Starring: Camilla Metelmann, Kim Sønderholm
Written & Directed By: Emil Ishii
Alternative Titles: Rovdrift (Denmark),
Grade: B+

 Bleed With Me is a Danish horror film that has been in the works for the past 3 years and is heading towards an international release. It shows us an environment where everyone seems to be an enemy. This theory is escalated further when a cab driver goes on a bloody rampage, forcing his passenger to witness all this until she has to face the same fate.
 
 Laura (Metelmann) is having a terrible night. She is closing up the bar she works at when a man comes in, resisting as she pushes him to leave. He says he just needs to go to the bathroom and he’ll leave. After awhile Laura doesn’t hear him any longer, but knows he hasn’t left. As she is looking for him, he grabs a hold of her and attempts to rape her. Laura manages to break free and knock him unconscious. Finally she is able to leave, but a man dressed in black walks up to her asking for a smoke. She gives it to him and tries to leave, but he comes chasing after her. She manages to find a cab though and is just happy she is finally on her way home. However, before long she discovers that she got in to the wrong cab. The Chauffeur (Sønderholm) doesn’t intend on letting Laura go. He drives maniacally as she begs and pleads for him to let her go. He doesn’t even respond to her though. After she nearly gets out, he bashes her head and when she wakes up she finds her hands and head tied back with barbed wire, barely even letting her breath. Anytime she tries to move at all, she starts choking as the wire pierces her skin.

 The Chauffeur ends up driving around, making visits to his victims. He visits two hookers who are friends with the one he is really after. He murders them both, bashing one with a sledgehammer until she reveals her friend’s location. While he is inside Laura furiously bangs on her door trying to get the attention of a man in the parking lot. By the time he realizes she needs help it’s too late for the both of them. They go on to find the next victim. The Chauffeur rapes this women and is just about to leave when she bruises his ego pushing him to murder her as well. In this time, Laura manages to break her hands free, but struggles to get the wiring off of her neck. Now that he has murdered the one he was really after, Laura is clearly next, and running out of time to escape.

 The acting is incredible here and adds so much to the film. I really liked Camilla Metelmann as Laura. She was strong, fierce, and wouldn’t give up no matter how bad things got. She wasn’t afraid to fight back and was actually very smart about how she went about things. I really appreciated that Metelmann didn’t simply play the character as a victim, but on the other hand also showed that she wasn’t indestructible. She showed great frustration and that she clearly wanted to give up, but was strong enough to keep on pushing on, fighting for survival. This is easily Kim Sønderholm’s best performance to date. He has this incredible intensity and dark mentality that he brings out in this character that remains nameless throughout the entire film. He is practically silent, yet facial expressions alone make him this creepy and un-understandable guy. The one thing I would have liked would be for his character’s mindset to be revealed somewhat. That could have made it even stronger by giving us a sense of what drove the bloodlust. I completely understand why the writer/director, Emil Ishii, didn’t do this. There is a great mystery in the character and he is given this monstrosity that makes us question whether there really is a human in there. So many moments when Laura is screaming incessantly Sønderholm just has a very straight face, as if this type of thing is so normal for him. Then there are moments when he kills or causes others pain such as when he runs over a guy in the street or when Laura realizes she is trapped that this gleeful smirk comes across his face, clearly showing how he gets off on others pain.

 There are a few links to other horror films here. One is a cat named Jonesy, a dedication to Alien. Laura happens to live on Elm Street and when the killer gets directions to the woman he is after, he is told, “Wolf street-the last house on the left”. Clearly, there were a few Wes Craven inspirations here.

 Bleed With Me blends the visuals with sound very well. The introduction works the two together, giving us this very trance like feel. At the beginning we see this image of a girl lying in a field, covered in blood. It’s blurred and there’s static sound coinciding with this. The focus goes in and out until a zap cuts this image out and brings us to this same girl, safe in her bed. Later on this focusing in and out combined with the zapping, takes us from one flashback to another, displaying the chaotic and terrorized state that Laura is in. There’s also a lot of dark shots here, that work off of the almost unnaturally white color of the killer’s skin. The soundtrack is great through the film, complimenting the horror, giving us a greater connection to the victims and making us fear for them through this created tension. There’s a number of good deaths here, although there is nothing new in terms of creativity in the deaths. Still, I feel like this helps conceal the killer’s identity and true motives since that seems to be something that the filmmaker wanted to keep a secret. There is a good amount of blood. There is a certain intensity in every death whether they are all that gruesome or not. Bleed With Me is an intense horror film full of great mystery through slaying after slaying.

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