Taglines: Music should be more than skin deep.
Bloodthirsty Movie Storyline. Indie singer-songwriter Grey Kessler suffers anxiety over having released a successful album and feels pressure for a successful follow-up. She also takes medication to try to stop dreams of herself as a wolf, and she appears to have other medical issues too, though her doctor can find nothing physically wrong.
A reclusive music producer, Vaughn Daniels, once a famous boy-band singer in the ’90s, invites Grey to his remote mansion to write and record her second album. Grey’s girlfriend, a painter named Charlie, learns Vaughn was tried but not convicted of murdering a singer named Greta. Despite misgivings, Grey accepts Vaughn’s offer, and Charlie accompanies her.
As the creative process continues, Grey becomes more obsessive and begins ignoring Charlie’s concerns. Vaughn pushes Grey, urging her to dredge up her darkest impulses for her songwriting. He taunts Grey’s vegetarianism, gives her absinthe to drink, and pushes Grey to complete a song that he says his wife, who had died by suicide, had started. Grey begins to crave and eat meat, and she falls deeper into a personal abyss. But her songwriting and performing improve. Charlie, seeing the darkness overtaking Grey, wants them both to leave, but Grey refuses.
Grey finds herself transforming into a werewolf. In a blackout after doing so, she kills Charlie. Later Grey confronts Vaughn, who reveals that he too is a werewolf, and Grey is his daughter. He wasn’t certain before this, because her mother, Greta, whom he had shot and killed in self-defense, had told Vaughn, who was gone for months at a time with his band, that their baby had died. Now Vaughn begins to transform into a werewolf, and Grey, who has completed her album, kills him with a gun.
Bloodthirsty is a Canadian horror film, directed by Amelia Moses and released in to festivals in 2020 and commercially in 2021. It stars Lauren Beatty as Grey, an indie singer-songwriter who begins to transform into a werewolf while working at a remote wilderness recording studio with producer Vaughn (Greg Bryk). The film premiered on October 1, 2020 at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, and was released on video-on-demand on April 23, 2021.
The film premiered on October 1, 2020 at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, held virtually that year. It also screened at the Telluride Horror Show festival in Colorado in 2020, and at the Calgary Underground Film Festival in 2021. In February 2021, Brainstorm Media acquired the U.S. rights to the film and planned to release it in theaters and on video-on-demand on April 23, 2021. On March 21, 2021, Raven Banner Releasing said it had acquired the Canadian rights and planned to release it in theaters and on demand also on April 23, 2021. However, while it was released and reviewed, Bloodthirsty did not play in theaters.
The film received two Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021, for Best Original Score (Michelle Osis and Lowell Boland) and Best Original Song (Boland, Evan Bogart and Justin Gray for “Grey Singing in Auditorium”).
Bloodthirsty (2021)
Directed by: Amelia Moses
Starring: Lauren Beatty, Greg Bryk, Katharine King So, Judith Buchan, Michael Ironside, Jesse Gervais, Jayce McKenzie, Zoe Glassman, Michael Peterson, Patricia Cerra
Screenplay by: Wendy Hill-Tout, Lowell Boland
Production Design by: Mike Kasper
Cinematography by: Charles Hamilton
Film Editing by: David Hiatt
Costume Design by: Tracey Graham
Art Direction by: Andrew Plews
Music by: Michelle Osis, Lowell Boland
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Raven Banner Entertainment, Brainstorm Media
Release Date: October 1, 2020 (Fantastic Fest), April 23, 2021 (United States)
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