The vampires within are primal monsters with one instinctual drive to rip out jugulars and feed. There’s nothing romanticized about the bloodsuckers in this story. The vampire lore and design here are stellar. A feral Nadja isn’t the only problem the hijackers encounter, and all of it causes a ripple effect of catastrophe. The filmmaker finds clever ways to maximize the limited space of the plane, utilizing just about every corner of it as each scenario adds a new obstacle to the mix. Nadja’s drive to keep Elias alive provides the stakes, and Thorwarth keeps applying pressure throughout. More profoundly, it adds a melancholic underpinning Nadja slowly giving in to her inner monster by necessity doubles as a metaphor for a young child watching his mother succumb to a ruthless disease that renders her unrecognizable. Elias’s unwavering love of mom adds a heartfelt, humanizing component. Nadja may be a desperate mom that fiercely loves her son, but Koch imbues Elias with a precocious maturity. This unique mother-son bond is compounded tenfold by Koch’s remarkable performance. Though at a two-hour runtime, some stretches sag in energy. Nadja’s struggle to keep the evil within her at bay for the safety of Elias provides the backbone of the story, one that adds a surprising level of depth as the action and horror escalates at a steady clip. It’s clear from the outset that she’s a vampire desperately searching for a cure, but her backstory and answers of how she ended up a bloodthirsty monster raising a charming, human son come in flashbacks over time. When a particularly sadistic terrorist causes harm, it triggers Nadja’s inner monster, unleashing a perilous new fight for survival for everyone on board.ĭirector Peter Thorwarth, who co-wrote the script with Stefan Holtz, takes care in doling out Nadja’s story. Nadja’s determined to protect her son at any cost. Violent terrorists hijack the flight straightaway, putting their lives at risk. She’s very ill and hopes the doctor in New York can cure her illness with an experimental transfusion. Nadja ( Peri Baumeister) and her ten-year-old son, Elias ( Carl Anton Koch), board a flight from Germany to New York.

A beating heart of familial love pumps through the veins of this intense horror-thriller with a vicious take on vampire lore. It’s the type of plot that screams action-horror spectacle, yet this high-altitude thriller defies expectations from the start. Terrorists attempting to hijack a transatlantic overnight flight find resistance in the form of a vampire. Blood Red Sky sets up expectations of an intense thriller with horror gimmickry thrown in for good measure between its title and the logline.

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