Blood Red Sky (2021)

 Score: 2 / 5

Nadja is a single mother and fighting a debilitating illness that appears to be terminal. When we first see her, pale and bald in a restroom, she looks to be battling leukemia; she's a woman of few words, so we never fully get a glimpse of her inner life. A German widow, she's shuttling her son into a red-eye flight across the Atlantic to a doctor in New York who might be able to help her out. Her son, Elias, who can't be more than ten or twelve years old, gazes knowingly at her as though he has matured far beyond his years while seeing his only parent suffer. As we might expect, the flight is doomed: shortly after taking off, a group of terrorists kills the air marshals and pilot, hijacking the plane until their ransom is paid. Surely this will be a Flightplan meets Air Force One scenario, and show the triumph of family and guts over greed and ambition.

And yet, as the terror sets in amongst the passengers, we realize that Nadja is hiding something far more horrifying. Played by a very physical Peri Baumeister, Nadja undergoes a transformation, revealing herself to be a vampire on the rampage. Having taken a drug earlier to suppress her bloodlust and pallid, batlike appearance, the sudden violence on the plane brings out the worst in her. Literally. Almost immediately, she's draining corpses of their fluids, and the terrorists realize that they picked the wrong plane to hijack.

Blood Red Sky belongs to the genre-mixing, bizarro family of From Dusk till Dawn, Snakes on a Plane, Cowboys vs. Aliens, or Train to Busan. Mash up two unlikely character types and see what happens, just for fun; throw in some schlocky gore and a few loud guffaws, and you've got a really fun time at the movies. Given the last decade or so, we've gotten to like antihero stories, and so watching a woman rip a bunch of white male terrorists up should be an exciting new prospect. It helps that she's a mother -- and a good one -- although her relationship with Elias takes far too much time to establish and develop. Is it necessary, to build what little we know of her character? Of course, but this sentimentality should support the ridiculous story rather than fight it for thematic dominance.

Then again, the chemistry between Baumeister and the little boy who plays Elias is one of the only things the movie gets totally right. Instead of making her vampiric revelation a fabulous midway centerpiece of the film, writer-director Peter Thorwarth makes it a fairly bland part of the expository setup. It would have been so fun to watch the terrorists make bloody discoveries and to learn with them, in horror, that the person killing their mercenaries isn't a hidden Harrison Ford or Jodie Foster, but rather a sharp-fanged, pointy-eared creature that looks like Stephen King's nightmares a la 'Salem's Lot.

Even with the hijacking, the movie takes a long time to pick up its own pace. Once Nadja goes full monster mode, complete with flashbacks to her initial infection and transformation, Thorwarth finds his intended pacing in close-quarters action. Unfortunately, the action is often fairly obvious; uninspired, these scenes take place in flourescent-lit cabins and holding decks. Movies cramped in claustrophobic spaces work best when individual scenes are in easily-differentiated locations, adding a sense of movement and momentum to the shots, even if the plot isn't advancing much. This movie can't quite escape what feels like visual doldrums, locking us into a bloodbath in which I cannot remember the sequence of events because of the lack of visual cues or development of unique sequences. It also doesn't help that the movie is longer than two hours. 

And speaking of time, the filmmakers almost completely sideline the easiest, most compelling part of pushing this plot! The simple fact that, due to the terrorists' rerouting of the plane, the sun might shine through at some point and destroy the only hope these passengers have. Beyond that, the film introduces ideas such as anti-Muslim fears, motherly sacrifice, and even the nature of the vampire in question, and only barely follows through on any of these interesting ideas, choosing instead to focus on the repetitive bloody action. I guess it was a fine enough distraction for a quiet night at home, but I certainly have no interest in taking this flight again.