Pelican Blood

British film Pelican Blood directed by Karl Golden and starring British rising star Harry Treadaway tries to tell a story of Bird Watching, love and teen suicide… heavy stuff, but lets find out if it manages to pull it off. Bird watcher Nikko (Treadaway) spends most of his time immersed in his passion alongside his two friends. His life finally back on track after a suicide attempt his ex-girlfriend Stevie (Emma Booth) reappears after the death of his mother and straight away causes a rift between him and his friends.

The two young lovers fall for each other again and we start to see the dangers of Nikko being with Stevie. Everything around him begins to deteriorate, his relationship with family, friends and his care of everything else that isn’t Stevie begins to become evident and he seems to be following a path that he’s walked down before to a disturbing end.

Pelican Blood was a film that I watched mostly out of necessity; I had a screener and as I review every DVD I get sent from PR company’s I stuck it in my player on a uneventful Sunday morning without any hopes of quality whatsoever and was well surprised to find that the film was a gripping and intense character drama with fantastic performances as well as having a very interesting central romance at its core.

Treadaway is fantastic in the lead role; looking back to a few years ago I can’t believe that this is the same kid that I couldn’t stand in City of Ember. He’s grown, matured and become a real one to look out for in the future, he brought a charm and nonchalant attitude to the role but when certain scenes ask him to bring up his game on an emotional level he always delivers. He was able to bring the tortured soul of Nikko to a messed up story of unrequited love that most young actors today wouldn’t be able to even attempt yet alone succeed.

Emma Booth is great and makes it easy to see why Nikko would fall for her. It’s the freedom and carefreeness of Stevie that attracts Nikko, as a character so wrapped up in his own turmoil you can feel that he sort of lives through her spirit and persona.

The film isn’t without faults though, the first 50 minutes is the building of the broken relationship between the two lovers and how that affects the other people in his life as well as the changes he seems to go through when he’s with her. All this is good, well-acted character based storytelling. I won’t spoil the plot but whilst bird watching by himself something happens which then means the next 25 minutes is very plot heavily and everything else seems to take a back burner.

The shift between the character heavy and plot heavy storytelling doesn’t blend well and the film for this time goes a little bit off the rails, becomes unfocused and loses for me what the point of the film was. It seemed that the writer finished his first draft and it was only 60 pages long and felt he needed to add another 30 just so that he could hit the 90 minute mark as everything just feels tacked on.

It lost my attention for a while but what ends being a really touching and tragically poetic final third brings the film back to the highs of the beginning character based drama so much that it left me a tad melancholic after the credits began. Everything was rounded off nicely and seemed fitting to the story and characters.

Apart from the aforementioned plot problems the script is smartly written, the dialogue is well thought out, witty and is able to manage the dealing of heavy subjects such as teen suicide with ease. It’s the first feature for both writer Cris Cole and director Karl Golden and they can be very happy with the outcome of the final film.

The soundtrack is impressive and just helps with the tone of the story and is just one positive aspect of this well-made film. The direction is solid, the performances are fantastic and flaws aside the writing is well formed. Pelican Blood is a fantastic debut and a great addition to the ever growing list of impressive British Independent Cinema. eatsleepfilms