Blood Red Ox (2021) | Stylish, Surreal, and a Little Confusing.

Breaking Glass Pictures is releasing this film on November 8th. 

This viewing was part of a Press Screening. 

If you been paying attention to my blog you will know that this year I got put on a publicity list for Breaking Glass Pictures. For the uninformed they are a production/distribution company and they have been acquiring quite a few foreign horror films in the last few years. Tonights Feature Film is Blood Red Ox directed by Bolivian Director Rodrigo Bellott. To be Honest I'm not particularlly familiar with him or his ouvre but from what mr. google can tell me hes a pretty familiar face around the Latin American Film Festival Circuit. So lets dive in as always lets get into 

THE GOOD STUFF.

In Interviews Bellott states that he takes a lot of inspiration from 70s and 80s film makers like Argento, Polanksi, and Ingmar Bergman, (he did Seventh Seal and No I totally didn't have to google that shut up), and the influences are worn on the sleeve. Intense Color Washing, Surreal Dream Sequences, and intense Paranoia all find there way into the film and this stylization is both a blessing and a curse.

I usually start off my reviews with a short synopsis of the plot and for this film it begins simply enough. Boyfriends Amir and Amat, (oh also every single character name starts with an A for some reason), go to Bolivia for a work trip. Amir is a journalist and Amat is just along for the ride. Things proceed as normal we meet some locals, mention some local gods, and there is some rather poignant beats as Amat discusses some of his history with Mental Health. Amat begins to loose his grip on reality and the movie decides to follow. 

The last half of the film becomes a sort of a waking dream or rather one of those dreams were you wake up and are still dreaming. The world begins to make less sense. We fall into layers and layers of unreality until the very events that we saw established are put into question. To be honest it isn't my favorite move. 

It actually reminds me of another microbudget foreign film Sodium Party (2014) which was done by an Irish Director. In that film we have a women who experiences a bucolic college experience until her boyfriend goes missing and no-one seems to remember him existing. The movie feels like someone coming out of a very intense delusion and the final 10 minutes show her wandering around a street stumbling into the  various actors of her daydream. ( I would compare this to the ending of the Wizard of OZ (1939) but I'm a dumb bitch whose never watched a classic so instead it's like the ending of Toothless(1997)). In any of these film mentioned what works for me is that there is always some base of reality. A final platform that we can stand on even if the rest of the movie flits about in a tesseract of dream logic above our heads. 

With Blood Red Ox, the surrealism, while provacative and uncanny, eats into the other themes given. There are some tangible ideas built up in the first half, Amir is working on a story about a conservation group that is battling neo-colonists trying to rip up the land for a profit. Amat is dealing with some extreme mental health issues that seem insanely terrifrying but as this film falls deeper into madness we don't explore these themes through a fractured lens we simple forget that they are there.

and I really hate being so critical of this because I want to recognize that I'm someone who is not super receptive to dream logic type plots, I need some consistenty, some golden thread to help me understand a film. Also while I do think the plot is the weakest part of this film there is a lot I really do like about this movie. Theres this really great part in the beginning of the film were their host is singing this torch song at a nightclub. Its very bluesey and Joan Jett and as the music plays it hard cuts into these images of blood and bodys, theres these moments during intense scenes where the film suddenly darkens and brightens again almost like somebody is playing with a dimmer switch or like there taking large shallow breaths. Bellott is clearly a very talented director and while I think that this movie doesn't stick its landing and develop its themes as well as it could I don't think this is a poor attempt by any means. There are hundreds of directors out there with very little vision who do a lot less with much more concise scripts and I want to applaud Bellott for still showing me something new and innovative. 

Blood Red Ox is meant to be reminescent of the surrealism of the genre films of the past. There is an intention to play with the emotional landscape of delusion and unreality, and as it flits through its dreamscape we see a lot of things that should work. Elements of Folk Horror and Queer Romance, Minotaurs that would make Kenneth Anger blush. But like with any dream meaning escapes it, the things that we wish to find concrete slip from are grasp and the understanding we acquire drifts from us in the micro seconds of waking. Leaving us with a beautiful ambiance but a fleeting memory. 

Rating: It's Complicated.