Four young film students eat a frame of a cursed film to get closer to the ‘TRUE ART’ of cinema to horrifying and surreal results. The film goes through many nightmarish and hallucinatory sequences as their film professor tries to save them from eternal damnation.

Filmed with seven different types of cameras, or so it seems to be according to the introduction of the film, Apocalypse of the Blood Freak (2019) tells the story of how a group of outcast film students who weren’t invited to an initiation for the most exclusive film society in London decides to search for a cursed film stored in an abandoned projection room. As they immediately find the film, they dare themselves to eat a frame of the film as their own initiation for their own society. Once they eat the frame, they get dizzy and have strange awakenings that go beyond strange and it makes them question their own realities. As every action comes with a price, theirs come with fatal results.

Apocalypse of the Blood Freak is a mix of this-and-that playing more as a social commentary rather than a collective film. It’s coherent and it follows an initial plot, but it the light stops shining on the right path as soon as the hallucinations get in frame.

Each of the students has their own “surreal” meta-sequences with a subject in mind: we see what we want to believe in. All the sequences are implied to be hallucinations during their state of shock for ingesting the film frame. At times it makes it feel like whatever they were trying to make “meta” is more of a tribute to a bunch of Twilight Zone episodes. It is a nice variation of an anthology or a collective but there is nothing new to make it memorable to keep you coming back for more. Does any sequence stand out from the others? Yes, and it’s the least structured one starred by the most annoying character in the whole film.

One of the interesting things in the film comes from the introduction. Most of it is carried by a narrator that gives us a huge cut of background to understand the rest of the story and, at the same time, gives us a detailed description of each main character. It’s extraordinary how the voiceover is used smartly for the purpose of transitioning or adding to whatever can’t be crafted due to a limited budget.

There are no words for the special effects, acting or editing because it’s awful, but at the same time it’s entertaining. As for the score, my recommendation would be to try to identify the song playing during the best sequence, the unstructured one, because the band actually exists and it’s pretty good if you’re into indie sounds.

In a nutshell, Apocalypse of the Blood Freak is the story of four bored kids that decide to eat, instead of watching, a killing film and later have the worst trip of their lives; it’s a mix of The Ring and The Cell with whatever mother nature and a cheap video editor gave them to work with. Is it worth watching? If you’re the type of viewer that likes to give misfits a chance to shine in the world, then this is an excellent choice for a random Sunday night. If extremely low-budget improvised project films aren’t your cup of tea, then take a step back and put whatever else you may have on your streaming list.