'Books Of Blood' Trailer: The Work Of Clive Barker Inspires A New Hulu Horror Movie

Clive Barker's series of short stories gathered in the Books of Blood collections have served as inspirations for several movies:  The Midnight Meat Train, Rawhead Rex, Quicksilver Highway, Lord of Illusions, Dread, and, the best of the bunch, Candyman. There was also another movie called Book of Blood released in 2018. Now Hulu is getting in on the action with their own Books of Blood movie. The streaming service was originally planning a Books of Blood TV series, but it looks like they opted to go with a movie instead.

In Books of Blood, audiences will be taken "on a journey into uncharted and forbidden territory through three uncanny tales tangled in space and time." And, having seen the movie already, I can tell you this: please don't expect to see any of Barker's familiar tales here. The only story lifted directly from Barker's books is the story Barker used to set things up, about a psychic researcher and her subject who summon up the tales of terror that populate the various Books of Blood volumes. The rest of the film has very little to do with Barker's work. Make of that what you will!

For a while there, Hulu was planning a Books of Blood TV series, and while I have no confirmation of this, I'm almost positive the service took a pilot episode (or two) for the planned show and reworked it into this movie. I could be 100% wrong there, but I don't think I am.

The film features Britt Robertson, Rafi Gavron, Anna Friel, Yul Vazquez, and Freda Foh Shen, and comes from director Brannon Braga. Braga also executive produces along with Seth MacFarlane, Erica Huggins, Alana Kleiman, Brian Witten, Jeff Kwatinetz, Josh Barry, Clive Barker and Adam Simon. The film is co-executive produced by Mark Miller, and produced by Jason Clark and Joe Micucci. The film comes from Touchstone Television and Fuzzy Door, headed by MacFarlane and Huggins.

There are plenty of great stories in Barker's Books of Blood, and while they may not be popping-up here, I hope someone gets another crack at them. My personal favorite is a story called "The Life of Death" in which a woman who recently had a miscarriage wanders into a recently excavated old church and finds hordes of dead plague victims packed into the basement. She inadvertently becomes a carrier for the plague and begins infecting those around her. Granted, the general mood right now may not lend itself to plague stories, but maybe a few years down the line someone can give it a shot.

Books of Blood arrives on October 7.