Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Justin Dix
Starring: Nathan Phillips, Alyssa Sutherland, Robert Taylor, Alex Cooke, Mark
Diaco
Since as far back as 1922, when Max Schreck's Count Orlok took a trip on a
schooner bound for England in FW Murnau's Nosferatu, horror cinema has seen the crew and passengers of numerous seafaring
vessels menaced by supernatural monsters. Another popular horror trope is
that of Nazis involved in sinister dealings with the paranormal, popularised
by Raiders of the Lost Ark and seen as recently as 2018's
Overlord. With his second feature, Blood Vessel, Australian director Justin Dix mashes both these sub-genres into a
pulpy tale of monsters running riot on a Nazi ship.
It's the closing weeks of WWII and sore losers, the Nazis are enacting a
policy of torpedoing any allied ship they come across, regardless of whether
it's a naval or merchant vessel. Survivors of one such dastardly attack are
huddled together in a dinghy somewhere in the North Atlantic when they come
across a Nazi minesweeper. Deciding to take their chances with Gerry rather
than die in the water, they attempt to hail the boat, but can't seem to
attract anyone's attention. Eventually they manage to climb aboard, only to
find an absence of living souls on board.
What they do find is something resembling the Norwegian outpost of John
Carpenter's The Thing, with the charred bodies of the ship's crew freshly stinking of gasoline,
some of them strangely contorted and with their veins detached from their
flesh, as though trying to escape their bodies. Eventually they come across
Newt...err, sorry, Mya (Ruby Isobel Hall), a feral child who speaks
Romanian and likes to take bites out of adults. Below decks they find more
oddities in a collection of gold bars and plundered artworks, along with
what looks an awful lot like a coffin...
If you're looking for a nuanced collection of characters,
Blood Vessel isn't the movie for you. Instead, Dix leans into
the Boys Own nature of his movie, with a group of protagonists as
stereotypical as those you'll find in any back issue of Commando, Battle or
Warlord. The multi-national group consists of Sinclair (Nathan Phillips), a gruff but level-headed Aussie; bickering American cooks Jackson (Christopher Kirby) and Bigelow (Mark Diaco); tough as nails Russian Teplov (Alex Cooke); snivelling British coward (you can tell this is an Australian movie,
can't you?) Faraday (John Lloyd Fillingham); and token woman Prescott
(Alyssa Sutherland, who I believe is meant to be British but who
struggles to disguise her Aussie accent).
Much of the fun comes from how Dix, co-writer Jordan Prosser and the
ensemble cast play around with these caricatures. National stereotypes are
embraced to the nth degree, particularly in the case of Russki Teplov, with
his constant refrain of "I've been through worse" every time he suffers some
fresh indignity. There's much bickering among the bunch, most of whom hold
prejudices towards the other nationalities. "Convict" is how Faraday
dismisses the Aussie Sinclair. "Wanker" is the terse response.
There's a similar lack of subtlety when the monsters eventually show up.
After teasing us for over half the movie's running time, Dix finally breaks
out a good old-fashioned man in a rubber mask and we're fully into b-movie
territory. It's a sign of how po-faced much of the horror genre has become
in recent years that we greet Blood Vessel's big baddy's appearance with such surprise. There's a risk of having a
modern smart-ass audience laugh off the rubbery effects, but Dix has
cleverly established his film's grindhouse tone by that point, so when we
eventually learn that there's an ancient creature below decks we simply
think "well, of course there is."
What prevents Blood Vessel from succeeding on the level of a
modern monster movie like Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers for
example, is how uncomfortable former FX technician Dix seems to be with
visual storytelling. There's an awful lot of exposition, most of it coming
from Teplov, who as a Slav is designated the expert in all things
supernatural here. The movie is lacking in tension and suspense, largely
because Dix fails to establish the geography of his confined location,
meaning we rarely know where our heroes are in relation to any possible
threat.
Blood Vessel boasts enough elements to satisfy more forgiving
horror fans, particularly those of us willing to accept some old school
silliness. It is however possible for a horror movie to be both silly and
scary, so it's a shame Blood Vessel never quite does enough to
send any shivers down our spine.
