An admirable stab at reinventing one of horror’s most overplayed tropes coagulates on streaming

Almost every avenue available to horror has been trodden over so many times that delivering something completely unique and brand new is becoming a harder and harder task with each passing year. Blood isn’t going to reinvent the wheel, but it did at least put more effort into its central concept than it did the title.

Much like hundreds upon hundreds of chillers before it, the story revolves around a character being bitten by something infected, which then leads them to develop symptoms that could best be described as zombie-like. While that’s about as formulaic as it gets, The Machinist director Brad Anderson’s foray into spine-tingling terror did at least paint its canvas with a couple of fresh colors.

Michelle Monaghan does solid work in the central role as a single mother living the quiet life back on her old farmhouse with her young son, only for things to take a turn for the worse when the child is bitten by a dog. As it turns out, a rabies shot is the least of her worries, as the boy begins developing a thirst for warm blood that can’t be quenched.

Yep, it’s a hybrid of zombie and vampire flick, but respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of 54 and 53 percent from critics and audiences hint that everyone was left suitably underwhelmed. Regardless, Blood has become one of the Top 10 most-watched features on ad-supported platform Freevee this weekend per FlixPatrol, so it’s gotten its teeth into an audience either way.