If you've watched films like Quarantine 2: The Terminal, Unhinged, Train to Busan, The Descent and Snakes on a Plane then I definitely recommend Blood Red Sky.
Blood Red Sky (2021)
Nadja and her son, Elias, are going to New York to meet a doctor who can cure Nadja of her disease. Unfortunately, the flight ended up as a bloodbath as she was forced to reveal her biggest secret to protect her son.
Movie Summary
In the first six minutes of the movie, Transatlantic 473 is being assisted by RAF (Royal Air Force) in their landing. Colonel Alan Drummonds and his team are handling a possible terrorist hostage-taking situation but with very little information, it would be too early to storm in the plane. They are aware that the pilot and co-pilot are dead, which leads them to suspect the current pilot as a terrorist. Later find a kid hopping off the plane and attempts to recover information from him but to their dismay, the kid refuses to talk.
Which now leads us to where it all began. Elias was the first to arrive with their baggage where he meets Farid who helped him with the baggage and is also a passenger of the plane. Nadja, When Nadja, Elias’ mom arrived, she had to go to the bathroom real quick to take her medication. For what it’s for, we don’t know just yet. Now that they’ve boarded the plane, everyone is settling down. No one said this was going to be a peaceful flight because just as everyone is taking a good night’s rest, it was revealed that there are hijackers within the plane. Eliminating all US Marshalls and the Pilot to completely take over the plane. They take Islamists to force them to read a letter. Farid reads it in Arabic and assumes that the terrorists couldn’t understand him, added an impromptu call for help which led to the death of one of the passengers as Berg, the leader of the hijacking group, can speak and understand Arabic.
Meanwhile, Elias tells his mother that there is a place they can hide in to escape the hijackers. Nadja rejects the plan but when Elias jumps off his seat and ran while the hijackers were busy, Nadja had no choice but to run after him resulting for Eightball to shoot her and take Elias back to his seat. Oh no, the protagonist died! Not quite. We later get flashbacks as to why she is taking medications in the first place. Many years back when Elias was still an infant, she and her husband Nikolai were stranded in the middle of nowhere when their car broke down. Nikolai went to look for help and never came back. Nadja searches for him and found blood in in the farmhouse. She followed it all the way down to the basement where she was chased by a human-like creature with fangs and mutated eyes. While fighting it off, she was bit in the hand. Nadja is alive! Weakened by the gunshot wound, she reaches the cargo hold where she manages to kill one of the hijackers and recover her strength. We see that she’s been hiding her fangs and mutated eyes all along.
She goes back to protect her son Elias just as the hijackers are about to jump off the plane. She takes one of the passengers with her to drive the plane back to their original course but unfortunately for them, the hijackers realize something was wrong. Eightball especially. They hid in the cockpit but the hijackers threatens to kill the passengers one by one until she opens the door. Nadja had no choice and was forced to reveal her biggest secret. She effortlessly killed Berg, the leader of the hijackers and frightens the hijackers to the point of retreat. Eightball does a quick research through her bag and finds out she’s a vampire and to fight off a vampire, you use the oldest trick in the book; sunlight.
Fast-tracking to the battleground, Eightball takes her blood and injects it to himself to turn himself into a vampire. He spreads this infection with his fellow hijackers until eventually, even the passengers.
In the final showdown between Nadja and Eightball, Nadja protects her son from being bit by Eightball but was overpowered by him. Elias uses himself as bait and when Eightball was near the door, he detonates the bomb and Eightball falls and was burned by the rising sun. Now, the most dramatic moment of the movie. Elias offers his blood to revive Nadja but she pushes him away, shaking her head and keeps a distance between them.
Going back to the present, Elias now tells them that there are vampires and that they have to get Farid out of there before night falls. Unfortunately, like every normal police reaction, they don’t listen. Which is why most of our protagonists in every movie out there, takes matter into their own hands and leaves the cops out of it.
Colonel Drummonds was willing to wait until nightfall to force Farid of a confession. Evening came and Colonel Drummonds sends his team in the plane and Farid was taken to be arrested. Elias on the other hand jumps out of a moving ambulance and calls out to save Farid as he ran back to the plane landing site. There he witnesses that as the soldiers were attacked and overwhelmed by the blood-sucking creatures Elias and Farid warned them about, out of the windows Nadja had killed one of the soldiers and snarls at him. Elias was hurt and Nadja ran to kill him next. Elias then reaches for the detonator hidden in his stuffed toy, thinking of no other alternative to prevent the spread of infection but to incinerate everyone including his own mother.
Finally getting to his senses, Colonel Drummonds orders Farid to be released and Farid runs to Elias’ side and the boy embraces him as the camera zooms out in view of the wreckage and debris from the explosion.
Movie Q&A
Now a short question and answer portion.
Why did Nadja let Elias go to the airport first by himself?
