Book of Blood
It’s been roughly twenty-five years since Clive Barker’s The Books of Blood burst onto horror’s literary scene. Nearly a quarter of a century since we first read Stephen King’s blurb “I have seen the future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker.” Over the span of those years, Barker has carved out a nice niche for himself in the genre—he’s never managed to overtake King (who’s a cottage industry unto himself), but if King is the, well, king of horror fiction, Barker has always been the prince.
Barker may not be able to boast the book sales or public recognition factor of King, but there is one area where he’s fared far better than his compatriot—and that’s in seeing his literary works adapted for the screen. Barker’s had genuine hits based on his works (Hellraiser, Candyman, and to a lesser extent, Nightbreed—a film that’s really more successful as a cult flick than anything), while King has had a rougher go of it at the box office (Kubrick’s version of The Shining is great, but mostly because of Kubrick, and not King. Cronenberg’s interpretation of Dead Zone also stands out), but for every one good King film, there seem to be five The Manglers. Barker’s had his misses as well (Rawhead Rex, for example) but I think overall his work has turned into better movies (and this is talking about films based directly on his work—so the ever-more-awful Hellraiser sequels don’t factor in).
Yet, for all of the Barker adaptations over the years, very few were pulled from The Books of Blood, which is odd since it’s viewed as a seminal collection of short fiction. That’s starting to change now, though—we’ve already had Midnight Meat Train (which was very good) and cinematic interpretations of Dread, Pig Blood Blues, and several other tales are in development. All of which brings us to Book of Blood—the latest and most current film based on a story from the series of three books (six in Barker’s native England—the last three volumes were given different names here in the States). So, does Book of Blood carry on the tradition started by Midnight Meat Train or does it take a place in the hall of shame next to Rawhead Rex (which I admit to liking as a guilty pleasure…) The answer isn’t as simple as it may seem.
Book of Blood is based on two stories from The Books of Blood: The Book of Blood and The Book of Blood (A Postscript): On Jerusalem Street. The first story appears at the opening of volume 1 of the collection, while the postscript closes volume 3. The interesting thing here is that both stories are really little more than framing devices to the stories that make up the bulk of the collection. Therefore, it’s hard to believe that anyone could manufacture a full-length feature film out of two pieces of writing that exist solely to give context to the collection as a whole. That director John Harrison has managed to take this framing story and blow it up to feature length—without diverging wildly from the implied tone of the original pieces—is something of a victory. The problem is that the two tales that serve as the inspiration for the film exist as more of a fictional tool than actual stories. That becomes apparent in the viewing. It’s hard to fault Harrison and company for this, though, because I always thought it was a shame that Barker didn’t flesh either of these pieces out in his collection.
That being said, the pieces do work more effectively in the book. The idea of a young charlatan passing himself off as a psychic and making the dead so angry that they break through to our plane of existence and carve their stories into every inch of his flesh is far more interesting when you read it and then read the stories that follow while thinking of each tale Baker’s crafted as one of the things written on the kid’s body. Book of Blood never gets to explore that in the film because the framing device is the story. As such, Harrison and the cast have to find ways to make the story interesting in and of itself—and they’re only partially successful.
What’s interesting about Book of Blood is what it isn’t—and that’s a gorefest. Barker is best known (although at least somewhat unfairly) for the violent and gruesome imagery of his work (he was one of the founding fathers of the splatterpunk movement…). Book of Blood does have some disturbing moments (a face peeling gets screentime on two different occasions), but it’s really a film more concerned with creating a dark and gloomy mood than it is in terrifying or grossing out an audience. The approach is interesting in that it wasn’t what I expected, but again, the story doesn’t seem geared toward pulling off this atmospheric approach. It struggles at various junctures with a sort of listlessness that kills any good will the audience might be feeling. Even the cast seems lost in these moments. Leads Sophie Ward and Jonas Armstrong try their damndest to keep things moving by whispering their dialogue and looking creeped out by the events happening around them, but the truth of the matter is that there are several periods in the finished product that feel more like a drama than a horror film.
I do, however, have to give Harrison props for two things. First up, the scene of the movers bringing the bed into the supposedly haunted Tollington House evokes memories of a similar sequence in Barker’s Hellraiser. There’s also a great cameo from Pinhead actor Doug Bradley in the film—but unfortunately it’s a very short scene. I was disappointed, mainly because I felt it would have been interesting to see more of his character’s time in the house.
Both of these things, and a the climactic payoff scene (which suffers a bit from some dodgy CGI yet still remains cool) counter many of the film’s shortcomings. Book of Blood isn’t a perfect Barker cinematic adaptation, but director John Harrison and his team do deserve credit for crafting a somewhat engaging film out of little more than two wraparound devices. Fans of the source material are bound to feel ambivalent about the project as a whole—it’s kind of faithful (the end moreso than the beginning) on the one hand, but it never quite coalesces into a satisfying whole on the other—but that’s better than I expected going in. Book of Blood is certainly lesser Barker in the pantheon of films based on his work, but it’s good enough that it makes me optimistic about all the adaptations of The Books of Blood stories in the pipeline.
Horror Geek Rating: 3 out of 5
Tags: Book of Blood, Books of Blood, Clive Barker, Film Reviews
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Spot on review Bracken. I’ve wanted to see a good adaptation of Barker’s Books of Blood for years so I was optimisticly curious about this movie. I was not only disappointed, worse, I was bored out of my mind. There were some interesting spots in the movie but it never established a clear tone in my mind. You summed it up perfectly with the term “listlessness”. Book of Blood could have easily been turned into a franchise made up of anthologies adapting the short stories within the framework of the books. I liked Midnight Meat Train(a title I thought I’d never see on a screen), let’s hope the other adaptations of Barker’s BoB short stories are more successful.
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:00 am
I had thought the movie was a total disappointment. But, after reading your review, I feel that if I had been prepared that the movie would play more like a drama than horror, I might have appreciated it more. I’m tempted to give it another try. The story is definitely better read than viewed, however.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:44 am
I saw bits and pieces when it aired on sci-fi (I fucking refuse to call it by the other name), and was not very impressed, certainly not enough to see the unedited version, but you’ve changed my mind, so kudos to you.
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:10 am
How much did you see to decide you weren’t impressed? I don’t know that your opinion is going to change much.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:22 am
Maybe 10-15 minutes. What I saw was hard to hear, and nothing much was happening, so I probably left and did something else.