From Mexico comes the cruel Blood for Flesh (2019), the extreme horror film directed by 23-year-old Alex Hernández. The film embraces morbid visions of pain and suffering that oscillate between reality and fantasy but also between present and past. Dense with flashbacks, Blood for Flesh is a bitter family drama divided into acts in which abuse and incestuous relationships nurture a story of despair that spirals into psycho-physical decline and madness.
Turbid, unhealthy, and pierced with sadness, this extreme film relies on dark cinematography in bluish or purple tones that intentionally weigh down the strong condition of distress in which the protagonist finds herself.
Blood for Flesh is a perpetual real-life nightmare in which nudity and eroticism (with undertones of necrophilia) go to feed the more rotten and decadent side of the story. Here bodies are piles of flesh from which to derive sexual pleasure, pastime for the sadistic nature of man then food for those hungry for death.
The very young Alex Hernández atypically writes and directs a timeless and surreal rape&revenge, using narrative metaphor to bring to the stage the brutalities of human beings and their most primitive instincts.
The whole thing turns into a distorted vision, a kind of hell in which weeping and screaming rumbles and where there is no shortage of gruesome sequences that add to the gore moments (such as the caesarean section sequence with subsequent stitches).
Finally, hand-to-hand fights, various tortures, murders, cannibalism and necrophagia only further enrich one of the most interesting extreme films of 2019.
The story of Blood for Flesh focuses on a morbid family unit in which a deep desire for revenge arises. The violence will open on unheard-of torture and then turn into sadistic pleasure through unclean or sleazy actions. Psychologically and physically destroyed, the victims will be nothing but the attraction of a murky story of incest, violence and pain.
A special note goes to the lead actress, Erika López, at ease in a difficult performance. Also in the cast are Juan Manuel Martínez, Enrique Diaz Duran, Luis Navarro, Marisela Plaza Martínez, Aldo Palacios, Daniel Ibarra, and Christian Cámara.
Dante Belmont and Alex Hernández are the cinematographers while the soundtrack is by Esteban Ibarra Rivero.
Blood for Flesh is produced by Queremos ver sangre Producciones while Juan Manuel Martínez is the executive producer.
The film will be one of the upcoming plate releases TetroVideo.