Robertson gives the best performance in the film and, to be fair, an arc here about things hidden in the walls also feels distinctly Barker-picture what was hiding in an average house in “ Hellraiser”-but Braga can’t find the grisly tone this story needed overall, letting it drag in a way that gets less and less interesting.Īnna Friel anchors the second story, “Miles,” as a woman who grieves the loss of her son when she’s approached by a man (Ravi Gavron) who claims to be able to communicate with the dead boy. She ends up at a bed and breakfast, where she learns that leaving home is the worst mistake she’s ever made. The emphasis on the creepiness of human mouth sounds like chewing does feel very Barker, and Jenna wears noise-canceling headphones to drown out the world.
Jenna has issues with the world around her, particularly the sounds it makes.
Cut from that opener to the story of “Jenna,” starring an effective Britt Robertson as a young woman who flees her home after a traumatic incident and the decision to go off her meds. “Books of Blood” opens with two criminals seeking payment from a bookseller, who tells one about the existence of a $1 million book and where to find it. But then why associate the film with such a beloved property? It’s only going to pale in comparison.
So I suppose it makes sense that Braga was scared of how Barker’s deeply literary surrealism would work on Hulu. There’s something about Barker that makes him incredibly hard to translate to other mediums-films like “Rawhead Rex” and “Lord of Illusions,” both based on Barker stories from Books of Blood bear this out even further. If they were part of a larger series that returned to Barker stories, they might fit in better, but here they feel like they have almost no connection to the anthology collection of Books of Blood, bearing little resemblance to the dark, twisted visions of Barker’s writing. The other two are original, reportedly conceived by Braga and Barker. In one of this production's strangest decisions, only one of these three stories is actually based on a Barker composition, and even that one (the actual story called “The Book of Blood” that opens the anthology) has been liberally altered. Would I judge this differently if it were three episodes sent to press for a new Hulu series instead of a complete feature? Maybe, but I’d still be nervous about where it was going next. If creator Brannon Braga had been allowed to expand this into the series it should have been, it might have worked, but it feels like a half-hearted project in every way in this form. Originally conceived as an anthology series, "Books of Blood" has now been reduced to an anthology film, three stories with loose connections in terms of plot but all about people who learn that they shouldn’t mess with the other side.
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