Breaking her sobriety with a new drug, bliss, Dezzy experiences terrifying and surreal visions.
Under the influence, her friend, Courtney (Tru Collins), slips her something else entirely.
Dezzy begins to experience a thirst for blood that sends her into a bloody spiral.
Image via Dark Sky
The horror could be an induced hallucination, or it could be real.
There are a few fight scenes towards the end of the movie.
In them, thebody horror is visceraland strange.
Image via Dark Sky Films
As throats get ripped out and fingers bitten off, the sound effects are dialed up to 11.
The sound design for the bone-crunching and wet squishes gives the viewer shivers.
The exposed carnage looks nasty, reminiscent pf chunky meat.
None of the gore appears overly realistic; instead, it favors a more stylized look.
Watching these violent sequences, the bloodshed comes off asartsy rather than gritty.
The gore becomes surrealist as the movie draws to a close and Dezzy has officially spun out of control.
Bliss (2019) chronicles the intense journey of an artist in Los Angeles who grapples with a creative block. To overcome it, she delves into a tumultuous world fueled by excessive indulgence, triggering an uncontrollable and surreal transformation that blurs the line between reality and imagination.
Bodies melt like Jello or squeeze wax.
Blisstakes several aesthetic cues from ’70s sexploitation films, which casts the violence in a campy light.
Dezzy frequently wakes upnaked and covered in blood.
Her lack of alarm lulls the audience into relative calm, choosing to believe this is simply a hallucination.
As the body count begins to stack up, blood spurts from victims like geysers.
The overabundance of gore feels theatrical and revelatory.
Favoring glamorous reds, purples, and blues,Blissgenerates an otherworldly vibe.
Depending on the color, a different tone is established for the scene.
When Dezzy is out and partying, the lights flash and pulse.
As she questions reality,Blisspushes this cosmic theme of unreality.
Humanity, specifically Dezzy’s humanity, becomes elastic as she consumes more bliss and blood.
As Dezzy questions whats real, so too does the viewer.
During the handful of painting sequences, clips of Dezzy out on the town are interspersed over her working.
Stylish modern horror films that echo classics like ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Deep Red.’
None of the bands playing throughout are mainstream, which gives the underground party scene a grungy believability.
Blissis a film concerned with aesthetics.
AsBlisstextuallytoys with the fabric of reality, it also subconsciously teases the same question through editing.
Blissis currently available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
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