Blood Vessel Review: An Entertaining Historical Action Film

Release date: October 8, 2020
Running time: 95 minutes
Starring Nathan Phillips (Wolf Creek), Alyssa Sutherland (Vikings), Robert Taylor (Longmire)
Directed by Justin Dix (Crawlspace)

A SHUDDER EXCLUSIVE. Somewhere in the North Atlantic, late 1945, a life raft adrift at sea, and in it, the survivors of a torpedoed hospital ship. With no food, water, or shelter, all seems lost until a seemingly abandoned German minesweeper drifts ominously towards them, giving them one last chance at survival—if they can survive the bloodthirsty monsters on board. 

Blood Vessel is an interesting World War II history-type film.  It is in a similar vein as Overlord, an isolated story during the war involving the occult that could have taken place without really turning the tide.  For some reason it seems like Nazis and the occult just go together well and make for entertaining films, and Blood Vessel is no exception.  The film puts an unlikely group of survivors right in the heart of a Nazi occult experience, with the predictable outcome you might expect.  The group itself is a fun one, with a lot of diversity between the characters.  The entire group is a ragtag compilation of American, British, Russian, and other soldiers all forced together on a life boat.  It makes for some entertaining interactions between them as their inherent distrust and culture clashes make for interesting mini conflicts in the overall story.

And the story itself provides a decent amount of mystery at first, although the outcome is telegraphed pretty early on.  Still, the exploration of this ship is entertaining to watch, as is trying to figure out what happened to this seeming ghost ship.  And there are generally good effects for this film with limited use of noticeable CGI.  However, the film's bloodthirsty monsters leave something to be desired.  They take on a different form than I think most people expected, and look a little ridiculous doing so.  They also do not seem to be as dangerous as I expected given that in the story, they took out an entire boat of trained soldiers.  It leaves something to be desired in the end, but overall the journey is a fun, light historical fiction.

Blood Vessel is a fun World War II occult film, with a good cast of characters, effects, and a solid mystery to drink in.

Rent it.

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Blood Vessel is available to stream on Shudder starting November 5, 2020.