What happens if you combine the second "Die Hard" and "The Hunger" by Tony Scott? And "Passenger 57" and "Blade"?
"Blood Red Sky"
German director Peter Thorwarth, co-authored with screenwriter Stefan Holtz, thought about this creative issue. Their "Blood Red Sky" is an interesting concept that brought together two genres that have always moved in parallel: an old-school thriller about hostage taking and a vampire horror. Such a meltdown becomes an unspoken trend -- especially after the success of the Western, where cannibals operate ("Bone Tomahawk"), and zombie horror, stylized as a robbery film ("Army of the Dead").
The German tape collects all its ambitions into a fist and turns the cute Peri Baumeister into such a John McKlein, who has vampire rage instead of savory and weapons, comparable to berserk fury.
Peri Baumeister as Nadja in the frame from the film "Blood Red Sky"
What is noteworthy, even if the vampires managed to get bored for more than 100 years of cinema, but the image of an angry Nadja - sharp ears, a bald head and an animal grin - seems infrequently original and impressive. It was not without the influence of cinematic referrals: the mother caring for her son is a visual tribute to Graf Orlok from Nosferatu by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.
And one delight to watch the heroine release her demons, causing a slaughter on board: textbook terrorists led by the formidable Dominic Purcell do not even understand what they are dealing with when they try to kill her.
The frame from the film "Blood Red Sky"
Peter Thorwarth lines the film not only as a tense and airtight thriller, where bloody confusion occurs in the Boeing space, but also lays it in the form of an urgent statement. Here is mass hysteria against the backdrop of a possible recurrence of September 11, and stock market manipulation, and Islamophobia, coupled with the fear of a global pandemic -- vampirism eventually turns into a deadly virus, and passengers into its carriers, interacting with each other in tight passages and cargo compartments.
Flashbacks are periodically knocked down by steel grip and confident rhythm (the mystery of Nadja's vampire curse is explained in deviations from the main action), setting the film a more complex dramatic structure.
Thorwarth's brainchild claims a smitten drama about maternal feelings and unconditional love, where Nadja's vampire is by no means a one-dimensional monster character, but a complex personality who not only deals with hijackers, but also tries to curb her own craving for blood.
But all kinds of narrative stretches, including drawn-out introductions to character biographies, are needed by the film rather for pro forma (or not at all). In the dry remnant, "Blood red sky" turns out to be a self-neglected category B crafts, an ideal midnight horror that has no need to be embarrassed by its teeth and predatory mood.
Peri Baumeister as Nadja in the frame from the film "Blood Red Sky"
Peter Thorwarth floods the screen with blood, fully aware of the report: graphic violence is the best part in its deadly genre exit, which takes on the task of becoming the new "Busanhaeng".
Therefore, by the second hour, having passed through a ton of extra episodes and generally famously balancing somewhere between high drama and thrash, the tape ceases to be shy and gives the will of fantasy: vampires on the fuselage of the aircraft, antagonists turned into ghouls, as well as the final action with an assault on the military.
"Blood red sky" knows the formula of night guilty pleasure for everyone who missed "30 Days of Night" and sharp genre sensations.
In the end, as Thorwarth shows, almost every insane and "meat" plot has an exciting story of pure and unconditional love - this fact, of course, cannot be avoided, even if flesh breaks on the screen and ghouls lick.