| Blood Trails | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Robert Krause |
| Produced by | Oliver Simon |
| Written by | Robert Krause Florian Puchert |
| Starring | Rebecca Palmer Ben Price Tom Frederic |
| Music by | Ben Bartlett |
| Editing by | Richard Krause Wolfgang Bohm |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | 2007 |
| Running time | 87 minutes |
| Language | English |
Blood Trails is a horror film, released in 2007 by Lions Gate Entertainment and starring Rebecca Palmer, Ben Price and Tom Frederic. It was directed by Robert Krause and won the Dawn by Dead Horror Festival Audience Award in 2006.
While the film is in the general slasher film category, it is an attempt at a realistic portrayal rather than the Grand Guignol style of most of this type. The protagonist, Anne, played by Palmer, is a bicycle messenger who accompanies her somewhat estranged boyfriend on a mountain biking holiday in the distant reaches of the "huge" Whistler Mountains (location never specified, but the movie was shot in Germany), where the two decide to cycle down a trail which had been closed to biking, and thus deserted. The pair are surreptitiously followed, however, by another mountain biker; a charming psychopath with whom Anne had, unknown to her boyfriend, had a recent one night stand which had become "brutal", as she confessed it to him. The psychopath, intrigued by Anne's strength and courage (he states that she is the "only one to have survived the first night"), now views her as his property and proceeds to quickly dispatch anyone who attempts to stand in the way of his enjoying her slow and painful death; the resourcefulness and courage shown in her efforts at evading him make up the rest of the movie. Aside from the psychopath, who by definition must act aberrantly, the portrayals in the movie are naturalistic rather than the stylized performances of most slasher films. The film features extended cycling scenes which are particularly realistic.