''Blood Vessel'' is a 2019 horror film that was filmed in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
, Australia. The film was directed by
Justin Dix
Justin may refer to: People
* Justin (name), including a list of persons with the given name Justin
* Justin (historian), a Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire
* Justin I (c. 450–527), or ''Flavius Iustinius Augustus'', Eastern Ro ...
and written by Dix and
Jordan Prosser
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan River ...
. It stars
Alyssa Sutherland
Alyssa Sutherland (born 23 September 1982) is an Australian actress and model best known for her role as Queen Aslaug in the History Channel television series ''Vikings'' (2013–2016).
Early life
Sutherland was born in Brisbane. Sutherland at ...
,
Robert Taylor,
Nathan Phillips, Christopher Kirby, John Lloyd Fillingham, and Alex Cooke. The film premiered as a closing night film at 2019
FilmQuest in
Provo, Utah
Provo ( ) is the fourth-largest city in Utah, United States. It is south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front. Provo is the largest city and county seat of Utah County and is home to Brigham Young University (BYU).
Provo lies between the ...
, where it was nominated for eleven awards, winning for Best Art Department, Best Costume, and Best Supporting Actress for Sutherland. The film was released on 21 July 2020 via
video-on-demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
service
Shudder
Shudder may refer to:
*Shivering
* ''Shudder'' (album), a 2008 album by American band Bayside
*Shudder (streaming service)
Shudder is an American over-the-top subscription video on demand service featuring horror, thriller and supernatural fic ...
.
Plot
In late 1945, near the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, a life raft is adrift in the North Atlantic, carrying the survivors of a hospital ship that was hit by a German torpedo and sunk. The survivors - American cook Bigelow, American mechanic Jackson, British nurse Jane Prescott, British codebreaker Gerard Faraday, Australian soldier Sinclair, Russian sniper Alexander Teplov, and Malone, the American captain of the hospital ship - have been adrift for days and have run out of food when suddenly a
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
minesweeper
A minesweeper is a small warship designed to remove or detonate naval mines. Using various mechanisms intended to counter the threat posed by naval mines, minesweepers keep waterways clear for safe shipping.
History
The earliest known usage of ...
drifts by. Teplov uses the last bullet in Malone's rifle to shoot one of the ship's cables and the survivors use it to climb up onto the ship's deck, but while Malone is trying to board, the ladder snaps and he falls into the water and is killed by the ship's propellers. The remaining survivors investigate the seemingly-abandoned ship, with Sinclair, Teplov, and Bigelow going to the bridge and finding that the steering wheel has been chained in place. They also find the body of one of the German crew, decapitated and with huge veins extending out of his neck and sticking to the wall. Below-deck, Jackson checks out the engine and finds bodies that seem to have been burned to death, and also discovers that the boiler has failed and the ship could explode at any time if the engine keeps running, so he shuts off the engine, leaving the ship dead in the water.
The survivors regroup in the
galley
A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by oars. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft, and low freeboard (clearance between sea and gunwale). Virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used ...
and discover a young girl hiding there. The girl is frightened and reflexively bites Jane when Jane attempts to reach out to her, but Jane calms her down and comforts her. When the girl finally speaks, Teplov identifies her language as
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
despite not being able to fully understand it, and the girl introduces herself as Mya. Mya leads the survivors to a heavy locked door further below-deck and the group hears a man speaking German on the other side. They cautiously open the door and find a surviving German crew member wielding a
Luger, who becomes terrified at the sight of Mya. He fires at Mya multiple times, wounding Teplov's leg and hitting Jackson in the head, killing him; Teplov kills the German survivor with a knife. Bigelow and Sinclair investigate the room that the German survivor was holed up in and find multiple large wooden boxes, a box of
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
, and a box filled with
crucifixes
A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...
and transparent glass containers shaped like grenades that are filled with
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a ...
. Jane, Teplov, and Mya return to the galley where Jane treats Teplov's bullet wound; Faraday sneaks off on his own and attempts to reach someone on the ship's
shortwave radio
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 me ...
; and Sinclair and Bigelow look through the quarters of the ship's dead captain, finding a wealth of photographs and documents showing Nazi soldiers unearthing ancient artifacts, including what appear to be multiple
sarcophagi
A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a cadaver, corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from ...
