A bunch of terrorists hijack a plane bound for New York. Unbeknownst to them, there’s a vampire on board. As irresistible high concepts go, this one’s right up there with – possibly even higher than – the unforgettable Snakes on a Plane. Running for about two hours, Blood Red Sky is slightly too long for its own good but this German production (with a smattering of English-speaking cast and sequences) is a rollickingly good no-holds-barred film that artfully marries together action movie and horror movie tropes and does exactly what you want – nothing less and nothing more – from a film about terrorists hi-jacking a plane with a vampire on board.
We open at a remote airfield in Scotland where the airport supervisor (Graham McTavish) watches as an unscheduled passenger liner lands on the runway. There’s no sign of life until a young boy emerges from the passenger hold and a desperate-looking man appears in the cockpit window. The film now flashes back a few hours where Nadja (Peri Baumeister), apparently suffering from leukaemia and on her way to visit a doctor in New York who, she hopes, can provide treatment that will relieve her condition, appears over-protective of her young son Elias (Carl Anton Koch) as he innocently befriends fellow traveller Farid (Kais Setti) in the airport waiting area. Not long after the plane takes off a group of men dispose of the three air marshalls on board and their burly leader Berg (Prison Break’s Dominic Purcell) informs the passengers that he and his gang are now in control of the plane, the black box has been sabotaged and the plane is being set on a course towards London where they will carry out a 9/11-like atrocity… but not before vacating the plane themselves. Elias slips away from his mother and, in following him, Nadia is brutally shot down and left for dead. But she isn’t dead, of course. She’s soon awake again and she has a lust for blood that can’t be satiated by the animals down in the cargo bay. Despite turning into a wild, pinched-featured monster, Nadia’s maternal instincts are still very much alive and she sets off on a spree to save her son whilst inadvertently putting the lives of everyone on the plane in even greater danger.
Netflix ‘original movies’ have a tendency to be slightly anaemic affairs – you’ll pardon the pun, of course? – but Blood Red Sky is a big, blood-drenched extravaganza packed with well-choreographed action sequences, a genuinely scary-looking vampire and a sense of tension and terror that rarely lets up once its undead cat is out of the bag and the carnage and the blood-letting begins. Well-placed flashbacks explain Nadja’s tragic backstory and, for once, these are flashbacks that add welcome colour, depth, and lost humanity to the story rather than distract from the action underway on the plane.
The star of this particular gory show is Baumeister as the cursed Nadja. Once transformed, she’s genuinely animalistic, a monster struggling to hang on to some vestiges of her humanity for the sake of her son and she will do anything in her considerable power to protect him. In doing so, she unleashes an even greater terror as, in one useful twist on accepted vampire lore, her condition is transmitted almost instantly to her victims so before long the plane is awash with terrorists-turned-vampire and the terrified passengers have more to worry about than an unexpected crash landing somewhere in London.
Blood Red Sky is a welcome blood-red treat, a proper horrific vampire story whose supernatural protagonists are more in line with the savage beasts of 30 Day of Night than the lovey-dovey saps of the Twilight saga. Strap yourself in; Blood Red Sky is bloody good fun and it successfully puts vampires back on the horror map where they belong.
Blood Red Sky is streaming now on Netflix
