Review: Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

Stephen Tyrone Williams is Dr. Hess Greene, an anthropologist and lover of African art. One night, Dr. Greene’s bizarro new assistant Lafayette Hightower (Elvis Nolasco) stabs the doctor with an ancient African dagger and then kills himself. It doesn’t kill Dr. Greene, however. Well, not exactly. Instead, once Dr. Greene awakens afterwards, he realises he’s actually undead. He’s been turned into a bloodthirsty vampire. Soon after this, Dr. Greene meets the lovely Ganja (Zaraah Abrahams) and the two fall in love. But then she discovers the doctor’s secret. Rami Malek plays manservant Higginbottom, whilst veteran character actor Stephen Henderson turns up briefly.

 

I try. I really try, guys. I so want to be a Spike Lee fan like the rest of you. It sucks being the odd person out. I loved “Malcolm X” despite the distracting role filmmaker Lee unnecessarily gave for himself. “Inside Man” was Lee’s least pretentious, most straightforwardly entertaining film to date. I liked that one just fine. I think “Do the Right Thing” is egotistical but occasionally interesting, and although the central romance didn’t much interest me “Jungle Fever” contains excellent supporting work by Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and especially a completely shattering Samuel L. Jackson. But by and large? Spike and I are just not on the same wavelength at all. I thought this 2015 film from writer-director Lee was gonna be the one to correct the course. I’ve not caught up with Bill Gunn’s “Ganja and Hess”, one of the more obscure Blaxploitation films out there. However, being a blaxploitation fan I thought if ever I was gonna like a Spike Lee film, it’d probably be this remake of “Ganja and Hess”. Nup, it’s actually Lee’s worst film to date. Yes, even worse than the self-indulgent mess “Summer of Sam”. It’s bad. It’s really, really, really bad. It was apparently Kickstarter-funded, but you’d swear the end result was the work of an amateur on their first indie assignment, not a supposedly top filmmaker on their 20+ feature film assignment.

 

The amateurishness is immediate with completely stilted lead performances. If it’s meant to be funny or a parody, well it’s not remotely funny to me. Perhaps Lee was trying to ape David Lynch’s style or something with his cast, but I’m not sure what good that would do here, either. Aside from recognisable faces like Stephen Henderson and a pre-Freddie Mercury Rami Malek, one wondered if this was the first time these people had stepped in front of a camera (Apparently not, going by their IMDb cages, at least for the leads). Brit actress Zaraah Abrahams (“Coronation Street”) is particularly poor as Ganja, with one monologue so bad it’s almost Elizabeth Berkeley with a bottle of ketchup in “Showgirls” levels of bad. Overall the supposed comedy is far too heavy-handed (I hope the original was far more subtle), with everyone basically playing a stilted, highly affected weirdo to no real benefit or purpose that I could ascertain.

 

As much as it didn’t work as comedy, it also didn’t work for me as horror, either. In fact, I’m pretty sure Lee was completely disinterested in the horror aspects of the story. Well Spike, this is the genre you essentially agreed to work in here, and you’ve neither shown the interest nor aptitude for it. It’s not frightening, just frightfully boring. If Spike thinks he’s making some grand and unique statement about addiction through vampirism, the 1990s had several vampire flicks that already did that and better. Hell, even 1987’s excellent “Near Dark” kinda touched on the theme, too. For the most part, Lee’s treatment is infantile, and being a remake is no excuse for being old-hat, anyway. Meanwhile, the film appears to have been edited with a sledgehammer. It’s not incoherent as such, just incredibly clunky.

 

A heavy-handed indie arthouse horror film made by a filmmaker with seemingly no interest in horror, let alone aptitude for the genre. Stilted, unfunny, un-scary, and insufferably boring. It’s bizarre but not in any interesting or entertaining way. Perhaps fans of the original “Ganja and Hess” will make more out of this than I did (it’s apparently a very faithful remake), but going by reviews and scores online, it appears most people dislike this remake or have never even heard of it. Spike’s worst film to date. By far. Watch “Blacula” instead, one of the campier but most enjoyable blaxploitation films and featuring a real actor in the lead with William Marshall.

 

Rating: F