‘In Our Blood’: Fantasia Review

Dir: Pedro Kos. US. 2024. 88mins

Making his feature debut, documentarian Pedro Kos (Rebel Hearts) brings fresh energy to the found-footage horror film but cannot entirely navigate past the genre’s limitations. In Our Blood follows an aspiring director as she returns home to make a documentary about her estranged mother, a recovering addict. But when her mother goes missing, this emotionally fraught reunion turns into a mystery that grows more ominous. For a good stretch of its runtime, this scrappy, compassionate picture leaves the viewer intrigued about precisely where it’s going, although the end result fails to live up to the promise of what came before. 

Takes its time to deliver scares

In Our Blood is an ideal premiere for Fantasia Fest, and its crowd-pleasing creepiness could make it a hit with midnight-movie fans. The film lacks big stars, although Kos has some cachet thanks to his Oscar-nominated documentary short Lead Me Home (2021), which he co-directed with Jon Shenk. Found-footage is not currently prevelant in horror but that may work to this picture’s advantage, offering viewers something they’re not seeing much of these days.

Set over the span of only a few days, In Our Blood introduces us to Emily (Brittany O’Grady), who is driving from Los Angeles to her hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico, which she fled when she was 13. Accompanied by her enthusiastic cinematographer Danny (E.J. Bonilla), Emily plans to chronicle her reunion with her troubled single mom Sam (Alanna Ubach), who swears she is sober after more than a decade of drug abuse. Sam seems sincere in her desire to make amends for the past, although Emily remains sceptical — but shortly after Emily arrives, Sam goes missing. Has Emily’s mother fallen off the wagon? Or is her disappearance tied to other missing persons in this bordertown?

There is a knowing irony in documentarian Kos’ decision to devote his first feature to a documentarian, with the film’s found-footage format designed to look like cinema verite. Indeed, In Our Blood subtly comments on the techniques nonfiction filmmakers and video journalists may use to get their stories and as Emily and Danny investigate Sam’s disappearance, they will encounter locals who are not keen to be on camera.

The story’s mystery element helps distinguish the picture from found-footage horror classics like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, which were more straightforward fright films. By comparison, In Our Blood takes its time to deliver scares, spending its opening reels carefully establishing the main characters and the desolate community of Las Cruces, which is on the frontline of America’s immigration crisis. (In short order, we see how vicious gangs, racist police and rampant drug use infest the area.) But soon, foreboding incidents – like the discovery of a severed pig’s head – start occurring, suggesting something even more sinister is afoot.

Mallory Westfall’s screenplay teases us with possibilities about what might have happened to Sam, but that central riddle ultimately proves more compelling than the characters. Emily and Danny have a friendly rapport — one suspects the bashful cameraman wishes something romantic could develop between them — but they don’t become more interesting or complicated as the mystery deepens.

For Emily, this reunion is initially more about her angrily confronting Sam on camera than seeking healing. But once Sam goes missing, Emily begins to soften, fearing the worst and determined to get answers. Unfortunately, that potentially gripping character arc is hampered by both the writing and O’Grady’s thin portrayal. Meanwhile, Bonilla overdoes Danny’s freak-out tendencies. Found-footage horror often relies on having one side character whose escalating panic amplifies the film’s tension, but Bonilla is a little too shrill, artificially raising the drama. And Emily gets to the bottom of Sam’s whereabouts, Kos throws out a series of twists; some more effective than others. 

Kos’ Lead Me Home grappled with homelessness in America and his feature debut also focuses on endangered communities, Emily’s search leading her to Las Cruces’ unhoused encampments. (Actual members of the encampment play themselves on screen.) Even so, that inclusion of real people’s battles with mental health and addiction doesn’t add much to the picture’s big final twist, which seems arbitrary. The reservations one might have had up to that point — including, as with so many found-footage films, the nagging question of why the characters are bothering recording certain hair-raising moments — might have been forgiven if Kos had stuck the landing. But while the stylish In Our Blood mourns the plight of the marginalised, it struggles to interweave that sentiment with its scares.