Here for Blood is the babysitter-man bloodbath wrestling comedy no one knew they needed

Coming out of a 2023 holiday season that was a king’s bounty of holiday horror comedies, the new year has dropped a few real genre charmers for us right outta the gate. Night Swim was a better January studio horror drop than we deserve and flicks like First Time Caller and Destroy All Neighbors were delightful accoutrements. Amid those first forays in 2024, we got an early look at a new film from the Screambox network that, in direct opposition to the high gloss emptiness of recent releases like Role Play, is a scrappy little “made for us, by us” horror flick.

Struggling to make ends meet, a rowdy pro wrestler (Shawn Roberts) agrees to babysit a precocious 10-year-old girl. What starts off as a laid-back night of junk food and video games quickly spirals into bloody chaos as the secluded home is invaded by a cult of mask-wearing maniacs. Yes, Here for Blood is amateur wrestler as babysitter versus Satanic panic, and it only gets more delightfully weird from there.

Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider lends his legendary voice to a decapitated skull, alongside a cast that includes co-stars Maya Misaljevic (The Boys), Joelle Farrow, Tara Spencer-Nairn, and Michael Therriault (Chucky).

Directed by Daniel Turres and written by James Roberts, Here for Blood won six awards at its Toronto After Dark premiere, including “Best Film to Watch with a Crowd,” and said award it probably the simplest, most effective review of the film available. This is a flick that was made to be watched with a group of friends in a theater, preferably with some drinks in ’em, loudly reacting to each and every practical effect—not, as I saw it, alone on a laptop screen. I can mostly imagine the experience I missed out on, and that collective celebration of lowbrow delights is what both the wrestling and horror elements cranked to 11 here fully deserve.

Here for Blood starts rough, with a first act that radiates big “Kickstarter movie” energy, where it hasn’t established whether we’re supposed to be laughing with it or even laughing at all. By the time you hit the first handmade special effects for decapitations and faces melted off, you’ll know exactly what kind of film this is meant to be. Like the aforementioned Destroy All Neighbors, this is a great time for someone who delights in bubbly flesh, pulsating pustules, and body parts that can’t seem to be killed.

When it gets rolling, Here for Blood is here to stay. Not only built on some genuine heart, the story and world-building do more with the murderous cult antagonist(s) than you’d expect. Slightly underdeveloped within this, but present on screen, is the hilarity of bad guys half the size of a professional wrestler thinking that a Halloween mask and a small knife will intimidate our hero into surrender. It’s hard to not imagine what a studio remake would do differently throughout, but equally that version would sacrifice so much of the tactile sense of DIY that permeates the film, and elevates it to the levels it reaches. At it’s best, Here for Blood touches Meet the Feebles-era Peter Jackson. At it’s worst, it feels like you’ve stumbled into a local wrestling show that got a little too meth’d up. Hard to go wrong.