Written, produced and directed by Justin Dix, Blood Vessel is an Australian film that tells the story of survivors from a torpedoed ship during World War II. Their life raft comes across an abandoned ship and the crew begin to explore the ship, soon finding out that they are not alone. On a ship that was supposed to help them onward to their freedom instead could lead to their demise, as there are shapeshifters onboard that are looking to kill the survivors.
The crew are then stranded on a ship in the middle of the ocean where they try to avoid being killed by the deadly shapeshifters, but as the crew struggle to get along, they may have more to worry about than just trying to survive the shapeshifters alone.
While the film has an interesting premise, I do not think that it was executed very well. The characters in the film are from America, England, Australia and Germany and every countries stereotype is used in a way that comes across as a parody, and if that is intentional, then it doesn’t come across as very funny at all. Also, the characters aren’t very likeable, as they spend the majority of the film bickering with each other to the point where you don’t really know much about them individually nor care whether they survive or not. This is pretty disappointing considering that if I was convinced to care about the characters and related to them, I believe I would have enjoyed this movie more.
It isn’t all bad though. I will say that for a low budget film, the shapeshifters did look really good and the attention to detail with the ship and the character costumes were very believable to have come from World War II. I did also enjoy some of the acting performances as well. I felt that Nathan Phillips was convincing as Nathan Sinclair, one of the crew members that is hell bent on survival. I also enjoyed Alyssa Sutherland as Jane Prescott, who wants the war to be over so that she can be at home with her family.
Blood Vessel uses familiar horror and thriller cinematic tropes but rather than them being used at their best, they fall flat, which is unfortunate as this film had a lot of potential.
Blood Vessel is available now on DVD and Video on Demand.