Malik (Deiondre Teagle - Death Ranch) is a struggling artist whose obsession with his art frequently impacts negatively on his bill paying jobs. Needing work after being fired for being late, Malik sees a vacancy as a security guard at a local art gallery run by the friendly Trisha (Deborah Seidel - Scare BNB: The Hosts) and soon gets the job. The centerpiece of the gallery is a painting with a dubious past, there is a legend that whoever comes into contact with the painting ends up dead. On his first night on the job Malik begins to hear strange noises, he soon comes to realise that there is a demonic creature that lives within the painting, and that for a high price he is willing to teach Malik how to become a great painter. Despite knowing the danger, Malik decides to accept the price from the demon, and it pays off with his work improving ten-fold, however, with this new skill comes a dangerous obsession to get even better, no matter the cost.
I always state during art based horrors that the paintings in the film need to be of a competent enough quality not to see bad. Thankfully, that is the case here, the paintings aren't steller, but they are good. I especially liked one scene in which Malik encounters all the previous victims of the demon trapped within portrait paintings of themselves, their emotions cause their paintings to change to reflect the mood. That was cool. This is an indie horror and one which doesn't have the most going on. Malik's nightly encounters with the creature create a pattern, and there is other stuff going on, such as Malik's issues with his degenerate landlord, Carson (Brad Belemjian - Ouija Craft, Death Ranch), a good side character.
The look of the demon wasn't that original, a white humanoid figure with long black claws, that appears not to have any features on their head, aside from a mouth, reminded me of a knock-off Cenobite. While the make-up effects were decent it still didn't look that realistic. The art gallery where most the film occurs is quite small, made up of just a couple of unremarkable rooms. At least there is some neat revelations as to the origins of the creature that I found unexpected, in a Phantasm kind of way. While Teagle was perfectly fine as the protagonist I felt his character would have benefitted from a few more neutral characters to interact with, though I'm sure that was a limitation of the budget. Plot wise there were not too many surprises, but it didn't tell a bad story.
Painted in Blood always felt like it needed something a little more to really bring the world of the film to life. The sterile set design and not enough characters hampered the effectiveness somewhat, but it wasn't a bad film, just lacked a spark to make it more memorable. Painted in Blood is due for release on 3rd October from High Fliers Films.
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