Robin
Richards is like a cross between E.L. James and Anne Rice, except she might
just be completely written out. Hey, it happens to the worst of us too. To reignite
her inspiration, Richards’ agent has booked her a stay at a quaint Swedish
farm. It might even work, if Richards survives the experience in Patrick von
Barkenberg’s Blood Paradise (trailer here), which screens
during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Scary Movies series.
Richards
has a lavish lifestyle and a pampered boy toy to support. Unfortunately, her
last book, Return to Blood Paradise,
a sequel to her bestselling Blood
Paradise bombed hard. As a result, she has to go along with the plan when
her agent dispatches her to the rustic working farm-B&B. Of course, it is
worse than Richards could have imagined: no cell service, outdoor privies, and
the ragingly psychotic Former Rolf.
Blood Paradise starts with an intriguing
premise: the scandalous writer forced to confront the weirdness of rural Sweden.
It is sort of the genre version of Doc Hollywood,
where the locals really are sadistic murderers. Co-screenwriter-co-everything Andréa
Winter is also a spectacularly hot mess as Richards. Unfortunately, the second
and third acts are just a lot of same-old-same-old disappointments. It really
is a bummer, because Richards is such a promising character, but she just turns
into a typical horror movie idiot down the stretch.
Winter
really is a delight haughtily rolling her eyes in the early scenes. Frankly, we
have a hard time believing von Barkenberg as Teddy, the himbo kept-man, but maybe
some women out there would beg to differ. Regardless, we should all be able to
agree Christer Cavallius’s smarmy shtick as Richards’ “Number One Fan” Hans
Bubi quickly grows tiresome. As sexually confused serial killers go, Rolf
Brunnstrom’s Farmer Rolf is also unusually dull, but he is Swedish after all.
Somewhere
around the half-hour mark, von Barkenberg lost sight of the snarky attitude,
but kept plowing ahead anyway. The results are highly forgettable, which is a
cardinal sin for a film like this. Maybe someone else could write a film that
better showcased Winter and her Richards character. They could call it Return to Blood Paradise. Not recommended,
von Barkenberg’s Blood Paradise screens
Saturday night (8/18) at the Walter Reade, as part of Scary Movies XI.
