BLISS (2019) **

“I hate to advocate alcohol, drugs, violence, and insanity, but they’ve always worked for me.”

This Hunter S. Thompson quote rattled through my head throughout most of Bliss.  I don’t know if it was intended as a metaphor for how substance abuse influences art or what.  I’m not sure the filmmakers knew, to be honest.

Dezzy (Dora Madison) is an artist who is struggling artistically and financially.  So, she does what anyone would do (or at least druggie painters) and goes out, gets drunk, and buys some weird new street drug called “Diablo”.  This potent pharmaceutical gives her the “bliss” she’s been missing, but it also causes her to occasionally lose track of time and wake up in mysterious places… sometimes covered in blood.  Oh well, who cares?  Especially when whatever she’s doing is causing her to finally put a brush to canvas again so she can finish her masterpiece.

Bliss feels like a horror anthology short that has been expanded to eighty minutes.  (The fact that it revolves around a painting means it could’ve easily been part of a Night Gallery reboot.)  There’s nothing here that couldn’t have been done in half (make that a quarter) of the time.  The big problem is the early scenes of our heroine getting high do very little to endear us to her character.  Imagine being stuck at a party listening to an annoying wasted chick yammer on and on and that might give you an idea of what you have to put up with.  At least she gets naked a few times (once during a three-way sex scene), which takes some of the sting out of it.

Once we finally learn what the drug has transformed her into, it’s a bit of a letdown.  I won’t spoil what happens, but I will say that director Joe (VFW) Begos brings nothing new to the subgenre.  Maybe it was the slower-than-slow burn that came before that soured me on the lackluster conclusion.

Also, I thought it was odd that before the movie began, there was a warning stating that the flashing lights could affect some photosensitive viewers.  However, there is no motion sickness warning for the scenes where Begos strapped a GoPro onto Madison and let her fly around the room, effectively giving the audience vertigo.  He really piles them on too in the final act, and the overall effect is just nauseating.  I guess he thought if the bloodletting wouldn’t sicken the audience, the camerawork would.