Netflix’s Bloodride (Blodtur) navigates human capability on horror’s route
Review by Angelo Lorenzo
A mother stabs her daughter’s dog on a stone slab in the outskirts of a backward pagan village. A son drives to a remote cottage with his three brothers and a hitchhiker only to discover that the symptoms of his mental illness have resurfaced. A writer attempts to bring the characters in her story ill-fortune before realizing that she is a character in someone else’s story. A greedy business tycoon traps his colleagues as his pharmaceutical company’s greatest experiment by far gets lost. A neophyte teacher summons the souls of children once bullied by the town where she now resides to work. Two new employees unravel a vengeful secret during an office party.
These are the various premises of the six episodes in Netflix’s new Norwegian horror anthology, Bloodride (Blodtur). The series premiered on March 13 — a Friday with all its luck — and has since left horror enthusiasts gouging for more. It may be the streaming service’s horror equivalent for science fiction’s Black Mirror or animation’s Love, Death, and Robots, but plunge deep into each of the 30-minute episodes and one may find out that the ugly side of human capability is what makes the paranormal or slasher fest all the more horrifying.
The opening sequence gives a hint of this concept as a man wheels a bus on a dark route towards a destination which many consider as hell — or at least that’s what other reviewers had analyzed. As the credits roll, the viewer sees the bus’ passengers who are later revealed to be the essential characters in each episode. Either they are reflecting the errors of their ways or contemplating about where they’re going; their forlorn faces show it all. Their experiences are detailed in each episode.
In “Ultimate Sacrifice”, a family has recently moved in to a rural town after a financial crisis has led them to find a new residence. They find it strange that the people keep bringing animals with them. But once they get acquainted with their neighbors, the mother soon discovers that the residents have kept an ancient tradition (based on Viking lore) where they’d sacrifice their loved ones to receive fortune. In the case of their neighbors, it’s their pets. This leads the mother to bring the family pet to stone slab, located deep in the woods — where the Vikings used to enact their rite. When she doesn’t get contented with the fortune she receives, she takes the sacrifice to the next level by bringing her husband there. As it turns out, their daughter discovers them and that’s when fortune takes a different turn for the mother’s greedy attempt.
While the “Ultimate Sacrifice” serves as the series’ first episode, it doesn’t veer away from the elements found in other episodes. The paranormal concept based on Norwegian lore also reveals in the episode, “Old School”, where a passionate teacher unravels the mystery behind lost girls in a school that has recently opened after being shut down for almost four decades. She doesn’t heed the people’s warnings, and instead wishes to bring justice to the girls who had been shunned and killed by the community before the school shut down. Eventually, she discovers that the lost girls, which she tries to summon, turn out to be the exact opposite of the innocent and pitiful victims she first assumed.
While greed is the main motive of the mother in the first episode, it becomes the downfall for the businessman in “Lab Rats.” It’s one of the episodes in the series that attempt to magnify human capability when greed becomes the driving force. As a mild criticism against capitalism, “Lab Rats” follows a business tycoon who exploits his employees and punishes them for not giving what he expects. It begins at a congratulatory dinner after his pharmaceutical company has successfully invented a drug that would allegedly cure depression or any related mental health illness. But when he does not find it in his vault, he accuses and inspects his colleagues at the dinner table and forces them to confess if they had stolen the product. His wife is not even exempted from the outburst. When none of them would give out the truth, he leads them into the basement of his building where he locks them up in a glass box. Gradually, his colleagues become desperate. Yet their pleas fall into deaf ears as he releases gas in the box until one of them would confess.
The series also draws the line between action that is motivated by the illness of the mind or that which is motivated by personal intent. The former is visible in “Three Brothers” wherein the character of the son, who has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital back to his mother, decides to go on a trip with his two brothers who seem to encourage him. Where else but a remote cottage in the mountains, childhood vacation spot where he knows can trigger memories? When he stops by a gas station, he meets an unlikely hitchhiker who appears to be very fond with his brothers. But it was in the cottage, and upon being fetched by his mother, where he meets the ultimate revelation that what he is seeing is not consistent with reality.
Personal intent, which is not heavily influenced by the tricks of the mind, turns a prolific writer into a bloodthirsty murderer in the episode, “Bad Writer.” It follows the experience of a privileged aspiring writer who attends a writing course where she meets a reclusive classmate and an instructor who encourages the class to bring ill-fortune to their characters to keep the stories interesting. When she comes home to her apartment, she discovers that her roommates and her boyfriend plot to murder her. At the height of her escape, she discovers that she is living in one of the stories being written by a person involved in that class.
Discovery also treads the office party in “The Elephant in the Room” where two newly hired employees attempt to solve the mystery behind a tragic event that left one of the company’s employees in the hospital. Through investigating by going over unauthorized files in the computer, the evidence they gather leads to an initial conclusion that the employee was once bullied by their co-workers. Upon helping their presumed victim exact her revenge, they learn that what they once concluded turns out to be the complete opposite.
From paranormal events to bloody slash fest, all six episodes in Netflix’s new horror anthology vary in terms of plot and motive. But if there’s one unifying element that fuels the bloodride all the way to its terrifying destination, it’s human capability. If anything, the series shows that this capability can be motivated by the darker side of human character — whether it’s of greed, ignorance, or the abuse and the impulsiveness of control and power. For Bloodride, this is perhaps the most horrifying aspect that paves the ominous way of violence and even death.
