Fantasia International Film Festival 2024 – Director Pedro Kos is best known for his Oscar-nominated documentary Lead Me Home. His first feature film, In Our Blood, is a faux documentary but with so many sudden twists and turns that it’s easy to get lost. That said, it contains one of the most surprising acts in any film that I’ve seen this year. This is a film that makes you ask yourself where it’s going, until it eventually arrives at its startling answers.

The movie stars Brittany O’Grady as Emily. She’s reunited with her mother, Sam (Alanna Ubach), for a documentary. Emily is accompanied by her cinematographer, Danny (E.J. Bonilla). Initially, this film has the typical doc set-up, with either Danny or Emily behind the camera. Emily indeed interviews her estranged mother, and you learn that Emily cut off all contact with Sam because of her drug addiction. It became so bad that Sam would have Emily go to clinics for her in order to score drugs. You can certainly understand their fractured relationship, and O’Grady does a good job in the lead role conveying her character’s emotional turmoil and pained past.

From there, the film grows stranger and stranger. Sam suddenly goes missing, and the documentary turns into a project to locate dear old mom. Emily and Danny visit a rehabilitation center of sorts where her mom knew several people. However, some of the workers, including Ana (Krisha Fairchild), seem to be withholding information from the camera and from Emily. It’s clear something is up, and the film raises a few possibilities, including gang violence and even a potential serial killer on the loose. To top it off, Emily and Danny come back to their hotel to find a bloody severed pig’s head in the bathtub. This same grisly token is left elsewhere, too, raising even more questions about Sam’s past.

So much of this film is rather head-scratching, even though the clues are there. They just don’t make sense until the revelation occurs. For more than half of the runtime, it’s utterly unclear where this film is going, as the mysteries only grow and multiply regarding Sam’s sudden disappearance. However, though the film has some pacing issues, the last 20 minutes are a solid payoff. The turn of events leads to quite a bombshell. That ah-ha moment will eventually come, justifying some of the stranger narrative decisions earlier in the film. I’m just not sure if others will see that ending as enough of a saving grace for the numerous paths this film takes. making for a slightly uneven script.

Kos’ forte is the documentary film and he uses that to his advantage with his first feature. The result is a clever found footage film, that, though baffling at times, leads to quite the jolting ending. This film is a conversation-starter. Go into it cold and avoid any spoilers.

7 Out of 10