Written by Will Honley and directed by Brad Anderson, the understated Blood (2022) takes vampire lore along a dirt track cut in the undergrowth by maternal love and hardened by addiction.
Jess (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse at the local hospital, is in the throes of an acrimonious divorce. Her soon to be ex-husband Patrick (Skeet Ulrich), is using her addiction to OxyContin, as leverage to get custody of their two kids, Owen (Finlay Wojtak-Hissong) and Tyler (Skylar Morgan Jones).
Now clean, and desperately trying to start over, Jess and her children move into the ancestral home, a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of town. It’s hard not to see the once bucolic setting is a metaphor for her addiction. The old pictures decorating the walls show the house in healthier times, when the furniture was cleaner, and the pond out back was so full you could take a boat out fishing. These days the wallpaper is peeling, the inherited furniture is tatty, and the pond is sick. A quagmire of stinking mud and rotting carcasses, surround a diseased tree that looks possessed.
As they unpack and get settled the family dog, the annoyingly named Pippin, gets spooked by something in the surrounding woods, and chases into the shadows after it. Lost for a day or so, a changed Pippin returns. Snapping and snarling the deranged beast attacks Owen, biting chunks from the boy, before Jess beats it to death.
Rushed to hospital, the doctors save Owen, but his condition repeatedly rallies and relapses, only showing signs of recovery when, during a particularly violent fit, he pulls himself free of the machines monitoring his vitals, and sucks down a bag of blood, gulping on claret like an alcoholic falling off the wagon.
As Owen’s condition improves, his need for blood escalates, and Jess if forced to take ever more desperate measures to keep him healthy. At first it’s stealing blood from hospital supplies. Then feeding him the blood of animals. But when that causes him to fit, she resorts to the forced exsanguination of a terminally ill woman, kidnapped from the hospital carpark. But nothing can keep up with Owen’s use. And when supplies run low Jess starts feeding him her own blood. Weak and fatigued Patrick accuses her of using again, and takes custody of the children, with devastating effects.
By stripping away the supernatural elements of vampire lore, and concentrating on the domestic, Honley and Anderson create an even more desperate set of choices for Jess. Her son’s addiction is her addiction and only when she faces it, beats it, can she save her family.
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