. They also find a thick tome showing images of monstrous creatures. Bigelow decides to go back to the storage room to take some of the gold for himself, and also opens up one of the large wooden boxes, which contains one of the sarcophagi from the photographs. He breaks the chains holding it shut and opens it, hoping to find more treasure, but instead finds a slumbering
creature with a bat-like face. The creature suddenly awakens and kills Bigelow; Sinclair encounters the creature as it attacks Bigelow but manages to lock the storage room door, trapping it inside. The creature's awakening triggers a transformation in Mya, who is revealed to be of the same species; she suddenly attacks Jane, but Teplov shoots her, scaring her off.
Sinclair reunites with Teplov and Jane and informs them of the monster in the storage room; meanwhile, Faraday makes contact with a German over the radio and offers up classified British information in exchange for rescue, but is attacked by Mya. Sinclair, Teplov, and Jane look over the documents and film in the captain's cabin, and when Teplov looks at the tome, he recognizes the monsters depicted inside as
Strigoi
Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. They are attributed with the abilities to transform into an animal, become invisible, and to gain vitality from the blood of their victims. Bram Stoke ...
, fairytale creatures that are said to feed on the blood of their victims and have the power to shape-shift and command the minds of others. In the storage room, the male strigoi opens the second sarcophagus and bites into his own hand, spilling blood into the open mouth of the female strigoi sleeping within, awakening her. Sinclair, Teplov, and Jane resolve to find Faraday and then kill the strigoi using the holy armaments in the storage room. They find Faraday, but he has been bitten by Mya, which allows the Patriarch of the strigoi to psychically control him. Speaking through Faraday, the Patriarch taunts and then attacks the remaining survivors, but Jane kills Faraday by stabbing him. The survivors then go searching for Mya. Jane finds her and lures her to the upper deck where Sinclair and Teplov trap her in a small room that they have doused in gasoline. Teplov then drops a lighter through a hole in the wall, igniting the gasoline and burning Mya to death. As she burns, the Patriarch initiates a psychic connection with Jane through the small bite she received when they first discovered Mya, which has slowly been growing worse. Jane slips away from Sinclair and Teplov and goes below-deck, freeing the pair of strigoi; the Patriarch then bites her neck.
Teplov goes back to the storage room to arm himself with the holy weapons stored there, but is ambushed by the Patriarch and bitten in the neck. He manages to escape by wounding the Patriarch with one of the holy water grenades and a flare gun recovered from the captain's cabin. Meanwhile, Sinclair, while searching for Jane, encounters his estranged wife on the upper deck. He breaks down upon seeing her, but Teplov finds them and sees that it is actually the Matriarch using her powers on Sinclair. Teplov breaks the illusion by firing the flare gun into the air, getting Sinclair's attention at the last second and saving his life. Teplov then wounds the Matriarch with the heavy mounted machine gun on the ship's highest deck and Sinclair finishes her off by decapitating her with an axe. The pair hear a distant ship approaching, alerted by the flare gun, so they agree to find Jane and then destroy the Nazi ship by detonating a warhead in the munitions storage in order to kill the Patriarch. They go to the munitions room and find it full of infected German crew, but they fight through the strigoi and kill them all. Teplov then reveals his neck wound from the Patriarch and decides to stay behind to detonate the warhead himself, ordering Sinclair to escape with Jane. Sinclair goes back to the upper deck and finds Jane, who appears disoriented and tells Sinclair to leave her behind, but he ignores her pleading. Teplov attempts to detonate the warhead by bludgeoning it with an axe and is stopped at the last second by the arrival of the Patriarch, who freezes Teplov's body with a psychic attack, but Teplov frees himself from control by pressing a crucifix into his neck wound, severing the psychic connection between him and the Patriarch. He slams his axe into the warhead, detonating it and causing a chain of explosions across the ship as Sinclair and Jane jump overboard. Sinclair dives underwater to rescue Jane, and begins yelling and waving at the approaching British ship, but when Jane regains consciousness, she is revealed to have been infected by the Patriarch, and bites Sinclair's neck, killing him and then letting him sink into the ocean. Jane is rescued by the British sailors.
References
External links
*
*
2019 horror films
2019 films
Films shot in Melbourne
Films set in 1945
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