Domonic and Damien Paris’ Dead Bloom lives within the same realm as R.T. Thorne’s sci-fi/thriller 40 Acres. Both films use genre as a vehicle to explore deeper themes of systemic oppression and generational trauma. The monsters simply add to the horror already raging on the outside, layering on a thick coating of inner anguish that threatens to burst bodies like pimples. With Dead Bloom, the father/son filmmaking team stretches generations back into the past and unearths a tale literally as old as time: the poison of human nature. The contamination of life, foisted by white supremacy, lies at the throbbing and oozing heart of the film.
The story opens on a cryptic scene. A chemical manufacturer orders two employees to bury a mysterious (and deadly) chemical, known only as XT-1, in the desert. In a grim turn of events, one of them ends up dead. Cut to: a Black family attempting to make a life for themselves. The terrain wraps its merciless hands around their throats, perhaps even literally. When the mother and father discover a succulent plant, they partake of its fruits, despite not knowing what it actually is. Their curiosity and desperation get the better of them, and things quickly turn disastrous. Some gnarly body horror sets the stage for what’s to come, and even then, you may not be fully prepared.
Years later, the Gaines family inherits the property, on which a small home has been built. Jules (Lilith Mesidor), seven months pregnant, with her husband Ted (Danny Fehsenfeld), and daughter Betsy (She Vaughn-Gabor), moves into the secluded house. Knowing nothing about the tragic past, Jules looks toward a nice and quiet escape to ride out the rest of her pregnancy and do her art. But an insidious evil, dating back centuries, contaminates their lives as those who’ve come before. It was only a matter of time before it would come for them, too.
Domonic and Damien craft such an intimate story that engages with the current social and political conversation in a very real and profound way. When Ted’s estranged sister Cassie (Sadie Katz) shows up with her 16-year-old son and influencer Ryder (Caleb White), the film opens up to explore the exploitation of Black lives and suffering for likes and views. White supremacy doesn’t just walk around in white hoods; it worms its way through microaggressions and inherent racism and privilege of white people, even if the intention is good. Dead Bloom roots itself into the spine of humanity and spotlights the very long history of brutality inflicted upon people of color.
Running concurrently with these raw themes, gooey and sickening (complementary) body horror courses through the film’s veins. As the buried chemical poisons the Gaines family, several sequences featuring nauseating practical effects, particularly involving appendages, cram into the eyeballs. There’s nothing like it, and Dead Bloom will make sure you have your puke bucket nearby. While the film isn’t perfect—the characters and performances could have used some fine-tuning—it does give you plenty of socio-political commentary to bite into and consider.
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