4/5 Bloody Good Movie
  by Xipe Totec
This a fantastic story with some great effects. If you don't watch it you are missing out on one of horrors best stories. It is based on Clive Barker's short story of the same name from the Books of Blood collection. Well worth a rent but if you are a Clive fan or a die hard horror fan you will want to own this.

5/5 Slow, deliberate and disturbing
  by Gregory Holmes
This isn't a remake or a sequel. Instead it is a good movie. Sticking quite faithfully to the original short story by Clive Barker, this is a well made and often disturbing film. Great performances by the cast, an excellent script, a haunting score and some moody photography all work together to make this one of the better adaptations of a Barker story. The Bluray, while not exactly eye candy, is a faithful reproduction of the directors intentions and all the scenes are sharp and decent looking. Not much in the way of extra features but the included documentary is fairly thorough if a bit short. All in all a great film and an excellent transfer.

4/5 A little thin, but worth the time
  by M. Daneker (Spinnerstown, Pa USA)
In order to flesh out two stories "book of blood" and "on jerusalem street" a subplot was added to a very basic story. The original tale is no more than a college student tries to channel spirits in a haunted house, he succeeds and they inscribe their stories into his flesh. The stories, are the books of blood that follow. In the film he's a fraud who used to be able to commune with the dead, but then he get's it back and is hunted for his flesh and the stories it holds. The first paragraph of Barker's story is repeated over and over in unatural dialogue but other than that it's a fairly solid ghost story. This is an old school gore shocker, the type that try to build character and story to get the audience involved so the scares are scary. It doesn't work 100%, it's a bit thin on character and story, so the slow my turn people off. Still, for oringal concept you can't beat it and any Clive Barker fan should be satisfied.

4/5 Another Odd Classic from Barker
  by Jacob Malewitz (Lansing, Michigan United States)
I think this will be one of those underrated Barker films. Sometimes his stuff doesn't make sense, sometimes it's basically taken from him and reimagined by Hollywood in a bad way, and all too often his name on the movie can be ignored.

However, I think this is right up there with Midnight Meat Train. I read the entire Books of Blood series years ago and loved them. And this film works in a similar, if flawed, way that those books did. I won't go into the story really, but it's based on early stories Barker wrote. There are some changes, and these are noted in the Blu-Ray addition. It's far more erotic than most other Barker films, and I disagree that the pacing was problematic in a sense. The 1st half of this film is almost a 5 star, but the ending did have some pacing problems and simply too much going on. Really, though, it looks like they actually tried to make a good horror movie, a different horror movie without young teens getting naked or slasher killers stalking people, freakish rejects in the hills etc. There is lots of gore, some minor and some big scares, and an ominous atmosphere. They spent money too making this film look good, no cheap effects, and had some darn good actors actually get into their parts.

It's a different kind of nightmare more fitting of a Barker tale than anything else.

As for the Blu Ray, sound and audio seemed to mesh very well (important when you want to get scared). The special features are very lacking, but I rarely watch all of those, just know people do like them. All you get is one behind the scenes featurette.

So I loved it. If only all the odd ideas could have been honed more. If you like Barker's horror, you'll enjoy this. Though this film is far from perfect, I liked it even more than Midnight Meat Train. And from the special features, it appears they intend to make many more films based on Barker's horror stories. Bring em on.



3/5 Not bad, but nothing special either
  by N. Durham (Philadelphia, PA)
Clive Barker adaptations are usually even more hit and miss than Stephen King ones. The last one we had was the surprisingly good (and dreadfully underrated) Midnight Meat Train, and now here we are Book of Blood. The story of this film revolves around a college student named Simon (Jonas Armstrong) able to channel the dead, who is brought to a supposed haunted house by his professor (Sophie Ward). This whole story is told by Simon to a demented man (Clive Russell) who has been hired to collect Simon's scarred up skin. As far as Barker adaptations go, Book of Blood isn't all bad, as it does provide some genuine scares and well-done gore effects. Where it falters however is the fact that the film as a whole is poorly paced, and the twist ending really doesn't come as too much of a surprise either if you think about it. Still, Book of Blood isn't all bad, and if you're a Clive Barker fan, you could do a whole lot worse. Look for Doug "Pinhead" Bradley in a blink-and-you-miss-him cameo.