‘Blades in the Darkness’ Review: A Captivating Killer Makes This Slasher Worth Watching

Blades in the Darkness is the best Albanian slasher movie you’re likely to see this year.

Blades in the Darkness released in the USA on streaming platforms on January 28, 2025.

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What is Blades in the Darkness About?

Blades in the Darkness (2022)
A killer with blades attached to his hands hunts a group of people within the darkness of an old bunker.

Blades in the Darkness is an Albanian horror movie that uses a crime-thriller setup as a gateway into a bloody slasher film.

Four friends pool their money and travel to Tirana, Albania with hopes of starting a restaurant. One among them, Adrian, secretly owes a lot of money to a gangster. Adrian “borrows” their restaurant start-up cash to pay off the gangster, and the payment takes place in an old bunker left abandoned for decades after the fall of Albania’s communist regime. Only, the bunker isn’t as abandoned as anyone thought. One thing leads to another, and Adrian, his friends, and a group of criminals are all hunted in the bunker by a blade-wielding killer raised by holdovers from the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania.

Blades in the Darkness was directed by Alex Visani, and it was co-written by Alex Visani, Lorenzo Lepori, and Alessandro Albertini. The four friends are played by Ermir Jonka, Ilirda Bejleri, Ingrid Monacelli, and Endrit Ahmetaj. The killer is played by Lorenzo Lepori, and his deranged foster parents are Manuela Arcuri and Francesco Rossini. Also appearing is Arnold Damazzeti.

Blades in the Darkness Review

Blades in the Darkness (2022)
Adrian (second from the left) leads his friends into more danger than he could have imagined.

Blades in the Darkness has all the makings of a fun slasher movie. The villain looks interesting and has a unique backstory. The victims are plentiful and have a decent amount of drama between them before the killing truly begins. And the filmmakers aren’t shy about using a lot of blood. The way the film is shot also displays some interesting style from time to time.

Blades in the Darkness (2022)
The gangsters don’t add much beyond increasing the body count. For the record, increasing the body count is a good thing, but bland characters aren’t necessarily good or bad in this type of film.

One thing that is apparent is that the story might try to take on a little much for the type of movie it’s trying to be. The opening segments of the film that follow the killer from his days as an impressionable, comic-book-loving kid through to his growth into a brutal killing machine are fun to watch. There’s some depth there, but a lot of it is left unexplored. Instead, we join Adrian and his friends in their side of the story just a few minutes into the movie, and it gets a little bland. It becomes a fairly typical crime thriller for a while, and it’s about halfway through before the slasher side of the movie kicks back in. That’s when it finally gets good again.

Blades in the Darkness (2022)
The killer has spent a lot of time alone, and he’s gone a bit strange.

Sure, there’s something to be said about building up sympathetic characters before cutting them down, but none of the characters we’re introduced to are particularly sympathetic. Frankly, the killer might have the biggest share of our sympathy thanks to his origin story and how his time in the movie ends. More time spent with the killer would have made Blades in the Dark a lot better.

Blades in the Darkness (2022)
A comic-book superhero becomes a strong symbol for the killer in Blades in the Darkness.

However, the second half of the movie is pretty fun as it is. It’s a quick and dirty slasher at that point, and that’s what you probably expect from a movie titled Blades in the Darkness. The limits of the budget are apparent from time to time when it comes to how the blood and gore effects are handled (some of the early kills have cutaways or extreme closeups on the violence), but there is a decent amount of gore shown as the movie goes on. The budget is navigated well by the filmmakers to provide good gore in the right moments.

Blades in the Darkness Rating and Recommendation

Blades in the Darkness (2022)
A sequel that focuses more on the killer could be fantastic!

Star Rating: 3 out of 5

Blades in the Darkness bogs down a little after the first few minutes, but if you stick around, you’ll be treated to a fun and gory slasher with one of the coolest killers so far this year.

Blades in the Darkness is currently streaming on TVOD platforms including Amazon Prime Video.

Further Reading

Meet The Author

Chris has a degree in film studies at Temple University’s campus in Tokyo, Japan. He is a renowned expert on horror cinema.