By SHAWN MACOMBER
Starring Micha Marie Stevens, Chance Gibbs and Jordan Walker Ross
Written and directed by Jason Vandygriff
Indie Rights Movies
Hayden Carey is stuck in a rut.
No, it’s not the rut he just knocked into some poor screaming coed’s forehead with a hatchet. (But that isn’t helping!) It’s a sense of purpose rut. An existential rut. A drudgery of listening to the commands of the dark voices inside his head rut. “Just once,” Hayden (Chance Gibbs) later confides to yet another, understandably bewildered young woman locked up in a dog cage in his living room, “I want to wake up and have it be my blood on my hands.”
Seems like a small ask, but turning over a new blood-spattered leaf proves easier said than done in BLOOD DRIED HANDS, a film (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) that carries the vibe of a high-concept serial-killer feature channeled through a network television police procedural.
We’ll flesh that out (metaphorically) a bit more momentarily, but first, here’s the setup: As noted, our man Hayden is tired of killing. Like, bone tired. What once inspired a sense of control in a world of chaos now leaves him cold and ambivalent, anxious and confused. So anxious and confused, in fact, that he found himself unable to complete his last kill, which morphed into a less-than-optimal kidnapping. Hence the houseguest in the dog cage.
Now, despite speaking to this young woman (Taylor, portrayed with harrowing freneticism by Anna Pena) in a confessional manner most would reserve for a therapist or trusted friend, Hayden feels he can’t simply let her go and retire. That’s because a) Taylor has seen his face (!), b) he might maybe, kinda, sorta still want to kill her (!!) and c) she has declined his offer to let her shoot him in the face and leave of her own accord (!!!). Unfortunately for Hayden, he doesn’t have the luxury of time: Sgt. Edi Sharp (Micha Marie Stevens), a woman seemingly as weighed down and wearied by her life choices as her murderous prey, is starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together. This is due not only to her own well-honed hunches and work alongside partner Reece (Jordan Walker Ross) but also to a creepy interview with a jailed serial killer (writer/director Jason Vandygriff) that could probably earn Clarice Starling some residuals.
The overt question here is: Can Sharp get to Hayden’s victim-in-waiting while he’s still hemming and hawing and in his feelings? On a subtextual level, though, it’s more a question of whether it will be detective or killer who sorts their interior shit out first, with the young Taylor’s life–and perhaps, if Hayden regains his sinister bearings, the lives of many future young women–hanging in the balance. Obviously, we would never spoil this for you. And BLOOD DRIED HANDS is a philosophical journey-not-the-destination flick, anyway.
So what, precisely, is that journey like?
Often it resembles Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER shot as a couple of episodes of the great aughts CBS cop series COLD CASE or the more recent MINDHUNTER. In other, intriguing moments when Hayden gets deeper into his self-analysis, it verges on something akin to DEXTER reimagined through the somber, nihilistic lens of TRUE DETECTIVE’s first season. In practice, this does means that BLOOD DRIED HANDS can sometimes feel, in parts, a little bit more drawn-out than is perhaps necessary. Yet it also operates within the framework of a few cat-and-mouse serial-killer formulas that all resonate very well for a reason. And Vandygriff’s crime-scene exhibit rug ties the cinematic room together very nicely. It is well-executed, smart and engaging, with authentic performances that sometimes outshine the modest budget.
Really, BLOOD DRIED HANDS should be a big hit with true-crime devotees who have streamed through all the documentaries and are looking for the deeper exploration of psychology that a fictionalized narrative allows. It’s also a solid second-tier choice for people who love this cinematic subgenre but want something novel when rewatches of the classics get staid.
Oh, and if you hate your job or the direction of your life, at least you haven’t killed anyone, right?
Right?
