Bloodline – review

Director: Rami Yasin

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

This Egyptian vampire film contains some conceits within it that do not bear too heavy a scrutiny, but it is a well shot exploration of how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. It questions the lengths a parent will go to for their child and sits firmly in the child vampire sub-genre. The poster and in-film credits name the film Bloodline rather than separating the words out as per IMDb and Netflix.

Nilli Karim as Lamia

It starts with the film concentrating on needle point as a woman’s voice, identified as belonging to Lamia (Nilli Karim), repeats eighteen months, three weeks, two days…. This is how long her son Malik (Pieter Ramy) has been in a coma. She pricks her finger, causing it to bleed a drop of blood, but continues with her needlepoint. A car pulls up to their home in the night and her husband Nader (Dhafer L'Abidine) arrives home.

the package

On arrival he suggests he has *it* with him and, after looking in on Malik, who is hooked to medical apparatus with a tube down his throat, goes for a shower and we see him crying. Out of the shower Lamia asks to see *it* and he opens a refrigerated case that holds a vial of blood. He offers her the chance to change her mind and then says he will administer it in the morning – which is, he suggests, how it must be.

eating the cat

He awakens as the day begins to break and goes to Malik. He removes the tube and presses a button to cause metal shutters to close. Lamia awakens and goes to ask Nader what he did and he admits he has given Malik the blood – she is not happy he did it without her. Her other son, Adam (John Ramy), gets up and goes to school – it is suggested that he and Malik are twins. Soon she can hear a heartbeat in Malik’s chest and then he sits up and, whilst shaky, is soon walking. Nader makes her go find something for him to eat – she ends up with the neighbour’s cat.

fangs on show

From here we get a film where they are trying to cope and avoid suspicion from the neighbours (they are ignoring friends, preventing visits to read to Malik etc). Malik is not the son Lamia knew and he very soon turns Adam. It is also apparent to the viewer that Nader is a vampire also and that is quickly confirmed. The blood he brought in the case from Romania was fake – he had been turned and he fed Malik his own blood, hence not waking Lamia.

trying meat

The lore we get is that vampires can move super quick, are immensely strong, and must share their blood to turn someone. They burn in sunlight (so turning a child in order to save him, in Egypt seems to have been given minimal thought) and long exposure will kill them. They crave living blood (or warm blood). When Malik is given rabbit blood in a bowl, he dislikes it and then grabs a living rabbit and drains it. When Nader tries raw meat he can’t stomach it. That said we see a dinner with two eating from bowls and one drinking from the animal – presumably the blood in the bowls was just spilt. Nader tries to teach them to drink without killing, telling them to stop when the heartbeat speeds up.

Malik comatose

The issue I had was within some of the conceits. They knew they were trying to buy a vampire’s blood (no indication was made as to how they found this) but they did not prepare in advance, either through livestock to feed to him or in ensuring their social side had been taken care of. Burying the cat (and rabbits they buy) rather than just putting them in the trash (they do eat one rabbit) just screamed discovery. A neighbourhood dog barking at the house – they must have a cat, is mentioned – had little sense as the cat was dead and buried and used to hang around the neighbourhood anyway. There are many more little story foibles that do not add up.

twins

That said it was well shot and enjoyable enough, so long as you didn’t think too deeply on the foibles. Nilli Karim was engaging as mother and wife and though the kids seemed a little stiff in role, actually that worked with the sociopathic creatures they become. It is always good to see vampire films coming out of other countries and whilst they might have tied some more Arabic folklore in rather than taking the Western model, this was worth taking time out of the day for. Not the greatest vampire film but worth a quick watch. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.