PLOT: Troubled mechanic and single mother Leigh Tiller finds herself in a bind when she decides to cover up a dead body found in her auto garage. When she opts to deliver the corpse to his family, a rash of poor decisions leads to further death and destruction.
REVIEW: With a quartet of preparatory shorts to his name, Matthew Pope resoundingly declares he’s ready for the feature-filmmaking stage with BLOOD ON HER NAME – a dreary, bleary, and often eerie indie affair that, despite a late-act reveal, functions less as a twisty plot-driven thriller and more as an ensorcelling character examination of a woman dealing with hard luck, a checkered past, single parenthood, a juvenile child, substance abuse, and most pressingly, a murder cover-up. While the tone is often far too gravid to elicit outright enjoyment, this harrowing and hardscrabble portrait remains engaging due to the powerful performance by Bethany Ann Lind (Stranger Things, Ozark) as Leigh, a woman who, maugre her good heart, falls victim to the circumstances the poor choices her moral core dictates. As a debut feature no doubt made on a shoestring, BLOOD ON HER NAME proves two things: Lind is a force to be reckoned with in front of the screen, as is Pope behind it. Check this flick out when it drops into select theaters Friday, February 28th!
With a gripper of an opening shot, a woman looms over a dead body resting in a puddle of blood inside an auto garage. A gory wrench lies beside the corpse. The woman wears bloody wounds on her face and forehead. It becomes reasonable to assume the woman murdered the man, but the reason for such remains turbid throughout. The woman is Leigh Tiller (Lind), an auto mechanic with a juvenile child named Ryan (Jared Ivers), a husband in jail for auto theft, and a corrupt town sheriff of a father named Richard (Will Patton). From the jump, we can see how tortured Leigh is, from the exterior lesions on her face to the inward tumult she cannot hide on her facial expressions. In a panicked state, Leigh decides to hide the corpse and dump the murder weapon. But her conscience won’t allow her to perform the former. As a result, Leigh unwisely decides to drop the corpse on his family’s property so that they can at least know what happened and try to find some closure. Leigh is trying to set a good example for her troubled son, Ryan, who’s recently been placed on juvenile probation.
Matters complicate when Leigh accidentally leaves a personal item near the corpse. As she scrambles to retrieve the item and rid the evidence of her involvement, Leigh continues to make a series of poor decisions, despite her heart being in the right place. She cops some pills to take the edge off, further clouding her judgment. One of the strongest parts of the film is how Lind plays these scenes. We can see her think, manically calculate, and hazily work out the next move in her head. Despite nary a single smile in the whole film, Lind does a tremendous job of exhibiting the panic and paranoia of a woman unsure of what to do or who to turn to, as well as eliciting a certain sympathy for her unenviable situation. No doubt about it, this is Lind’s hour to shine, and that she does in what amounts to less of a heart-pounding thriller than it does a heartrending feeler. That is, even with the poor decisions she makes, it’s hard not to sympathize with Leigh and hope for her salvation.
Beyond the stellar central turn, the real hold of the movie comes in the lingering mystery of how the man was killed to begin with, how it happened, and why, no matter her involvement, Leigh failed to call the police and report the incident as an act of self-defense, which she maintains is the truth. Part of the reason, without spoiling too much, is the sordid criminal past of Leigh’s incarcerated husband, who has implicated their auto garage – which happens to be the murder scene – with past illegal activity. If Leigh reports the murder, such activity will surely come to light. In this regard, it seems like this might be one of Leigh’s wiser choices, but then another dynamic-shifting revelation comes barreling down in the final act that again makes you question Leigh’s motives. You may even agree with them. Indeed, Pope has crafted a messy, complex, deeply flawed character whose wrongheadedness and good-heartedness do not align, which only compounds her legal woes. I like that dynamic a great deal.
For a first feature, Pope does far more right than wrong. The only real issue to be had with the film is how, at just 83 minutes or so, the austerely dreary tone of the piece makes it feel longer than it really is. Again, without an ounce of levity to be found in the film, it’s sort of a grueling experience to get through in one sitting. And yet, it’s worth it. Aside from that, and your typical resource deficiencies plaguing a small indie movie made with little time and money, there’s not a lot to grouse about. BLOOD ON HER NAME is an exquisite debut feature that begs we keep our collective attention on director Matthew Pope and actress Bethany Ann Lind in the future!