Blood & Lust

An low-budget yet ambitious short film released in 2023, Blood & Lust was directed by Patrick Eichner and written by George Firewalker Carlson. The plot synopsis provided for this 37-minute short reads “Gus fills the empty void in his soul with sex, drugs and gambling, he's spiralling out of control. His tendency for self-destruction becomes a question for survival when one faithful night he's faced with unspeakable terror and is stalked by a bevy of beautiful creatures of the night.” Immediately that sounds pretty bizarre, but it looks very standard when compared to the film itself – viewers may still be surprised by where it ends up going despite the ridiculous setup.

When looking at films that are this low-budget and independent, it’s important to acknowledge and praise what the filmmakers are able to do with limited resources, even if the film has the shortcomings that are often seen in similar pieces of work. With this in mind, Blood & Lust has some genuinely admirable elements. It’s difficult to deny that it feels like the people involved are actually trying, and that the filmmakers have some interesting ideas that are difficult to fully expand on in a film that is so short. Most of the actors do their best, there are some interesting moments visually, and the costumes and sets are solid where it matters. The film eventually becomes so outlandish that it’s difficult not to respect it. It does feel like Eichner was doing his best to bring a story he was passionate about to life. However, it is also true that Blood & Lust does is littered with those previously mentioned shortcomings. There are editing issues, the sound mixing is rough with some dialogue that is hard to hear, and there’s a general feeling that the film can’t cover or expand upon everything that it wants to with such a short length.

It’s not particularly easy to make sense of everything here. It feels like the film may be trying to make a point about addiction, and the consequences of self-destructive behaviour (the film’s tagline “how far is too far?” further suggests this). The problem is that the film itself isn’t compelling. The writing isn’t strong enough, the characters are basic, and it does unfortunately feel too limited. As a result, it’s difficult to care about its themes and ideas when you don’t care about the rest of it.

Blood & Lust isn’t a complete failure, and again, it feels like the people involved were doing their best with what they had – which is always admirable. I wouldn’t call it a complete waste of thirty-seven minutes. But it’s undeniably flawed and mainly just leaves you wondering what these filmmakers could do with a bigger budget, a stronger script, better actors, and a longer runtime.