After struggling to have a child, Eric and Makayla have hired a witch doctor named Ola to help. She moves into their home and concocts a series of magical rituals and ceremonies to bring a child into their lives. If you truly want something so badly, are you willing to take it, even if it brings something not quite human into your life? That’s the question behind Blood Born.

Writer and director Reed Shusterman was inspired by the upcoming birth of his child: “I started development on Blood Born right when my wife and I had just decided to start having a baby. And, in a very literal interpretation of “write what you know,” I wrote about that.

On one level this movie is about the general fears of pregnancy and parenthood, like what happens to you/your partner’s body and the physical space the baby will take up. But what really scared me into making this movie was how much a baby would change me. I’d no longer be the most important person in my wife’s life. Hell, I wouldn’t be the most important person in my own life. In a certain way, I’d be giving up myself, my being.”

Look, when a magic user comes into your home and tells you that she’s helped people with hysterectomies have babies and promises that you’ll have a child in a month, maybe things aren’t going to go well. Then again, I come from a mindset where I’m always looking for the neighbors offering tannis root.

How badly do Eric and Makayla want children? Enough to sacrifice animals? And what will they do when the child needs blood more than milk? I’m asking way more questions than the film’s protagonists, obviously.

Blood Born is available on demand from Terror Films.