"Blood Red Sky" Review: Vampires on a Plane

Platform: Netflix

Release Date: July 23, 2021

I've never considered myself to be claustrophobic, but even not subscribing to it, there are plenty of closed space situations that would drive me crazy. Being buried alive and stuck on a mid-flight airplane with vampires just to name a couple. High stakes with little physical space seems to be a real unique combination for thrilling fun, with movies such as “Buried,” “Devil,” and “The Descent” spinning effective stories from the concept. Harboring a concept similar to 2006's “Snakes on a Plane,” though, slightly less ridiculous, is German horror/thriller “Blood Red Sky”. Following a simple premise, the movie is lead by Peri Baumeister as Nadja, who is traveling with her son Elias (Carl Anton Koch) on a flight to New York where she is seeking treatment for an unkown illness. Not long after take-off, a group of hijackers take control of the plane and, while trying to hide with her son, Nadja is shot and presumed dead by the sociopath of the terrorist bunch, Eightball (Alexander Scheer). After pulling herself to safety in the cargo hold, Nadja undoes her facade as a human and unleashes her vampiric vengeance on the hijackers. Struggling to walk the line between human and monster, Nadja's perserverance is put to the test when Eightball injects himself with her blood and unleashes a vampire plague on the plane.

I have to begin by acknowledging that this is pretty awesome concept for a film and one to which I was highly looking forward. At the same time, I have to also acknowledge that it commits one of my movie structure sins: beginning with the ending. The film is told in two flashbacks, as well as the present time, with Elias remembering what happened on the plane after landing and Nadja's flashbacks of first encountering a vampire. These leave the narrative feeling messy and overextended from what should be a simple plot. Rather, it gets stuck between being a family-drama and a horror-thriller, and ends up falling short in both categories. The horror aspect was fun, but I found the connection between Nadja and Elias to be the most compelling aspect, with the young actor who portrayed Elias doing an excellent job of conveying emotion.

Perhaps to its detriment, the movie relied on quickly paced and bloody action sequences. Not that they were particularly highlights in themselves, but it was the vampire violence that brought any level of thrill to the film. The vampires' were pretty classic in their appearance and abilities, with bald heads, full rows of sharp teeth, and pointy ears, along with increased agility and strength with a weakness to sunlight. I thought the prosthetics came off well in the film, as did the blood and injuries, though, it felt like they could have been a bit more generous in the gore department. They used the spaces of the plane well enough to translate some aspects of being trapped, but not enough to really make it feel like this had to happen on a plane. They used a larger aircraft with a corridor, cargo hold, and multiple hatches to increase the space available which made sense watching the movie, but leaves the “stuck on a plane” portion a bit lacking. The movie is slow to get going and moves pretty slow throughout, spending too much time on the hijackers. Not only is everything about their intentions confusing, as is realized during a string of dialogue between passengers, but only two of the five actually carry weight in the story.

Being dubbed from its original German language, it can be difficult to experience the emotional tone of the movie since the voice-over may not always e consistent with the original actors performance. Even with that, the movie did a good job of strengthening the mother-son bond and choreographing Nadja's motherly protection. Where the movie fails is in the pay-off to those emotions, when Nadja succumbs too much to her vampiric nature and cannot trust herself near Elias anymore. The script did a terrible job of translating the drama of why Nadja was so adamant of continuing to suppress her darker half while amidst dangerous company. It makes it seem like its the obvious, that she needs to hide what she is, but it is not until she pushes Elias away near the end that it kind of comes together. But with no build-up to that moment, it did not carry much of an emotional punch.

As already alluded, the movie carries two climaxes, with the first being the final fight between Nadja and Eightball and the second being the end when Elias has to stop the vampires from getting off the plane. Though the movie does not do a great job of eliciting the emotional response from the first climax, having a second leaves them both feeling cheap. Neither comes off as very surprising and furthers extends a film already suffering from its runtime. This feels like a rough cut of a film that had another 30 minutes to cut out and has not yet done the reshoots to fill plot holes. Nevertheless, it served its purpose as a fine Friday night viewing that has enough absurd action to keep you entertained while waiting between Nadja's “vamp outs” and misfitting side stories.

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RATING: 🧛🏻‍♀️ 🧛🏻‍♀️ 🧛🏻‍♀️. 5 / 5

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