“Blood from Stone” (2020) - Review
“Blood From Stone” aspires to be the neon trailer park, blood splatter sister of “Only Lover’s Left Alive.” In Jim Jarmusch’s affecting revisionist take on the genre, the enigmatic and mystically hypnotic Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) delicately tiptoed through the art world for their immortal lives, playing muse to the most influential figures in history. The closest thing to art in writer/director Geoff Ryan’s “Blood From Stone,” is dirtbag fashion. In an attempted reconciliation between Darya (Gabriella Toth) and former lover, Jure (Vanja Kapetanovic) results in a murderous feeding frenzy that brings them out of the shadows.
Set in the permanent augmented night in the strange Las Vegas’ gambling hubs and bar sprawl, Darya is trying to keep under the radar. Vampire life in 2020, is a much more complicated proposition. Sourcing blood from medical interns, suppressing the urge to feed with disposable one night stands, she’s trying to blend into a regular type life. Enter Jure, an appropriately Eastern European accented, dark-featured specimen; a Dracula by way of UFC fighter Jorge Masvidal if neither character were worried in any way about testing positive for steroids.
Writer/director Geoff Ryan synthesises old and new in the movie’s killing-spree centrepiece at a frequency that dwarfs the rest of the film. Dejected after an attempted apology to Darya for a barroom slaughter upon his arrival, Jure begins a new evening buffet. Jure initiates another alcohol-fuelled evening quickly turns into an epiphany. Jure takes over a rideshare and works out that if he can hide/dispose of the bodies, there’s an evening of gluttonous, on-demand humanity to consume.
As the montage of chaotically, self-destructively drunken riders pour out of gambling and drinking venues, Jure mashes old and new. Jure builds rapport with his passengers, making this typically “blackout” Vegas night, travel with uninterrupted partying intensity. He encourages his soon-to-be victims to drink more, go past their limit, only to make his next vicious drink easier. The performance, the music, editing makes you feel like you’ve got front row seats to this insane Las Vegas night. The charm, seduction, calculating predatory instincts, and perfect seasoning of ridiculous contemporary peccadillos like ensuring that he uses his victims’ devices to maintain a perfect driver rating to continue this conveyer belt of victims, is the life of “Blood from Stone”.
Gabriella Toth’s Darya is constructed to perplex. Darya’s craving for modest anonymity seems to outstrip her desire for blood. You’re left scratching your head in how she finds solace in a series of empty one night stands with the transient tourists that pass through this former desert stopovers for G.Is. However, when you see her using these encounters to “edge” with potential victims without relenting to those killer instincts, you can predict her eventual downfall before you see it. Vanja Kapetanovic’s Jure is a pure psycho party boy. In the scenes of physicality and chaotic fun, he delivers on Jure.
The characters’ broader existential musings require actors Gabriella Toth, Vanja Kapetanovic and Nika Khitrova (who plays Jure’s sister Viktoria) to convey a level of circumspection that didn’t land. Any time they’re forced to sit in a scene and discuss their current mindset, reflect on past regrets, and outline their past experiences contradicts their behaviour.
If “Blood from Stone” presented these (comparatively) young vampires to be bundles of pure “millennial” recklessness, the film would live up to its excellent, early crescendo.
