phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2021
Books Of Blood
IMDb Info
Release Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 47min
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: A journey into uncharted and forbidden territory through three tales tangled in space and time.
Poster - Title Card
phancy.com rating:
phancy.com notes: One passable story, one non-creepy story and an uninteresting bookending story. Small kudos for filming the opening scene in LA's The Last Bookstore. Only one of the three stories comes from Clive Barker's Books Of Blood, which means two-thirds of this movie is false advertising.
Outside Reviews:
Brian Tallerico
2 out of 4 stars -
rogerebert.com
Originally conceived as an anthology series, Books of Blood has now been reduced to an anthology film, three stories with loose connections in terms of plot but all about people who learn that they shouldn't mess with the other side. If creator Brannon Braga had been allowed to expand this into the series it should have been, it might have worked, but it feels like a half-hearted project in every way in this form. Would I judge this differently if it were three episodes sent to press for a new Hulu series instead of a complete feature? Maybe, but I'd still be nervous about where it was going next.
Katie Rife
Grade: C -
Hulu's Books Of Blood somehow manages to make Clive Barker bland
With a body of work that is explicit, disturbing, and sexually charged, Clive Barker is among the more transgressive horror authors to breach the mainstream in the past 30 years. So how did Hulu manage to turn a seminal Barker volume into a milquetoast adaptation that resembles an old-fashioned made-for-TV-movie in all the worst ways? Unintentionally, one imagines, because you don't option Barker's six-volume short-story collection Books Of Blood - a cornerstone of the cheekily named "splatterpunk" movement - unless you're looking to push some boundaries. And Hulu's version of Books Of Blood is a case study in how the streaming revolution has changed the rules of what can and cannot be shown on "TV." But beyond fleeting moments of graphic violence and nudity, the knife's edge here is actually quite dull.