Blood Shine Review: Run Away From the Light

Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks’s Blood Shine is an ambitious yet confounding folk-horror film with strong performances.

Blood Shine does feature both a standout performance and a couple of disturbing moments, but unfortunately it’s not worth a full recommendation.

Quite unnecessarily, Blood Shine starts by showing us filmmaker Brighton West’s (David Call) latest horror short film, tricking the audience into thinking the movie will be about something completely different. After that, we learn that Brighton owes the studio a new instalment of his successful horror franchise, called Craven (a bit of an homage to director Wes Craven, I assume), so he goes to a remote cabin in upstate New York to get some inspiration and start writing. Unfortunately, after wandering in the woods and taking photos of a woman bathing in the river, he gets hit in the head and passes out.

Some time later, Brighton wakes up in Clara’s (Emily Bennett) house. At first, the young woman seems to want to help him, but almost immediately it becomes clear she was the one to hit him and kidnap him. She gives him a mysterious tea to drink; he passes out yet again, and Brighton wakes up in the house’s basement, where Clara begins a series of torture sessions, talking to his victim about the power of light and the fact that they all should be trying to escape “the cage” (their bodies) to avoid the darkness. As time passes, an increasingly wounded Brighton begins to understand his captor, while Clara starts to (maybe) develop feelings for him.

Blood Shine’s central concept is not without potential. It’s yet another horror movie about a cult, yes, but it’s got an attractive dreamlike quality, as well as a sort-of surreal tone. Moreover, the idea of a group of crazies trying to “liberate” people from their mortal bodies and turn them into God-like luminous beings could certainly result in an interesting and intense film. Unfortunately, Blood Shine squanders most of its potential, setting the majority of its story in Clara’s torture basement, clearly limited by budget and resources. The end result has its bright spots, but is generally quite tedious.

Which is a pity, because co-director Emily Bennett gives it her all, gifting us with a credible, potent and quite impressive performance. The viewer ends up understanding Clara as a (deranged and delusional) person thanks to Bennett’s acting; she manages to make the character feel real and visceral, even if her motivations are a bit vague. She plays her as a victim who deals with the trauma of abuse by having victims of her own, and who refuses to accept that she’s traded one form of control for another. Clara truly believes in the cult and its leader’s (Larry Fessenden) guidance, even if her actions aren’t always well-explained.

Additionally, Blood Shine does include a couple of standout moments, which ironically make the rest of the movie seem even more mundane. The first happens during the admittedly unnecessary prologue, which shows us Brighton’s short, and in which Bennett plays another woman in a desolate cabin, this time getting rid of a farmer named Keith (Brendan Sexton III) in bloody fashion. The other comes late in the game, and is certainly the goriest scene in the film. I don’t want to spoil it, so let’s just say it involves deep, self-inflicted wounds, disturbing sex and really impressive gore effects. If there had been any more equally visceral scenes in Blood Shine, the end product would’ve felt more impactful and memorable.

In any case, I do appreciate that Bennett and Brooks are trying to say something with their latest offering. For example, one of Blood Shine’s main themes is that of control. Brighton appears to be an abusive director who tries to seduce a potential actress for his movie during the casting process; and later Clara mentions she chose him because he doesn’t have any family or friends, but mainly because of all the pain he’s caused to other people. On her part, Clara is a victim of abuse, who realises she was controlled by men with power, but who is now, once again, being controlled by an expert manipulator. The only difference this time, she says, is that she’s entered the cult willingly. All of this could have been better developed, but the fact that Blood Shine is about something makes it better than, say, something like Ice Cream Man.

Watching a low-budget horror film can be a bit of a gamble. Sometimes, the risk pays off and one ends up watching something worthwhile and even impressive. But other times, the experience can end up being rather gruelling. Thankfully, Blood Shine is somewhere in between. It’s an ambitious and thematically intriguing production that unfortunately suffers from an unnecessary prologue, a repetitive second act, an unclear script and an overall sense of frustration. Emily Bennett’s performance is great; there’s some uncomfortable gore and some of its themes are intriguing, but it’s not enough to turn the movie into a complete success. Blood Shine doesn’t manage to fully shine, but at least it’s not left in complete darkness.

Blood Shine will be released in select US theaters and on digital platforms on August 21, 2026.