Where to watch Baby Blood
3 1/2 Stars
A cruel circus owner beats and abuses his pregnant wife. One day the circus receives a leopard newly captured in Africa, but the animal soon dies. However, an evil creature that was inside the leopard bursts out of the animal’s body, burrows into the wife’s body and takes over her fetus. It soon starts demanding blood, and the woman goes searching for victims for her new “baby.”
Imagine Venom went into a woman’s womb and spoke to her in that odd venom voice, convincing her to kill and drink human blood so it can grow and she can birth it, that’s Blood Baby in a nutshell. This is a French film from the 90’s and it feels like it. I miss these types of oddities in today’s cinematic world — movies that are so weird Hollywood wouldn’t even think of touching them.
There is gore in here, but not a lot. Mostly the film consists of a creepy monster voice trying to get the main character to do unspeakable things, mainly kill and drink blood, although for all the killing she does the blood seems to go to waste as she runs off more often than drinks. Emmanuelle Escourrou is great as the young woman infected with the parasite, the emotional journey she is dragged on by this “fetus” may be an attempt to explore thoughts of abortion and what it means to bring life to something, but that message is muddled by the fact she’s impregnated with an incredibly evil being that in no way resembles a truly innocent human child. Either way there’s something deep happening here, or perhaps that’s just the slow 90’s pace that plods on with such confidence, as if the film knows exactly what it’s doing.
The plot isn’t much expanded on the basic idea, it’s a relatively simplistic ride, but such an odd idea regardless. The modern Hollywood equivalent would have to be the 2013 Scarlett Johansson flick Under the Skin, both films are mesmerizing in their slow methodical direction and character portrayals. This is a low budget film shot in five weeks, which us rather impressive given the use of a circus and gory special effects, but it’s the level of detail focused on the characters and the acting that really brings this to life.
If you’re into creepy odd horror flicks with a bit of gore I’d definitely say Baby Blood is worth tracking down.
Directed by: Alain Robak
Written by: Serge Cukier, Alain Robak
Starring: Emmanuelle Escourrou, Christian Sinniger, Jean-François Gallotte