Prior to the vampire introduction, we were only given hints that Nadja is not allowed to be in contact with the sun. Elias’ arrival to the airport shows that the sun was still up and everything in the hotel room where Nadja was in was closed off and dark. After the phone call, we see Elias saying he’ll see his mother soon and then a shot of him looking at the setting sun. Nadja later arrives when the moon was up.
Why did the hijackers hijack the plane?
Hinted in the first scene of the flashback, while Nadja was in the bathroom she left the TV playing and there the reporter tells us that there was an eight percent surge in the markets in the airline in just one week. And later in the film, there is one guy who is invested in the stock market. When the passengers are trying to figure out why they were hijacked in the first place, he explains that the stock market is overheated and if the hijackers repeats a 9/11 scenario, then the prices will tank.
There are other assumptions but this is the closest one as there are no election-related hints in the movie.
What was the convention that Farid was going to?
Farid and the Arabic student who volunteered to pilot the plane claimed to be going to a convention in New York but later Colonel Drummonds says that there was no convention. Farid then stated that it was all part of the trap that the hijackers had set up.
Tell us more about the vampire lore.
The vampiric lore in this film is a little different from the ones we’ve seen in Twilight and Blade. In the film, the vampires do not have a dramatic shift after being bit. They don’t turn pale or cold or have beautiful eyes. The infection happens fast and you can lose control if you drink too much blood. There are only 3 vampires in the movie who did not end up a mindless vampire; Nadja, the man in the farmhouse and Eightball. As to why it’s possible, there is no direct explanation. As Berg would say “Use your imaginations”.
The shifting happens fast yet why didn’t Nadja eat Elias when he was an infant?
Just like Eightball who had shifted yet he was still himself, we can assume that Nadja had a similar experience. We received a cliffhanging flashback that after the bite we skip to a certain period of time where she is struggling to manage her life and raise Elias.
How did Nadja lose her self-control?
Theory 1:
At the beginning of the movie, we see that Nadja is taking medications to kick back the vampiric infection that makes her crave blood. Nadja got these medication from the farmhouse where she was bit. When she drank Jurij's blood, she healed and recovered from being shot. Her fangs were growing again and she no longer hid her supernatural eyes. And Elias asked her if she drank blood when he saw her eyes. Elias is well aware of her condition the entire time and he is concerned for her well-being. The second time she drank blood was when she killed Berg and she still has medications to keep herself in control.
She also continuously drank blood or bit and killed someone throughout the film, which could have been the cause of the crave for more blood to overwhelm her senses.
Theory 2:
On the other hand, on her final battle with Eightball, she lost and Eightball drank on her blood to the point that she couldn't get up anymore. She was weakened by this, which is why Elias had her drink his blood.
Talking about "bites" and "infection", IF it is possible to infect someone and pass on your inner desires when you bite someone? Just like how when Eightball bit the former US marine and the doctor, they did not have a mind of their own and just became mindless vampires in general. But then again, when Nadja was bit the first time by a mindless vampire, she did not end up like them.
Movie Ending
The final moments of the movie is when the flashback had ended and Elias now tells the police that there are vampires in the plane. The action kickstarted again when evening came. Farid knew he was going to be arrested so he got up in a hurry to detonate the bomb and destroy the plane along with the vampire infestation inside. He was not fast enough and he was cuffed and taken away as he yells at them about the lurking monsters. Meanwhile, Elias escapes the ambulance and runs back to the plane landing site to save Farid. The bloodbath had begun and soldiers were dying every second. Among the mindless vampires was Nadja. When Elias saw her in the state of no return, it was Elias' go signal to detonate the bomb himself.
Everything happened really fast. The soldiers, Farid and Elias' scenes were building the hype up to its final scene.
Why did Elias blow up the plane?
After seeing his mother drinking on the blood of one of the soldiers, she became the very creature that they have been preventing to spread the entire time. One of the original vampires that Nadja met claimed that they are cursed creatures and we see at some point in the movie that Nadja is pondering on this when she was desperate to kill Eightball before he injects himself with her blood.
Elias might know that there is no going back for Nadja and it would be a risk to let her alive along with the number of infected-passengers on the plane. So as much as it pained him to see her this way, it was even more painful to press the button to kill her and save humanity.
Is Col. Drummonds going to arrest them still?
In the beginning of the movie, we see that Col. Drummonds was suspecting Farid as a terrorist because his purpose of going to New York was not true. Well, after the final battle, he ordered his men to release Farid so he could embrace Elias after what happened.
After all that he's seen, it is impossible that Col. Drummonds is unconvinced that what they are saying is true. Therefore, he won't arrest them anymore.
What will happen to Elias?
Nadja made Farid promise to take care of Elias at some point in the movie. Farid is a kind and loving man who looked after Elias as his own from beginning to end, so we can assume that Farid is going to raise Elias from there on.
Movie Comparison
See the post in this blog.
Thanks for reading.
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