I Watch FIlms: Blood Relatives

 

Blood Relatives

Patricia enters a police station late at night, wounded and bloody, to report her older cousin Muriel has been brutally stabbed. The police swing into action, trying to identify the attacker. They follow up a number of dead ends, including the lead detective (Donald Sutherland) chasing down the alibi of a paedophile (Donald Pleasance) who was with a fourteen year old at the time.

Every step forward brings new questions. Patricia picks out a policeman from a line up. At the funeral Patricia’s brother throws himself on the coffin. The detective keeps trying to learn more, and has to dig deeply into the family to discover what has caused this.

It’s a paranoid, gritty police procedural film, the central characters shifting in our understanding the more we see of them.

Watch This: Some good performances and a solid central mystery
Don’t Watch This: If you suspect, from the title, you know the answers and don’t want to go there