Bleeding (2024)
Directed & Written by Andrew Bell
Starring John R. Howley, Jasper Jones, & Tori Wong.

Horror

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

DISCLAIMER:
The following essay contains
SPOILERS!
Look away,
or forever be turned.

There are endless vampire films, stemming from the many vampire tales that emerged out of Gothic fiction’s fascination with the undead who suck the blood of the living, so it takes a lot for a story about vampires to stick out in the twenty-first century, which is why when a film like Andrew Bell’s Bleeding comes along it’s so wonderful to get a fresh infusion into the vampire sub-genre of horror. Bell’s film is set in a contemporary vision of America in which vampire blood is “a deadly and addictive opioid” that’s further manufactured into “a derivative” called Dust. Eric (John R. Howley) has a brother who died a year prior because of Dust, and now he finds out his cousin Sean (Jasper Jones) is hooked on the stuff, too. Even worse, Sean’s on the hook for a bunch of Dust with a local violent drug dealer. His and Eric’s lives change forever when they go looking for money or anything worth pawning by breaking into houses after they discover a girl locked in a basement.

Vampires and compulsive behaviours have long been linked, even prior to Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction (1995), as far back as depictions in Macedonian folklore of vampires driven by arithmomania, a compulsion to count actions/objects. Bell’s screenplay is imbued with a very personal understanding of the opioid crisis in America that has taken so many lives and rendered so many (largely working-class) people into forms of the living dead, walking amongst the shadows seeking their next fix, just as the addicts in Bleeding seek only their next sip of blood. The allegory of vampirism as addiction isn’t new, but Bell uses it in his film to tell an important, haunting, ugly story about the deep darkness of addiction that turns people into horrific versions of themselves and also reveals the monstrosity of those who’d rather stake them in the heart than try to help.
Ferrara’s aptly titled The Addiction is one of the best looks at vampirism as addiction, yet it’s a far different, more philosophically-minded film than Bleeding which chooses, in the best sense, to look at the painful realities created by addiction through a vampiric lens. Eric’s world is a narrow one; a world populated by broken, hurting people. His mother’s depressed and taking what Cousin Sean mockingly  calls “suicide pills.” She’s become like the living dead herself, according to Eric: “She just lays there all day. It‘s like a tomb.” His Uncle Hank (Jay Dunn) is a cop who’s personally had a hand in exterminating addicts (a.k.a vampires) and spends his time at home drinking while watching body cam footage of said exterminations. While vampire blood and its derivative Dust have spawned a whole illegal industry, it’s likewise ravaged everything and everybody around it. Just like oxycodone did in America and Canada. Even those not taking the drug itself come to be harmed, particularly the family members of addicts, or, as in Bell’s film, family members of the vampires “on blood.”

Perhaps Bleeding‘s best quality is the way it questions where monstrosity lies in the Gothic, using vampirism as addiction to question what’s monstrous in society; is it really the addict who’s a monster, or is it the response to addiction that’s most monstrous? There’s a great scene where monstrosity comes up directly when Sara tells Eric “Don‘t act like I‘m the monster” after her vampire urges briefly take her over, reminding him she’s the one who woke up with a slashed throat after Sean’s own vampire urges got the better of him earlier. Bell’s screenplay is a great example of what we know as the neo-Gothic, subverting traditional elements from many of the original Gothic stories to comment on the current moment in time, like questioning who and what is monstrous. While the vampires/addicts occasionally do questionable things, it’s always due to their hunger/addiction, never out of malice, whereas Bleeding does a great job of showcasing how others—such as the cops and the drug dealers—are the true monsters, using their authority and their power to manipulate those with the hunger/addiction. The cops via Uncle Hank and the drug dealers in Bleeding are the ones who kill, who assault, who keep people hooked on Dust. It’s the same as in real life, too. In reality, the doctors who get people hooked on drugs like oxycodone, the drug dealers who sell it on the streets (and also recommend other drugs like heroin after oxycodone’s effects are no longer enough for their high or extort people who can’t pay for their drugs), and the cops/legal system who brutally enforce harsh drug laws are the ones who help perpetuate addiction. And that’s not monstrous?
The ending of Bleeding can be interpreted slightly since Bell doesn’t spoon feed what will actually happen to the audience, allowing each viewer to wonder whether Eric will choose to go down a similar path as his Uncle Hank. The hope is that Eric will choose a different path, one that opts for more hope in a world of darkness. Earlier in the film, Eric and Sara talk about vampirism being treated humanely in other places outside of the United States: “They‘re treating this like a disease, researching cures.” Bleeding is, almost inarguably, a decidedly American film because of how it depicts the state-sanctioned force of police being used violently against some of the most vulnerable people, and we specifically see that manifested as gun violence. There’s little hope at all in Bell’s film apart from the potential for hope that lies in Eric at the end, though it’s not promised. This is why horror is such a perfect vessel for social and political commentary because in real life, like in Bleeding and Eric’s case, sometimes hope is hard to come by, no matter how hard we fight to hold onto it.