Bleed with me

Covering a festival often allows you to discover many films before their release but especially new talents. After her debut short film Undress Me (2017), director and screenwriter Amelia Moses propose a stifling thriller behind closed doors with Bleed with me. We discover Emily (Lauren Beatty), her boyfriend Brendan (Aris Tyros), and her friend Rowan (Lee Marshall) who have decided to spend a few days in a remote cabin. The fact that the writer and director have a real mastery of creating a disturbing atmosphere makes it easy for us to get immersed in this film without really knowing what's going to happen. Little by little, what should have been a dream holiday in the middle of nature will give way to an agonizing climate in which appearances are often deceptive.

Through her first film, the director not only manages to capture our full attention, but above all she shows that she knows how to set the scene and bring her characters to life. By using music to reinforce the film's strong scenes, careful photography and, above all, convincing direction by the actors, Bleed With Me easily manages to get out of the frame of a low-budget film to make way for a thriller that is far more convincing than The Rental, recently released in French theatres. As this film shows so well, it's often with a tight budget that young directors have to redouble their efforts and show constant inventiveness.

To create this disturbing atmosphere and to highlight Rowan's many hallucinations and psychological and physical decline, the director perfectly understood the importance of working on sound and music to reinforce the emotional strength of her story. As this film shows so well, Canadian genre cinema has nothing to envy the American one.

The particularly careful staging here and the convincing performance of the three main actors Lauren Beatty, Lee Marshall and Aris Tyros make it possible to have a good time in front of this first successful and original film that will make you jump on your chair as the plot unfolds. The world premiere of Bleed With Me will take place on August 27th during the Fantasia 2020 festival which benefits from an excellent program with several world premieres.

Bleed with me
Written and Directed by Amelia Moses
Produced by Lee Marshall, Amelia Moses, Mariel Sharp
Starring Lauren Beatty, Lee Marshall, Aris Tyros
Music by Dominic Caterina
Cinematography: Rene Arseneau
Edited by: Mattias Graham
Release date: August 20, 2020 (USA)
Running time: 79mns

Viewed August 19, 2020 (screener press)

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