Private investigator Abel Walker and his cameraman are on the hunt for a missing woman. As they unravel the mystery of her disappearance, they become caught in a sick and violent game.

Distribution company High Octane Pictures who has brought us Crisis Hotline (our review), American Killing (our review), and many other films this year is starting out 2020 with another thriller.  Writer/ director Jason R. Miller ‘s cleverly titled film Bloodhound (2020) follows a rare breed of a private investigator who has a knack for tracking people down. Though Jason R. Miller has produced many a horror film, Bloodhound is his sophomoric feature-length directorial debut. 

Bloodhound follows Abel Walker, a private investigator who started out working small-times cases but who has recently taken on bigger cases that are increasingly more harrowing. Confident in his abilities, Abel gets an idea to turn his adventures into a reality TV show and hires a camera guy, Jim (David Foy), to film him while speaking with clients and carrying out his investigations. Their first go at the new enterprise is taking on the case of Bill Augustine (Miles Dougal), a man concerned that his ex-wife has gone missing. The task sends them on a wild chase in search of her kidnapper, grappling with a gang of knife-wielding masked men, bloody clues,  and red herrings along the way.

Similar to Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass’s Creep (2014), Bloodhound is a documentary-style thriller. Besides some forgivable aerial shots for establishing the setting, the movie commits to the documentarian, POV-style throughout the film, which I commend them for accomplishing. The movie does build some tension with its characters during the investigation, having them run into nefarious characters and throwing in a couple of jump-scares (more like jump-startles); these moments don’t really boil over into anything spectacular though they do keep the film interesting. I also liked the music accompanying this, it helped to build the suspenseful sequences even though the score sounded like it was created on a Casio keyboard.

The movie is low-budget, but it has a great quality of film when it could have settled for less, being a POV film. Starring Ed Ackerman (Adam Green’s Frozen) and David Foy (Hatchet/Victor Crowley series), the acting performances were believable and surprisingly not cheesy. I was surprised by the lack of comedy, seeing as how Ed, David, and Jason are all regularly a part of the crew for Adam Green films, a director notable for his splatter-ific horror comedies. Though there is humor that comes through in some of the dialogue, it seems that Bloodhound is a serious attempt at a documentary thriller. It definitely could have been more thrilling, as there are scenes where the camera cuts out right when it appears something intense will happen, but otherwise, the film was a good watch.

Though Bloodhound was lacking in inducing fear and had me screaming “why don’t they just call the cops?” like any person in real life would, with its short runtime of about an hour Bloodhound had good performances, the characters were engaging until the very end, and it even had its own little “what’s in the box?!” moment à la Se7en (1995). To catch this twisty thriller you will have to wait until after the holidays, Bloodhound will be released to digital platforms and on DVD this upcoming January 7, 2020.