Bliss is Gritty, Raw, Frantic, and Beautiful
So my wife says to me…
“This is really your kind of movie. Blood, gore, nekkid women and death metal”
As the main character, Dezzy (Dora Madison), danced naked, covered in blood, painting an image of souls climbing out of hell all set to Die Forever by Blackened Crustcore band Harrassor.
Okay, maybe she was right. Joe Begos’ 2019 film Bliss is exactly the type of film I love, but it’s not all about the blood, gore, nekkid women and death metal, it’s about so much more.
Blood is awesome, but also, so is the execution. I’m a big fan of splatter films like Dead Alive aka Braindead and this film is on par with that Peter Jackson classic in terms of gallons of blood used but what I enjoy more is that this film is only 80 minutes long.
Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong about a long movie, it’s just sometimes I don’t care and I don’t have time. A horror movie that is two and a half to three hours long, even with the fastest pace, still creaks and crawls to a conclusion and for me, sometimes that 2 hour 45 minute climax starts and I couldn’t be bothered or perhaps I figured it out already.
Bliss gives you everything you need in a succinct 80 minutes which completely tells the entire story and the motivations for the characters without too much exposition. We learn about Dezzy the starving artist who has hit a creative block on her latest painting that has already been delayed. We see her cursing the world, smoking blunts and driving around in her convertible Cadillac with her dark sunglasses on. We know about her free loading boyfriend, her gross landlord and her seedy drug dealer who has a new drug, Bliss, which is a pure mix of cocaine and DMT.
Gore is proffered, but so is cinematography. You know what I can't stand? When a horror movie gives you extreme gore, but it’s just the aftermath. Midsommar is a perfect example, one dude was flayed but we did not see him getting flayed, we just saw the end product. How Bliss excels in the gore department is its frantic insanity that you see in full vivid color. You see, Dezzy has been sober for 3 months, but starts snorting the Bliss to break her creative block. From this point on the film is what the fancy critics call “A fever dream”.
The entire thing is this neon soaked hallucination with strange camera angles and so many flashing lights that the film has a big epilepsy warning at the beginning. Dezzy snorts a half kilo of Bliss and reality, space and time are bent and twisted in strange ways as she parties, orgies, snorts, pukes blood, wakes up naked in strange places covered in blood and snorts more and more. The use of color is on par with classics like Suspiria and the dizzying camera work, which is usually from the perspective of over the shoulder of Dezzy documents first hand a descent into madness which hasn’t been seen since Jacob’s Ladder. It’s absolutely incredible.
Death Metal and nekkid women is like peanut butter and jelly, but so is mystery and mythology. If you go to Twitter and follow Joe Begos his profile says:
“Nobody finances dark, grungy, ultra graphic NC-17 horror movies that are SHOT ON FILM anymore, and we need to buck that trend.”
And this is exactly what Bliss is. There is a very graphic orgy sex scene in the film that will certainly make you blush. The main character is very naked for large portions of the film and the soundtrack is a punk rock explosion that keeps the movie at a frantic pace. Gritty and raw, this film is the antithesis of modern artsy horror films with their slow burns and drawn out whining violin scores.
The nudity and constant drug abuse set the tone, the metal beats you into submission, it’s a fantastic mix but more important is what they leave out. A gripe I have with modern horror and film in general is that often the creators hold your hand, giving you every detail not allowing your imagination to fill in the blanks. Almost as if they are so worried about plot holes that they spackle on buckets of dialog to cover it up but all you end up with is this big patchy mess. Bliss does an excellent job of confusing the hell out of you about what exactly is going on until the very end when you find out...
SPOILER ALERT
It’s a fucking Vampire film! During the orgy in the first scene, Dezzy becomes a vampire from her dark shades wearing friend Courtney. Her blood lust and insanity is not caused by the cocaine or the DMT, it’s because she has a thirst for human blood. An excellent spin on the vampire mythology that takes the vampires out of decadence and into the seedy, dark underground where you would expect it, something that hasn’t been seen since The Lost Boys.
The most amazing part about it is you really don’t know that vampirism is the root of the story until the last five minutes and the only explanation you get is Courtney saying “You have our blood flowing through your veins” and that the only way to kill one of their kind is to “Destroy the heart” which she does with a wooden, broken mop, almost like a stake. Sure, Joe Begos could have taken 20-30 minutes explaining the vampire lore and how “Vampires only work like that in the movies” in regards to garlic and silver, but that would have been boring and useless. Instead he kept everything mysterious until the very end and worked within the existing mythology without having to explain his way around the differences.
After watching Bliss I am reordering my top films of 2019, my tops films of the 2010’s and my favorite horror films of all-time. An absolute masterpiece that is equal parts Return of the Living Dead, The Lost Boys, Jacobs Ladder with a dash of Dead Alive for good measure. Put this one at the top of your queue and watch it ASAP.
Can I give a movie a 6 out of 5? After watching this punk rock, against the grain film I’m gonna say hell yeah I can.
Check out Bliss now streaming on Shudder 6 out of 5 check it out now!
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