Blood on Her Name (2020) by Matthew Pope

Director: Matthew Pope
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Suspense/Thriller

Plot:
After accidentally murdering a man at work, a woman tries to hide the body until she can get it properly disposed of but when work complications, her own family struggles and the threat of exposure start to take a toll on her she fears she may slip up and let the truth be known.

Review:

On the whole, this is an enjoyably tense and gripping thriller. The majority of that is due to the central premise of relying on how far she gets before the secret she carries catches up with her. Since the opening ten minutes focuses on her concealment of the crime and disposal of the body, we're dropped right in and given ample evidence to point out how utterly ill-equipped she is at this sort of behavior. As she tries to live her life following the incident and trying to forget what happened which causes her life to spiral out of control, the impact this has not only on her but her strained relationships with her friends and family pushes the suspense along considerably well. As things turn into the shocking and somewhat surprising finale that ends this one far more action-packed than expected, this turns into a fine showing of how far she gets pushed which is exceptionally fun to watch.

That said, there are a few issues here. The main impetus on the film not fully exploring the realities of what happened the fateful night of the murder means the film grapples with her loss of self for the wrong reasons. Rather than constantly being inadvertently reminded of what happened that would allow her guilty conscious to drive up the tension, this one tends to revolve around the idea of her putting herself into the more suspicious aspects of the story for no real reason. It doesn't truly capture the anguish of trying to cover up the body through any kind of nominally reasonable motivations instead of through her own doing that's causing everything, making for the entirety stress to be related to her through her own fault. This can conceivably be the point of all this, but there's still other ways to get this same point across here, and being the only issue here doesn't make for too detrimental an issue.

Overview: ***.5/5
Wholly engrossing and enjoyable thriller that doesn't really strike too many major flaws at all, this was a rather likable effort that holds itself quite nicely into a fine genre effort. Give this a chance if you're a fan of these dark dramatic thrillers or looking for these kinds of genre efforts, while those that don't appreciate the style won't find this one too enjoyable and should heed caution.