There is something prowling around the edges of Blood Barn that never quite settles. It shows up in the opening stretch, where abstraction slowly coagulates into something resembling story (maybe….I honestly am still not sure). It lingers in the way characters drift through scenes like they wandered in from slightly different realities and new each other from different lives or different movies even. And it hangs over the whole enterprise like a dare: is this a bit? That is the question the movie almost purposefully thumbs its nose at.
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Directed by Gabriel Bernini and co-written with Alexandra Jade, Blood Barn announces itself as a retro supernatural slasher set during one last summer blowout in 1985. The premise is comfort food. A secluded barn. A tight knit group of friends. Secrets in the walls. Something ancient and angry waiting for nightfall. You know the drill. Except you do not.
From the jump, the film telegraphs a 70s patina while bathing itself in 80s synth haze. The smokey lens quality drifting through daylight scenes, the soft focus glow, the sense that this might have been recorded on a tape deck found in a shoebox. It all feels tactile and grimy in the best way. Shot at the real Long View Farm Studios, the location does half the heavy lifting. The barn is not just a setting. It feels lived in, soaked with past lives and somehow in a place out of time.
The cast, including Chloe Cherry and Lena Redford, exists in a strange age limbo that becomes part of the movie’s surreal texture. These are clearly adults playing younger characters, but not in a glossy, network television way. Some of them feel like they have pensions and 30 year mortgages. And yet the film never acknowledges it. No wink. No parody. It plays everything straight, which weirdly makes the whole thing feel more dreamlike. Like we are watching a memory that cannot quite get the details right.
The film dutifully hits the summer slasher beats. There is drinking. They all swim in a lake. There is a volleyball sequence that pointedly evokes Top Gun, complete with performative sweat and not so subtle homoerotic charge. The difference is that no one here is built like a fighter pilot. The scene feels intentional, maybe even affectionate, but also slightly skewed. It captures that feeling of people trying to inhabit a cinematic fantasy that does not quite fit.
Is this a bit? Fucked if I know.
There are stretches where the movie withholds basic narrative grounding. Who exactly are these people in practical terms? What are they doing at this barn beyond vibing aggressively? The lack of exposition feels deliberate. Instead of anchoring us in character backstory, Bernini and Jade let their ensemble float. The result is alienating, but productively so. The characters feel unmoored, and in a story about buried family history and possession, that dislocation starts to feel thematic….or its just a bit.
When Blood Barn leans fully into horror, it absolutely hums. The interstitial imagery is genuinely unsettling. There are flashes that feel like found footage from someone else’s nightmare. A rocking chair grandma who looks ripped from a cursed attic. Vine like tendrils that slither and wrap with nasty body horror intent, giving a wink to fans of The Ruins without feeling derivative. The movie embraces its DIY texture, but it never treats that as an excuse to pull punches. It wants to get under your skin (sometimes quite literally).
The synth score by Jonathan Rado deserves special mention. It blankets the film in analog warmth and creeping unease, channeling that late night cable horror energy where every cue feels like a warning. The music does a lot of atmospheric heavy lifting, turning even simple compositions of hallway and shadow into something anticipatory.
The final act is where everything snaps into place. Red filters flood the frame. The pacing accelerates. The horror shifts from suggestive to aggressive. The movie sheds its slightly awkward hangout skin and dives headfirst into experimental splatter surrealism. The DIY ethos becomes a strength rather than a qualifier. It lands in that sweet spot of scrappy genre filmmaking where imagination outruns budget and sincerity keeps it from collapsing into parody….or its just a bit.
Crucially, no one is winking. The performances stay earnest, even as the imagery grows more unhinged. That authenticity, paired with escalating nightmare logic, creates moments that are legitimately creepy. There is a version of this film that trims some of the conversational drift and simply lives in this red soaked nightmare zone for longer. If it had doubled down even further on being scary rather than flirting with schlock as a hedge, it might have crossed into something truly profound.
Still, what is here is compelling. Blood Barn is slightly less than a lovable mess and more than a curiosity. It is a debut feature with real flashes of innovative, creative horror that suggest filmmakers who are not content to simply replicate the past. They are poking at it. Warping it. Asking whether nostalgia itself can feel haunted.
I had fun with Blood Barn. More importantly, I felt those flashes. The kind that make you sit up a little straighter and think, okay, there is something here. If Bernini and Jade lean even harder into that fearless, experimental horror energy next time, we could be looking at something genuinely special.
Watch this space for what is next. I know I am excited to find out.
Tyler has been the editor in chief of Signal Horizon since its conception. He is also the Director of Monsters 101 at Truman State University a class that pairs horror movie criticism with survival skills to help middle and high school students learn critical thinking. When he is not watching, teaching or thinking about horror he is the Director of Debate and Forensics at a high school in Kansas City, Missouri.