My Review Of "Blood Widow”

Jeremiah Buckhalt’s “Blood Widow’ is a modern slasher with an ambitious story, an intimidating masked killer and a lot of gore. The indie film stars Danielle Lilley, Brandon Kyle Peters, Christopher de Padua, Jose Miguel Vasquez, Emily Cutting, Kelly Kilgore, Phillip Marunowski, and Gabrielle Henry, shot in Florida on a low budget and gives 100 % fun. “Blood Widow” introduces a new slasher that stalks a group of friends during and after a house warming party in the country.

The story of “Blood Widow” is pretty mediocre but the new killer it creates is as memorable as “Chromeskull”, a brutal, unapologetic force of unnatural death. A stereotypical group of friends meet a brutal end at the hands of a homicidal maniac in a mask is no new ground in horror but then again no one is wanting new ground, just new monsters and new bodies that hit the floor. “Blood Widow” gives us that. The acting is passable, with some proving better than others in bring the characters to life. The origin story and dialog in this film treads lightly with some spots fighting to hold true to the story but all that is forgiven in this slice ‘em and dice ‘em flick. The cast are believable enough, the action keeps your attention and the production is enough make the film watchable.

“Blood Widow” is a low budget but it doesn’t pretend not to be. Even with the lower budget Buckhalt still goes full steam into the kill scenes giving fans what they want-blood and gore and screams. Some deaths are not as memorable as others but this film gives good kills. The effects are noticeably cheap but fun to watch. The blood is plausible, the gore is face-forward and the kills are at times creative. The killer does seem a little too polished for the setting but given the backstory and implied origin tale that got the killer to this point in life you can accept the “polished” costume-y style “Blood Widow” takes in this film.

Still there are some issues in “Blood Widow”, the camera does hold on the cheaper effects a bit too long which could turn off more mainstream horror fans, the origin story is on the weaker side of horror mythos when comparing to other modern slasher icons, and some moments have less than stellar sound quality so be warned. Over all though, I found “Blood Widow”, fun, entertaining and dark with no camp or extreme cheese aspects aside from the unavoidable like cliché characters and screaming while fake blood is spraying everywhere. Check it out if you are an indie or low budget horror fan.