Blood Vessel (2019 film)

Blood Vessel is a 2019 horror film that was filmed in Melbourne, Australia. The film was directed by Justin Dix and written by Dix and Jordan Prosser. It stars Alyssa Sutherland, 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, 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 service Shudder.

Plot
In late 1945, near the end of World War II, 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 minesweeper 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 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 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, and a box filled with crucifixes and transparent glass containers shaped like grenades that are filled with water. 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; 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. 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, 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.