Directed by Claude Chabrol | Starring Donald Sutherland, Aude Landry, Lisa Langlois
Oh, Blood Relatives. A film so quiet, so somber, so Canadian that you could practically hear the apologetic rustle of a maple leaf every time someone died. Directed by the French master of moral ambiguity Claude Chabrol—here slumming it in English—and starring a world-weary Donald Sutherland dressed like an off-duty geography teacher, this film is the cinematic equivalent of watching wallpaper peel while someone reads a pulp novel aloud in a whisper.
If you came here for thrills, suspense, or God forbid energy, you’ve wandered into the wrong funeral parlor.
Plot: Blood Is Thicker Than Plot Holes
Set in a foggy, rain-drenched, personality-deficient version of Montreal, the movie opens with the murder of a 16-year-old girl named Patricia. Her cousin, Muriel, survives with minor injuries and a backstory written in crayon. The case falls into the lap of Detective Carella (Donald Sutherland), a man who wears his trench coat like it’s emotionally burdensome and questions suspects like he’s trying to bore them into confessing.
As Carella pokes around, the family tree starts to resemble more of a twisted root system. Sordid secrets emerge—incest, jealousy, mental instability—but it’s all delivered in such a monotonous drone that even the plot twists sound like they’re on Valium.
This could’ve been a sleazy little noir, but instead it’s a funeral march played on a broken accordion.
Donald Sutherland: The Sleepwalking Sleuth
Sutherland is usually a delight to watch—dry, acerbic, effortlessly strange. But here, he moves through scenes like a man trying not to wake up his own performance. He mutters his lines with all the enthusiasm of a man checking receipts, and his investigative technique consists mainly of staring pensively at teenagers and scribbling in a damp notepad.
He looks like he wandered into the wrong movie, decided to stay, and then deeply regretted it.
At one point, he confronts someone with the line, “There’s no such thing as a simple case.” And you believe him—because this film has made even murder feel like an administrative burden.
The Rest of the Cast: Wide Eyes and Whispered Trauma
Aude Landry plays Muriel, the surviving cousin, with all the nuance of a stunned squirrel. She’s either catatonic or screaming, with very little in between. Lisa Langlois shows up with a French accent and a bucket of angst. Everyone else looks like they were cast for their ability to cry in low lighting or appear suspicious while eating toast.
No one behaves like a human being. They behave like understudies in a murder mystery dinner theater where the food poisoned the lead cast.
Direction: Chabrol Forgets to Be Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a master of psychological tension, but here he directs like a man who lost a bet and has to finish the film before customs agents notice he’s working in Canada without a permit. The pacing is glacial. The lighting is gloomier than a Bergman funeral scene. The mood is oppressive but not in a fun, Se7en-style way—more like someone trapped you in a library basement and made you listen to whispers about incest for two hours.
Chabrol usually dishes out moral decay with elegance. Here, it’s just decay.
Production Design: Canada on Quaaludes
Let’s talk about the setting. The entire movie looks like it was filmed on the same three blocks of rainy Montreal. Every scene is soaked in gray, lit like a funeral parlor, and drenched in so much atmosphere you’d think the fog machine union got a tax credit. The interiors are full of wood paneling and wallpaper that smells like old carpet.
Every room looks like a secret was buried there—and then wallpapered over.
Mood: Like a Wet Wool Blanket on a Corpse
There’s a difference between brooding and boring. Blood Relatives tries hard to be dark and poetic, but ends up cold and listless. You get murder, incest, mental illness, and betrayal—but somehow it all feels about as shocking as a weather report.
There are exactly two moments of tension in the whole film: one where someone almost drops a glass, and one where the audience starts wondering if the movie is actually just a very sad dream Donald Sutherland is having about high school drama club.
The Ending: You Guessed It, But You Still Don’t Care
The big twist comes in like a fart in a church: quiet, uncomfortable, and followed by a room full of people pretending it didn’t happen. When the truth comes out—who killed Patricia and why—you’re left with a shrug. Not because it wasn’t disturbing, but because the film drained every drop of narrative juice before you got there.
There’s no catharsis. Just more rain, another sigh from Sutherland, and the vague feeling that someone owes you two hours and a sedative.
Final Thoughts: All Blood, No Pulse
Blood Relatives had the potential to be a grimy little gem—an incestuous, fog-drenched noir set in a morally bankrupt family—but it chooses instead to mumble its way through a bleak mystery without urgency, suspense, or even a decent scream. It’s the kind of film that leaves a taste in your mouth—like you chewed a damp paperback.
Chabrol mailed this one in. Sutherland walked through it. The actors whispered it. And the audience? We just endured it.
Final Score: 3/10
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+1 for the possibility of an interesting story buried under all the fog
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+1 for Donald Sutherland’s mustache
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+1 for the accidental comedy of watching Canadian incest drama played at arthouse volume
But seriously—this blood runs cold, and not in a good way.
