BLOOD VESSEL: Schlocky Fun on the High Seas

Blood Vessel takes the classic Dracula’s castle trope and transfers it to an empty Nazi ship adrift on the Atlantic. The ship is found by a group of castaways from a bombed medical ship. They’re injured, malnourished, and a mix of nationalities and accents. They’re the perfect cannon fodder for this kind of movie.

And by that, I mean a bit of old school horror in the vein of The Haunting of Hill House (but on a ship) or Ghost Ship (but with vampires). This movie isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, create something postmodern, or change horror forever. It’s here to give you a few good scares, some laughs, and be a great Friday night movie with pizza, beers, and the lights turned low, and in that it mostly succeeds.

Haunted House

The best parts of Blood Vessel are within the first hour. The team boards the empty ship and stumble around in the dark looking for clues as to where the crew is and why they keep finding dead bodies. The main group is made up of two Americans, an Australian, a Russian, and two Brits. Naturally, one of the Americans is a fast-talking cook from Brooklyn, one of the Brits is a ratty, panicky Ian Holm-type, the Australian is dryly funny, and the Russian is hard as nails and steals every scene he’s in. As they split up to cover more ground or discuss their predicament, we get a little background on all of them, but it is only the three characters who survive the longest who get a sad backstory of how the war has affected them and the sacrifices they have made.

This hour is great haunted house stuff, enhanced by the discovery of a terrifying little girl played with creepy excellence by newcomer Ruby Isobel Hall. She is like Newt in Aliens but infinitely spookier and off-putting. As the movie builds to an inevitable pay-off it is a great character piece with some shocks and incredibly well-done atmosphere work. The ship feels dark and cramped, and the shadows all around the characters look as though they could be full of monster or Nazi soldiers just waiting to pounce.

Vessel Vampire

Your mileage may vary on the final half-hour of the movie as the monster is revealed. Wicked of Oz, the special effects studio behind the movie, do their usual stellar work with the daddy vampire who is more Nosferatu than Edward Cullen, but once he appears, the movie becomes a lot campier. Genuine atmospheric scares are replaced with lingering monster shots and conversations in gothic-font subtitles.

The supernatural elements that had existed in the background and the unanswered questions suddenly jump to the forefront and once the monster is revealed it is an impressive creation but it’s not that scary, and definitely not as scary as the unknown horrors we were imagining previously. Perhaps that is an unfair criticism though, as what director is ever going to create something scarier than our imagination? But the main issue at this point really boils down to tone.

Haunted Monster Comedy

The movie operates with three main tones: haunted house, creature feature, and comedy horror. Each tone is handled very well, but the issue is that they aren’t handled at the same time. So, the first hour is a haunted house movie in which characters move through the dark corridors of the ship, split up, find things on the other end of their flashlights, and wonder where everyone is. Then, once the monster is revealed, it becomes more ominous and monster-based, so then it’s a lot of reading from spooky books and vampiric mind control. Then the final ten minutes or so two of the characters become a bit of a double act working their way through a room of vampires after quipping with each other and having a grand old time.

The haunted house segments are the strongest and, while I enjoyed the appearance of the monstrous Nosferatu-looking vampire, it would be very easy to lose audiences who became invested in the Marie Celeste-style mystery of the empty ship and what it was hiding. As to the comedy horror, there are a lot of laughs in the movie but never some as blatant as they are in those final scenes. Up until then, the jokes have felt organic and in character, so it’s quite strange for the two survivors to suddenly become Riggs and Murtagh right before performing a death-defying act of intense violence.

Conclusion

Blood Vessel is a good piece of midnight horror show material. Watched with the right crowd, this movie would slay and perhaps not watching it as I did: on a screener in my office by myself due to COVID-19 is not the ideal conditions for such a movie.

There is a lot of talent on display here. The performances – barring a few shonky accents – are solid, the monster work is great, and the directing is confident. But at some point, the movie feels like it got away from the writers, and they began to make something else, something different from what they started with.

Overall, Blood Vessel isn’t going to change horror forever, but it is entertaining, especially the first hour. Get some popcorn and a few mates around (when the lockdown is over) and enjoy.

What did you think of Blood Vessel?  Do you have a favourite Australian horror movie? Let us know in the comments below!

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