The Big Picture
In Our Blood
is a horror film that questions the neutrality of capturing pain on film, grappling with whether documentary filmmaking is itself extractive and parasitic.- The film embraces the eerie commodification of others’ suffering for content, pondering the ethical implications of filming people in distress.
- The bold, bloody ending ensures everything clicks into place perfectly and leaves you with much more to chew on about who next might be consumed.
There is no way to write about In Our Blood, the audacious narrative feature debut from documentary filmmaker Pedro Kos, without withholding as much as the film does. What can be said is that it’s a sly little horror movie starring Brittany O'Grady of the upcomingIt’s What’s Inside and E.J. Bonilla of last year’s The Exorcist: Believer. However, while both are no strangers to films that play around in as well as adjacent to the genre, their latest is something special all its own that defies any and all expectations. Written by Mallory Westfall, who previously worked on the stellar series Chucky, it wraps itself in the visual language of documentary filmmaking that it then proceeds to cannibalize in intriguing and incisive ways. Namely, this is a story with a mystery at its center that, by the time it reveals itself, had me levitating out of my chair in pure excitement that the film saw what it was gesturing towards all the way through. While this twist will likely become clear to any who watch it, as Kos and Westfall do a solid job of laying out all the pieces until you can see what they’re building to without robbing it of the final reveal, this review will avoid going into too much detail about what gets discovered. Not only is this to preserve the experience, but because there is much to sink your teeth into elsewhere in terms of how it offers a fresh take on the found footage subgenre. Just be prepared, the duo serves up a real meal of a movie.
What Is 'In Our Blood' About?
This all begins with Emily (O’Grady), who we see speaking directly to the camera in what feels like both a confession and a repudiation of something. Before we come to understand what this is, the film rewinds through flashes of something going awry before returning us to what we are informed by on-screen text is Day 01. We then find ourselves on the road with Emily and Danny (Bonilla) as they drive to Las Cruces, New Mexico. They banter back and forth with relative ease, though more agonizing truths underlie their conversations before they come spilling out. Namely, we soon learn that the duo are setting out to make a documentary about Emily’s mother, Sam (Alanna Ubach), who says she is now clean from the suffocating vise of a drug addiction that fractured their family. The matriarch sent a letter laying all this out, but when they arrive at her home, there is a feeling that there is something else we aren’t being told. After an initial reconnection and a painful interview that ends with Emily storming out, seeming like she is questioning doing this at all, Sam disappears. As the film then goes from being about reconnection to tracing a haphazard search, both the dark realities of this world and the way documentary filmmaking attempts to capture it get held up to the light.
Namely, this is found footage that questions whether the act of capturing pain is a neutral act. Oddly, while there have been great recent films in the subgenre from the hauntingly expansive The Outwaters to the playfully inventive Late Night with the Devil, the film that In Our Blood felt most similar to was Alex Garland’s Civil War. Yes, that is more of a tense action-thriller, but they have a shared skepticism that they turn inwards on themselves. Here, Kos and Westfall are showing how there can be something extractive, even parasitic, to documentary filmmaking itself. As you watch, you wonder why they keep filming what can be deeply painful situations, but then you realize that’s the point. It’s meant to cross lines where others wouldn't.
Where other found footage films leave you wondering why they haven’t just cut already, In Our Blood embraces the eerie sensation of seeing the suffering of others being commodified and consumed. Even when being done under the guise of compassion, as that is supposedly why it seems that Emily initially set out to make this film, there is an inherent tension to bringing a camera into a situation where people are struggling. It’s something that’s being done for the purposes of more and more content at all costs, even to oneself. The film wields this like an ax, turning itself into a painfully relevant and sharp tool by which to skewer the continued way turning your lens on something can suck all the life out of it rather than help the situation.
Sometimes this is expressed via the reactions of people telling Emily and Danny to stop filming, which helps to inject the film with the necessary mystery as you wonder what is seemingly being covered up, while also making clear that these documentary filmmakers may be harming more than helping. One scene where they chase down a man makes this most explicit, especially once you know what this is all really about. That the film uses interviews with real people living on the margins, blurring the line between documentary and the fictional approximation of one, is a fraught undertaking, but it still proves quite effective. It’s almost closer in ethos to the found footage classic Cannibal Holocaust as it frequently ponders whether there is exploitation at play here because of the way people are being filmed by outsiders coming in. The low-budget sensibility with the scrappy yet precise formal approach are all in service of this thematic tension that the film, rightly, realizes can’t be neatly resolved in a complicated conclusion where everything still clicks into brutal and beautiful place.
'In Our Blood' Has a Bold, Bloody Ending
While the ending is quite a big swing, it doesn’t come entirely out of nowhere as key details that are sprinkled throughout ensure this is also a sturdy genre mystery that will only reward a second watch. There is a central misdirect that we spend a fair amount of time tracing down, which, while it proves to be the film’s sole weaker element, still does a good job of setting the stage for what this was really about all along to hit that much harder. The last half hour where we spend time following the duo desperately driving down roads before entering what feels like it could be a whole new film gives the reveal in Barbarian a run for its money. From the uninterrupted sequence where we behold all of this (mostly) without cuts to the eventual realization about how we ended up with Emily confessing is all excellent, sending the film out on a grim and gruesome high note. Whenever you sit down to watch it, whether for the first or the inevitable second time you’ll immediately want to, keep your eyes on every move that an understated yet outstanding O’Grady makes both leading up to this fantastic finale, and in every single moment the camera now puts her at the forefront of the film being made.
In the end, you’ll see all that Kos has been wanting us to see. What a glorious, gruesome sight it is to take in as the truth is finally laid bare. As the sun rises one more time on the community they came into, Kos and, by extension, our small-time crew end up uncovering some big things. Was it worth the cost? We’re left to linger on this question through the credits where we see the world that then gets left behind, leaving us too with something more to chew on. Just as the film takes a final big bite out of itself as well as all it had been putting forth up until then, you’ll be left wondering what role you had as the consumer of this strife and if, at some point in the not-too-distant future, it is you who might be the next meal being served.
REVIEW
In Our Blood (2024)
Pedro Kos' In Our Blood is an audacious horror debut that, in addition to a bold and bloody ending, has plenty to chew on in the run-up to it.
- The film defies any and all expectations, wrapping itself in the visual language of documentary filmmaking before cannibalizing itself in intriguing and incisive ways.
- Kos and writer Mallory Westfall do a solid job of of laying out all the pieces while still preserving the punch of the final reveal.
- Said ending serves up a glorious, gruesome sight that represents just as much of a big swing as a way of leaving us with something more lingering.
In Our Blood had its World Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.
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