Dezzy Donahue (Dora Madison Burge, CHICAGO FIRE, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) is a painter suffering from a creative block, which is causing her world to fall apart both financially, and emotionally. The fact she is a hard partying drug user is surely not helping, but when Dezzy gets ahold of a new designer drug called BLISS, "a perfect mixture of cocaine and DMT", the work begins to turn around.
On a particularly wild night, she has a threesome with her friends Courtney (Tru Collins, AWKWARD) and Ronnie (Rhys Wakefield, THE PURGE, REPRISAL), and winds up with a lot more than a hickey on her neck. Soon, Dezzy is withdrawing, and experiencing blackouts and cravings for blood. Meanwhile, her next gallery piece, a troublesome painting she hasn't been able to finish, and which her next round of money hinges on, finally starts moving along as Dezzy, in her stupor, finds inpsiration. Horrific, demonic, and twisted (like her usual stuff) images emerge from the pigment, and as the work progresses so does Dezzy's downward spiral into all out bloodlust.
Shot in 16mm, writer/director Joe Begos and cinematographer Mike Testin deliver an incredibly effective film that seems to draw influences from Gaspar Noe's INTO THE VOID, and Abel Ferrara's vampire arthouse film THE ADDICTION, along with a visual aesthetic somewhere between GWAR and Diamanda Galas. Factor in a post/doom metal soundtrack, as well as scenes shot in lots of dark, seedy hipster bars slathered in garish and assaulting colors reflecting the patrons warped states of mind, and you have a wild, psychedelic film that is so deliriously drunk, it has the spins.
Odd. Clever. Effective. Gory. BLISS is darned good, and features some very fine performances from the cast. Overall, a great example of low budget horror, that takes an insanely worn trope and infuses it with some new...wait for it...blood.
- 8/10
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