In short: Blood Bags (2018)

American Tracy (Makenna Guyler) is in her  last month of a study year in Italy. She dreams of becoming a photographer, finding herself somewhere between enchanted and obsessed by old, empty buildings and the kind of urban semi-ruin you don’t really get in the USA, apparently. She takes her friend Petra (Marta Tananyan) on what may very well be the last photography expedition of her stay to a pretty picturesque street in Turin. When the two find the gate to a particularly impressive building to be open, Tracy drags Petra with her inside. Alas, Petra is soon killed by the shrouded inhabitant of the place, someone, as the audience already know, with a rather dire lust for blood.

Tracy manages to escape for a time, but she’s now locked in the place, stalked by the killer. And she’s not the only one, for she quickly encounters the thief Alex (Emanuele Turetta), who has been hiding from their stalker for hours. To make matters worse, the killer may also have an accomplice making their way to the house.

Emiliano Ranzani’s Body Bags may be a low budget movie with limited ambitions, but I found myself rather pleasantly surprised by it all the same. For while the acting is all over the place (with Guyler and Turetta sensibly the most professional people on screen as well as those with the most screen time), and the whole affair really is a simple “people running through an old house chased by a monster” set-up with just enough scenes set elsewhere to introduce characters and provide a sense of place and time, the film mostly realizes it with competence.

There are some clear nods towards Italian genre greats – Fulci must be a particular favourite I assume – and the slash and stalk scenes are often low-key but suspenseful. The film also features a very nice nightmare sequence that actually makes me wish the production had taken more steps in the direction of the dream-like, but I’m bound to say that, aren’t I?


You could criticize some elements of the script for not being exactly tasteful – porphyria doesn’t work this way, and the whole “sick people are evil” thing is a bit distasteful  – and its mechanics for keeping characters where they are supposed to be are a bit too much the standard mechanics of all horror films. However, given the constraints the filmmakers were working under, I’m still rather taken with Blood Bags.