Blood Punch

Filmmaker Madellaine Paxson's cheeky, gory thriller has been accurately called a combination of Groundhog Day and Blood Simple. It is essentially a three-character puzzler involving geeky college chemistry student Milton (Milo Cawthorne), who is lured out of a drug rehab program by abrasive but seductive bad girl Skyler (Olivia Tennet) to cook up a huge load of meth from ingredients supplied by her psycho boyfriend Russell (Ari Boyland). After the threesome hole up in an isolated cabin to do the job, the relationship among them quickly turns hostile, and someone winds up dead. The next morning, however, the corpse is alive and kicking as though nothing had happened, and that pattern repeats itself each day—although the particular victim and mode of killing will vary—becoming increasingly baroque and grisly as time goes on (or doesn't, actually). In an inevitably silly turn, the trio eventually figures out the cause of the supernatural goings-on, but breaking the chain of recurrence proves to be well-nigh impossible. Blood Punch was obviously made on a modest budget, with humorously bargain-basement visual effects and somewhat amateurish acting, but the script is clever and one can easily imagine a Hollywood remake with a star-laden cast. Recommended. (F. Swietek)