Dir. Ed Boase, UK, 2011, Dur. 76 mins.
Cast: Oliver Boot, Tracy Ifeacor, Joseph Kloska, Cicely Tennant, Jay Taylor, Adam Best, Isabella Calthorpe, Mark Dexter, Sharon Duncan Brewster, Neil McDermott
Review by Carlie Newman
A film that is sure to inspire much discussion about the issues covered, Blooded deals graphically with the torture and humiliation of a group of young deer hunters. Set in October 2005, after the Anti-hunt legislation has been passed, the five young men and women go to the highlands of Scotland for some hunting. As is the custom, one of the young women is “blooded” after she has shot her first deer.
Combining dramatic reconstruction of the events and moving interviews with the survivors, we learn what happened next. Drugged and stripped of their clothing, they were all dragged into the open and there abandoned. The militant Real Animal League group filmed their own horrific behaviour and later released film, which was shown on the internet, of their actions. Once awake the young ones are forced into a deadly game in which they find themselves hunted. Their ordeal is pronounced “fair game” as they have been hunters and the animal rights group want to show what happens as a warning to others who want to continue hunting even though it has now been banned.
Shown in a graphic manner that is often terrifyingly real to watch, it turns out that the whole film is complete fiction. At the special press screening the producer and director were on hand to give out a press release explaining that there is no such group as the Real Animal League and that all the people seen are actors. In the style of other documentaries they have used two actors for each character – one for the “live” interviews and another for the dramatic reconstruction element of the film. The director explained to me that they had chosen this style in order to give maximum impact to this. The torture and other acts of humiliation are entirely concocted and show what could happen if the extreme views held by both sides of the hunting/anti-hunting legislation were to be put into practice.
Taken purely as a thriller, the film is exciting to watch and very well acted by the members of the cast. It is professionally directed and looks so obviously real that without that information from the producer and director, the audience would probably take it as fact.
Released 1 April. DVD available with extras on 4 April
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