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Blooded

5/10

Stars: Neil McDermott, Nick Ashdown, Mark Dexter, Oliver Boot, Isabella Calthorpe, Cicely Tennant, Adam Best, Joseph Kloska, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Tracy Ifeachor

Director: Ed Boase

A downright peculiar 'faux-documentary'-style thriller, beautifully shot on the Scottish isle of Mull, and centring on five hunting enthusiasts on a stag-shooting jaunt, who themselves become the prey of balaclava'd and well-armed members of the 'Real Animal League'.

The action - the quintet is drugged, stripped and dumped in the forbidding countryside - is spliced with 'interviews' with the survivors, which only break up the film's flow. Puzzlingly, while actors play the characters in the reconstructed island footage, the interviewees are also played by actors - but different ones.

Confused? You will be, especially as the 'real-life' characters are themselves occasionally glimpsed in grainy videos shot by the 'Real Animal League': so (I think) we have three versions of the same thing.

Slow to start - you may sit there thinking 'Get on with it' - the film does muster some moments of suspense when the action gets under way. Dialogue tends to the portentous - 'For him, hunting was an act of reverence...of worship if you like' - but is mercifully kept to a minimum.

David Quinlan

UK 2009. UK Distributor: Revolver. Colour.
76 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 2.

Review date: 29 Mar 2011