[SPOILER ALERT] Blood Red Sky is best experienced knowing nothing about it, so I wouldn’t read on and go see the movie first if you’re interested.
It’s always a treat when someone comes up with a unique spin on a monster movie. In the current world of giant CGI battle sequences with monsters fighting other monsters, it’s a breath of fresh air when a movie doesn’t need to rely on that to be its selling point. That means Blood Red Sky was developed overseas, because it’s much more interested in the dilemma of its main characters than letting vampires punch and bite each other while flying through a blood red sky (damn my indoctrination, that sounds kinda cool).
Transatlantic flight 473 is an overnight flight leaving from Europe to the United States. Apparently this flight has a whole lot of people on board with ulterior motives, except for sweet Farid (Kais Setti), who just wants to travel. A group of terrorists including leader Berg (Dominic Purcell), co-pilot Bastian (Kai Ivo Baulitz), and wildcard Eightball (Alexander Scheer), have concocted a plan to hijack the plane. During the takeover a passenger, Nadja (Peri Baumeister) gets shot multiple times while trying to protect her son Elias (Carl Anton Koch). But Nadja is hiding secrets of her own that prevent simple bullet wounds from outright killing her.
It’s so easy to see the pitch here: Vampires on a plane. But the movie succeeds because of writer/director Peter Thorwarth’s execution of that idea. We’ve certainly seen our fare share of vampires who regret their eternal life (Only Lovers Left Alive for example), but we don’t see a lot of them fighting full fledged transformation from human to vampire, a nice wrinkle and addition to vampire lore. Poor Nadja was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when she got infected, and this flight gives her hope that she can get a blood transfusion to purge herself of this evil, willing to trade power for the ability to care for her son. Thus, the ultimate goal of Blood Red Sky is not a giant vampire battle, but the Nadja’s personal battle to keep the evil within her from consuming her, leading to a more emotional story. The movie also effectively uses our stereotypes against us, as the heroes of this movie are the kind and caring vampires and Islamic scientists, while the truly bad guys are a bunch of power obsessed mostly Caucasian hijackers.
The movie also uses most of its plane setting as well. Nadja lurks throughout the plane in the stowaway compartments, where cars and pets are crated. These compartments and the cockpit are pretty tiny, certainly scaring the hell out of Farid, other normal passengers, and even a few terrorists when trapped in close proximity to a fast moving ultra powerful vampire. The movie inadvertently becomes a selling point for blacklights, as their use becomes a great vampire deflector and leads to some terrifying chases through the undercarriage of the plane. You’ve got car fires, depressurization, vampire on vampire action, and a terrifying soldier sweep that will have you on pins and needles. Plane terror and vampire terror combine in an unholy combination of the greatest hits of both genres, leading to something new and fun along the way.
Props to the Europeans for keeping monster movies interesting. Between Let the Right One In, Der Samurai, Border, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and now Blood Red Sky, I worry for my European bretheren. I hope everything’s okay over there, and you’re not secretly hiding a cabal of horrors awaiting to take advantage of unknowing tourists. Just give me some advance warning before I go over there please? Thanks.