‘Blood Conscious’ Review — A paranoid, claustrophobic cabin nightmare [CFF `21]

A review of the new horror film, showing now at the Chattanooga Film Festival

I always liked the part in Friday the 13th: Part 3D where the new crop of imminent victims drive past Camp Crystal Lake and see the place swarming with emergency vehicles cleaning up the previous night’s massacre, a.k.a. the events of the previous movie. How awful must it be to find the aftermath of a slasher-movie scenario?

Blood Conscious, the new debut horror film from writer-director Timothy Covell, tackles that very question. In this case, the newcomers to the scene are brother/sister duo Kevin (Oghenero Gbaje) and Brittney (DeShawn White), headed along with Brittney’s fiancé Tony (Lenny Thomas) up to a picturesque lakefront vacation. Unfortunately, the lakefront is the site of a very recent massacre: the family they were coming to meet lie dead, and their killer (Nick Damici) still stalks the campground, convinced he is hunting demons.

What follows is a spiraling, claustrophobic film about paranoia and fear. Brittney, Tony, and Kevin hunker down in a cabin over the course of one long and harrowing night, trying not to succumb to their captor’s infectious idea that there really may be demons in the darkness. And then, when a…