Written and directed by Amelia Moses
Starring Lee Marshall, Lauren Beatty and Aris Tyros
Running time: 1 hour and 19 minutes
MPAA rating: R for violence, sexual situations

by Audrey Callerstrom

Early on in Bleed With Me, Rowan (Lee Marshall, who also produced) cracks a smile. Looking at her made me think of the moments in Carrie when Tommy is nice to Carrie and she smiles. Marshall bears a striking resemblance to Sissy Spacek. As Rowan, Marshall is impressionable, malleable, a loner. A lost, gentle soul in need of care. Rowan is surprised, but pleased, to be invited to a cabin weekend in the dead of winter with her co-worker Emily (Lauren Beatty) and Emily’s boyfriend Brandon (Aris Tyros). Marshall’s performance is the stand out of the film, but it can’t save a lazy script, simple dialogue and wooden acting from Marshall’s counterpart, Beatty.

The plot, as advertised, is that a young woman suspects her friend is stealing her blood. For consumption or some other sinister purpose it’s not clear. Press materials identify Bleed With Me as an “investigation of female intimacy and dangerous codependency.” Perhaps that was the intention when writer/director Amelia Moses sat down to write the script, but that doesn’t translate to the final product. The circumstances between what brings Rowan and Emily to the cabin with Emily’s boyfriend in tow are vague. Rowan is “in recovery,” but it’s never spoken to what exactly she is in recovery from. Emily is also “in recovery.” Both girls drink. Rowan has scars on her arms from self-mutilation. Rowan and Emily work together at a group home. Are both girls in recovery from depression, anxiety, self-harm? Rowan may be, but Emily doesn’t appear to be in recovery from anything. She behaves as more of an alpha female, a stereotypical mean girl. Even the inflection in her voice suggests she should be spewing insults at Rowan instead of spending vacation with her. There is no build-up of tension between the two women, because we know from the get-go that Emily is cruel and vapid. Although Rowan and Emily identify as friends, they behave more like two strangers waiting at the DMV.

Immediately, something doesn’t gel. Why would Rowan tag along as a third wheel to what is supposed to be a couple’s weekend? At an isolated cabin in the middle of winter, no less? It’s not like the cabin has terrific amenities that would make hearing sex sounds worth it. The dialogue exchanged between the three characters never seems believable or indicative of the way three people in their 20s would talk. They speak like teens, idealistic, with a simple vocabulary. Rowan admits to Emily that she was jealous seeing Emily and Brandon together. “How do you do it? You both seem so happy.” What? What kind of person who has been on this planet for (I assume) two-and-a-half decades speaks like that? For some reason, Emily and Brandon frequently say Rowan’s name to her when she’s in the room. It’s an interesting, unique name, and it’s fun to say, but it’s another thing that probably looks better on paper than it sounds in the film. It’s not how people speak, particularly when they are in close proximity to each other. Say your roommate/partner/spouse’s name to them repeatedly in conversation the next time you talk to them. They will be annoyed.

Rowan starts to have vivid dreams, which can be effective in the right film, but here they are a crutch, an excuse to show blood and visuals that Moses can’t fit elsewhere. Rowan begins waking up with cuts on her arm, and starts to look and feel lethargic. Suspicious that the shadows she sees in her early waking hours are Emily doing something sinister, she snoops around the cabin and finds an album with photos of Emily and a now-dead sister she never mentioned. The script throws this in there with no intention of wrapping it up. The script is full of other loose-ends: what the girls are in recovery from, what the sister has to do with anything, a recurring story about a stalker of Rowan’s that doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. And why does the boyfriend need to be there? Marshall is a champion with some of the irksome dialogue, speaking at times like a child. Beatty is less so, delivering most lines without inflection. There is potential here – Moses is a capable technical director, even if some shots are repetitive – but the script needs significant work.

If in Canada, you can give it a try yourself via Fantasia Film Fest on September 1st at 3:00PM.