Blood on Her Name (2020) | Film Review

Leigh Tiller is in dire straits. With an ex in prison and a delinquent young son on his way, Leigh is fighting to make ends meet working in a car repair shop while simultaneously keeping what is left of her family intact. It would seem circumstances could not possibly become any more frenetically stressful. That is, until we begin her journey in Blood on Her Name, and we find Leigh standing tall over a freshly murdered corpse on her shop’s garage floor.

Leigh (Bethany Anne Lind) immediately thinks of taking moral action; call the authorities and deal with the ramifications. After a moment of assessment, she chooses to go another route and dispose of the body. Leigh has a complicated history with her father, Sheriff Richard Tiller (Will Patton), and ultimately decides there is a chance she and her son, Ryan (Jared Ivers), can walk away from this unscathed. As one can assume, complications soon arise and Leigh will be consistently confronted with the depths of her own morality.

In his feature film debut, director Matthew Pope presents a unique take on an overdone trope: the whodunit. In the first 30 seconds, the audience is made acutely aware of whom is responsible for this strange man’s murder. What Pope’s script (co-written with Don M. Thompson) aims to focus on is not who did this, specifically, nor really even why. Instead, Blood on Her Name chooses to wrestle with a far more complicated inquiry: if you accidentally killed someone and believed you could get away with it…would you? If so, what about the deceased’s family, do you owe them anything? Also, how far would you go to protect your secret?

The beauty of Pope’s film lies in its simplicity. Drawing equal breaths from the likes of Blood Simple and D.O.A., this noir-ish thriller is cleverly plotted and fueled by Leigh’s impending doom. Each choice Leigh makes, whether well-intentioned or rooted in selfish fear, leads to genuine consequences that directly affect not only her, but those she loves as well. As Leigh aspires to maintain composure in front of her son and co-worker Rey (Jimmy Gonzales), she instead begins to spiral out of control under the immense pressure of her sheer guilt.

Carrying the film as sure as Leigh wears her own private burden is Bethany Anne Lind, delivering a powerhouse performance. The entirety of Blood on Her Name rests squarely on her shoulders, and Lind bleeds desperation, panic, and moral crisis in each and every frame. Once the setup is established, the audience needs a reason to continue to root for a character who would choose to cover up a scene such as this. This becomes particularly problematic when the film chooses to begin after the crime in question, leaving us unsure if we can ever fully invest in Leigh as our heroine.

Lind wins us over from the opening, her eyes a window into the soul and struggles of her character. Those eyes carry us along throughout the many ups-and-downs of Leigh’s journey, never once losing our empathy in the process. Leigh Tiller makes many bad choices, but our belief in her chosen path stems directly from Lind’s innate ability to garner our sympathies no matter how despicable Leigh’s actions may seem.

That does not mean she has to handle the film all by her lonesome, as the criminally underrated Will Patton’s turn as Sheriff Tiller deserves his own share of the praise. Once again, Patton takes a seemingly irredeemable rascal of a man – a Sheriff with bad parenting skills and more than a few shady secrets of his own – and crafts a character who somehow makes more sense the longer we hang on his tender way of selling a sinister pitch. Elisabeth Röhm also deserves a mention in her pivotal role, yet one which we will leave out of this review to protect the storytelling.

A small character piece, Matthew Pope directs with a confident vision as Bethany Anne Lind gives a star-making performance and takes us on a tense journey through one hell of a moral crisis. Blood on Her Name is pulse-pounding entertainment that posits a macabre question: how far would you go if everything you loved was on the line? And much like Leigh Tiller, a solidified answer may continue to elude you.