Fresh from its Audience Award winning presentation at Fright Night Theatre Film Festival, Blood Hunters, directed by Tricia Lee will have a theatrical run at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto, ON starting July 7th, 2017 and a one night screening as part of the DedFemme Screening Series at the Metro Cinema in Edmonton, AB on the same day. The film is also coming out on DVD, VOD and all digital platforms in Canada and the USA on July 4th, 2017.
Blood Hunters is the terrifying new horror film from director Tricia Lee and Film Monkey Productions. Lee, one of the very few successful female directors in the genre, made a splash on the scene with her first feature Clean Break and her second feature Silent Retreat. Since the long-time team of Tricia Lee and writer Corey Brown won Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, they have been working on the script, formerly titled One Drop for their new horror creature feature and are excited to see their vision become a reality.
In order to bring her chilling vision to life, Tricia Lee and casting director Kristen Henderson assembled a fantastic cast:
- Lara Gilchrist (Battlestar Galactica, Defying Gravity)
- Benjamin Arthur (Less Than Kind, Working the Engels)
- Torri Higginson (Stargate: Atlantis, This Life)
- Mark Taylor (Flashpoint, Instant Star)
- Julian Richings (Orphan Black, Supernatural)
- Peter Blankenstein (The Human Centipede I,II,III)
These talented actors join forces to battle a nightmare beyond the reaches of science. In Blood Hunters, science is pitted against religion in a suspenseful script that is visually, emotionally and intellectually stimulating.
With SPFX guru Shaun Hunter creating gruesome prosthetics and Producer Chris Luckhardt (Silent Retreat, Tru Love) and Executive Producers Brigitte Kingsley (The Dark Rising Franchise, Night Cries) and Michael Baker (Backcountry, Nostrum), this project was selected to attend the Frontieres Genre Co-Production Market in Brussels, Belgium which coincided with the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. Frontieres later presented the film during the Cannes Marche du Film as part of Frontieres Goes To Cannes.
Given all the recent news about the struggles of female filmmakers, nowhere is this more evident than in the horror genre. The tiny handful of women helming genre films is no doubt a contributing factor to why most horror screenplays are told from the male perspective, despite the fact that a solid 50 percent of horror audiences are female.
Director Tricia Lee is keenly aware of this. “The genre traditionally focuses on the three B’s: beasts, blood, and boobs. I want to bring something different. I want to introduce a new alphabet,” she attested in a gentle voice that should not ever be taken for granted because it belies her delight in the macabre.
What Lee brings is emotion, without sacrificing beasts and blood. She entertainments her audiences so they enjoy a broader spectrum of emotions. “When people watch horror films, their emotions are opened up, they’re scared, and they’re allowing themselves to feel. I always bring a dramatic element. I want to elicit tears. I want to go deeper and draw a strong connection between the audience and the characters.”
SYNOPSIS
Blood Hunters tells the story of a single mother who wakes up in the basement of a medical facility only to discover that everyone around her is dead and she is somehow nine months pregnant. As she struggles to escape, she encounters other survivors, each with their own secret. Together they must unlock the mysteries of the facility which will take them to the brink of death and beyond.
