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If you’re mak­ing a hor­ror flick today, it’s only nat­ural to want to reclaim a piece of the genre’s past in your work.  After all, hor­ror is a genre where a film that con­vinc­ingly evokes the “old school” is auto­mat­i­cally guar­an­teed instant street-cred with a sig­nif­i­cant part of the audi­ence.  However, pulling off such a feat involves more than atten­tion to hair­styles, fash­ion and musi­cal score: if a film­maker leans too heav­ily on such con­trivances and ignores real crafts­man­ship then the result will fail twice (as a hor­ror film and as an homage).

Thankfully for hor­ror fans, Blood Junkie nego­ti­ates this tightrope in an effec­tive man­ner.  It care­fully evokes the inde­pen­dent efforts of horror’s early-1980’s era as it presents the story of Craig (Nick Sommer) and Teddy (Mike Johnston), a cou­ple of high school-grad slack­ers look­ing to shake off the dol­drums by “get­ting loaded and laid.”  To do so, Craig fast-talks Laura (Sarah Luther) and Rachel (Emily Treolo) into going on a camp­ing trip at an old, aban­doned camp­ground where they will be guar­an­teed pri­vacy for their boozing/sexing exploits.

Unfortunately, there are two prob­lems that Craig and Teddy didn’t fore­see in their rush for forest-set bac­cha­na­lia.  First off, they have to bring along Laura’s odd­ball lit­tle brother Andy (Brady Cohen).  The sec­ond prob­lem is that the aban­doned camp­ground is located near the site of a vacant fac­tory where a jump-suited, blood-drinking killer lurks.  Boobs and blood­shed ensue, as well as a few surprises…

The most impres­sive thing about Blood Junkie is its abil­ity to play its genre-reclamation agenda with a straight face.  Writer/director Drew Rosas side­steps the temp­ta­tion of mak­ing a big deal out of the film’s retro trap­pings and instead con­cen­trates on inhab­it­ing the skin of an early 1980’s hor­ror flick.  It’s a very care­fully stud­ied homage — flashes of MTV-influenced edit­ing, slasher flick plot-points, a delight­fully cheap-sounding synth score — but it never strains for effect.

Rosas also edited, did sound design and served as co-cinematographer and co-composer so the film has a uniquely handcrafted/fully-realized touch to it.  Best of all, he under­stands the con­cept of brevity and keeps the film from wear­ing out its wel­come by pac­ing it so it clocks in at a lean 72 minutes.

It also helps that the direc­tor is savvy enough to real­ize that the writ­ing and act­ing have to work with the photography/editing/score to achieve a con­vinc­ing retro effect.  To pull this off, he cre­ates char­ac­ters that are amus­ing enough to hold the audience’s inter­est and gets his actors to deliver deadpan-witty per­for­mances that can believ­ably recre­ate the kind of pre-irony teenagers that existed in early 1980’s hor­ror flicks.  As a result, the per­for­mances are funny but have a relaxed, nat­ural qual­ity to them: Sommers is a big scene-stealer as the self-styled leader of the group but Treolo also steals a few scenes as a girl with a val­ley girl-ish atti­tude of disinterest.

All of these fac­tors make Blood Junkie the rare hor­ror homage that is sat­is­fy­ing whether you approach it as an homage or just watch it for grindhouse-style kicks.  Hopefully, it can find an audi­ence with the same peo­ple who snap up vin­tage slasher flicks on DVD because it deliv­ers the same kind of cheap thrills — and it approx­i­mates the vibe of those past trash-classics in a way that will make the hard­core fan smile.

(Note: you can find out more about this film by vis­it­ing its offi­cial site: http://bloodjunkiemovie.com/)