Blood On Her Name review: A gripping neo-noir thriller about guilt and consequence

The neo-noir thriller Blood On Her Name tells a haunting story about guilt and consequences passed down through families.

There isn’t nearly enough of Matthew Pope’s poignantly grim Blood On Her Name to satisfy. I feel like Bong Joon Ho demanding a six-hour version of a movie instead of two. About midway through the film, I got terribly upset that it wasn’t longer or perhaps developed into a miniseries. There is so much more to this story than what we’re shown, a truckload’s worth of backstory that just barely peeks out from behind the curtain.

This is in no way a complaint though. Keeping certain details in the dark grounded the film in reality and fashioned around it a quiet type of suspense. So quiet, it was like tip-toeing on landmines. Structurally speaking, Blood On Her Name is a perfect thriller. Its plot, sequence, and development are balanced and well-rounded. A good showcase of what director and writer Matthew Pope can do.

Nothing is what it seems and even if you manage to guess what’s happening, it doesn’t happen the way you expect. Ghosts from the past haunt the living, right along beside the mind’s two greatest threats; guilt and fear.

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This is definitely a slow build type of film. The mystery unfolds at a moderate pace alongside the main character’s growing paranoia, never going too far too fast. It takes its time. It knows where it’s going and is in no rush to get there. Lots of people might turn away the instant they hear “slow build”, but don’t let this disenchant you. The payoff is brilliant. I couldn’t look away for a single minute.

This is a true accomplishment in my judgment, because no matter how much I love films, I very rarely find one that keeps my attention so consistently. Even at its weaker moments, the story keeps moving. The many mysteries reveal themselves like chocolate chips in a cookie, sprinkled throughout the body just waiting to be discovered.

Leigh Tiller (Bethany Anne Lind) is a struggling woman running her ex-husband’s garage after he’s put away for running cars, and their son Ryan (Jared Ivers) is on probation for violently assaulting another boy at school. The film opens with her standing over a dead body, a man she seemingly killed by accident. She stands in the washed-out grays that surround the garage looking down at the blood pooling around the man’s head, her expressions ranging from shock to panic to numb acceptance. It’s the perfect opening to such a story.

Despite her claims that it was self-defense, she opts not to report it to the police. This decision quickly spins out of control when her guilty conscience demands that she return the body to the dead man’s family. This ends up being, as you can guess, a huge mistake.

The question of whether or not she knew the victim is cleared up pretty quickly. It’s easy to figure out that something had exchanged between them before the accident but many questions remain as Leigh covers up lies with more lies. There is, of course, an actual reason why she doesn’t report the crime, but this reason lives underneath the many layers of Leigh and her troubled life, including the strained relationship between her and her crooked cop father (Will Patton).

Leigh’s consumed by guilt, suffocating under its weight. However, what truly haunts her is not the man she may or may not have intentionally murdered, but past events that have tormented her since childhood.

There is a running theme of moral inheritance or, more appropriately, sins of the father taking place. Whether it’s Leigh and her father or Ryan and his father. There’s a forceful look at how we inherit our family’s actions and often take responsibility for them. Overall, Blood On Her Name is a well-executed thriller that stays with you long after it’s over. It may not be as bloody or explosive as other films, but it holds you in other ways.

Blood On Her Name will be released in select theaters and on VOD on Feb. 28, 2020.