[Panic Fest 2020 Review] Blood on Her Name is a Tense Little Thriller

Inevitable.

That’s the word that keeps floating in my head after watching Matthew Pope’s debut thriller Blood on Her Name. It’s set in the world of single mothers dealing with criminal exes and the things they’re willing to do to keep their small family from falling apart. It brings to mind dramas like 2008’s Frozen River or even Winter’s Bone in the way it showcases women having to deal with the fallout after the man in the family does something reckless and stupid. It’s a dark and somber affair, punctuated by flourishes of bravura storytelling.

But it’s also inevitable as it opens with a panicked Leigh (Bethany Anne Lind) who is faced with a dead body in her auto garage. It’s laid out on the cold cement, a bloody trail oozing its way from a head wound. A wrench sits in the pooling blood and her lip is split and her face is bloodied. She dials 911 on her cell but hesitates. And in that inevitable moment, she instead puts her phone away and closes the garage door.

It’s an audacious opening that sets the scene for a quietly intense thriller that slowly, ever so slowly, escalates the tension over the course of the rest of its sleek 80 minute runtime. Leigh’s life is split between her earlier life, where her husband ran the garage, and the now, where her husband has been sent to prison and she’s forced to keep the failing business afloat. She can only afford one mechanic named Rey (Jimmy Gonzales) who also might be her only friend and exudes a charming warmness even when he doesn’t understand why Leigh is suddenly acting so cagey. 

She obviously can’t rely on her troubled son Ryan (Jared Ivers), a teenager who’s on probation and seems to be only a step or two away from following his father’s fate. And then there’s her father Richard (Will Patton), who not only is estranged from Leigh because of some event from their past but is also the small town’s sheriff.

Leigh is basically forced to carry this weight all alone while the pressures of the failing auto shop slowly mount and, like most humans would be, is severely inept at covering up the mess she’s made. But she goes about it, hiding the body, cleaning up the blood and trying the best she can to go on with her life. Unfortunately, she makes the mistake of listening to an errant voice mail sent to the dead man’s phone. It’s from the man’s worried son. Where are you? Why didn’t you come home last night? 

Hope everything is okay...

It forces her to think about her own son and his incarcerated father. She can’t leave the family with unanswered questions. And these little mistakes, fueled by her own morals, start to add up to the inevitability of her terrible situation.

The script script by Don M. Thompson and Matthew Pope wisely teases out the mysteries surrounding the dead man in the garage. Leigh is an unreliable narrator and the script puts us right in the aftermath of the murder. It forces us to follow along, without knowing the entire story and the narrative twists in fantastic ways. It’s a classic onion narrative and as we peel away the layers of the mystery, it further entrenches the dire situation she’s in. But it’s not the only mystery to be solved, as we also slowly learn why Leigh distrusts her sheriff father. 

 Blood on Her Name proves that all an indie thriller needs it a premise, a tight script and good actors. Bethany’s desperate performance as Leigh is full of pathos and understanding, even as her situation becomes more murky. Watching her try to keep all of the balls--her son, the murder, her garage, her life--in the air is as fascinating as it is tragic. Character actor Will Patton brings a subdued sense of the resigned nature of life to his character. But it’s Gonzales’ performance as Rey that lingered with me. He’s so eager to help Bethany, even without understanding the depth of her problems. He’s a bystander that’s trying desperately to toss out a lifeline, not knowing what the extent of the horrors drowning Leigh, just beneath the roiling waves. 

Blood on Her Name is a sleek indie thriller with dread that just constantly churns throughout its breezy runtime. It’s smart and heart-wrenching; ultimately a parable of morality and the inevitability that comes from trying to do the (somewhat) right thing in a situation where no right answers exist.