Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys (2014)

Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys

IMDB rate: 5,1

Genre: Predator

Starring: Shannen Doherty, Jason Brooks, Christopher Lloyd

For some unknown reason I decided to watch Blood Lake on Netflix. The minute the first scene ended I regretted this quite immensely. I think I got a bit dragged along when I saw that Shannen Doherty and Christopher Lloyd played in this movie, and got my hopes up. Of course I should've known better because Christopher Lloyd also decided to play in a movie called 'Piranha'. 

This really is one terrible movie. In the very first scene you already saw the first kill and you immediately get a glimpse on these attacking creatures, and they are the worst animated predators I've ever seen. I'm almost willing to say that the sharks in Sharknado looked more real, compared to these lampreys. When there's a ton of these lampreys together they just wriggle all at the same time, animated as if it's a cartoon from the 50's. Really, this looks so ridiculous that you should look it up, it's just laughable. 

I must say that I'm pretty disappointed in these actors that they choose a role in a movie like this. I'm currently watching the TV show 'Charmed' where Shannen Doherty played Prue in the first three seasons (supposedly she got written off because she was terrible to work with) and while I disliked her character in the beginning, she started to grow on me in the ending. Until she got killed off of course. Playing in a movie like this though really seems like a step below her usual work. I of course don't know how she is in person, but I do know that I don't dislike her as an actress. But even when you're the best actress around, there's no chance you'll make the movie Blood Lake better. What also surprised me is how old she got, she's only 45 years old or so, but her face looks so old out of a sudden. 

Then there's Christopher Lloyd, of course best known for his brilliant role as Doc Brown in Back to the Future. I was whining about Shannen Doherty playing in a movie below her 'level', but compare Christopher Lloyd with that! The man can act, but also he won't make this movie better. Even more so because his character is the most unrealistic character ever written. Get this, people in his town are dying because the lake is overrun with lampreys, but because he wants to attracts tourists to his town he won't make an announcement to stop the people getting into the water. So his character is actually supposed to think that it's more positive for his town that the people are dying in the water, rather than them just stay away for a few days until the problem is solved. What the actual fuck, right? 

Another smaller role was for Rachel True, who I know from seeing The Craft. Again, just a terrible attempt to lift her career up. I saw that she's also playing in Sharknado 2, and when the time has come that you only cast in terrible sea creature movies, I think it's best to give up on the acting career. 

Beside my great disappointment in a few good actors, 

I was also very surprised with the level of the dialogues. Especially coming from one guy named Rich (Fred Stoller), who talks and acts as if he's a 5 year old, but he still has quite an important job. The kids in this movie are of course the most annoying brats you'll ever see, ignoring their parents, go to the water, keep a lamprey alive, etc. Because they're such brats I really couldn't care less if they would die because a lamprey attacked them. Another fun one is when the mother goes to the shower (she knew already that the lampreys were in the shower, can't remember why she went in anyway), turns on the water (again, attracting the lampreys) doesn't go out of the shower, and to make matter worse, she gets a curling iron into the shower (which is running) to burn some lampreys. How this woman didn't get electrocuted is probably the biggest mystery ever. Terribly unrealistic characters, with very fitting dialogues I suppose. 

I already mentioned how unrealistic this movie is, and with Sharknado I was able to laugh at it because it was just too ridiculous to take seriously. But it seems like Blood Lake actually tried to be a good movie, because you're almost forced to take it seriously, meaning you can't laugh at it. It's not even laughably bad or something. 

If you didn't notice yet, I hated this movie. It's really a bunch of crap, perhaps even worse than Sharknado. Terrible special effects, real terrible. Good actors, but a lot of wasted talent because of terrible dialogue and characters. Oh, another small fun fact, everyone single person in this town is killed because of lampreys in the water (home tap, shower, swimming pools, lakes), but when you see a shot of the lake, there are shit loads of birds just chilling on the water... I think my rant is over, please take my advice and just don't watch this movie :).

My rate: 2/10