On Amazon Prime as a longer run-time short film (some 50 minutes), this is listed part 1 on the actual titles and IMDb suggests a series, of which this is the only episode currently released. It was directed by Jaime Gonzalez, released in 2025, and is rather ambitious with some strange, and I assume deliberate, anachronisms.
After intertitles that give a potted history of the Angelic fall, Nephilim and vampires we move to a cyberpunk scenario in a world not quite ours, in a city called Neo-Babylon, at the tail-end of a corporate war. A vampire, Gabriel (Jake Wade) feeds on a woman (Vanessa Lauren Freeman). We hear the nearby car’s AI declare that she is losing blood and death is imminent. In the car is a baby. The woman deploys a blade implant from her arm, but the vampire prevents any attack and she dies.
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| the victim |
Filled with bloodlust he heads to the car ready to devour the baby. However the baby wears an icon (a cross with a dragon below – being the order of the dragon) and it causes Gabriel pain, which curtails his bloodlust. He puts, what looks like, a 5.25" floppy disc into the car’s IT – this is part of the anachronism I mention, like a cassette player later – and takes over the AI, forcing a change in owner to be detected. Michael Rákóczi, however, is the baby and too young to drive. Gabriel puts the woman in the drivers seat and the car is programmed to go to an orphanage in auto-pilot mode. He contacts base to say that the target has been eliminated and is told that *she* wants to speak to him – she being Elizabeth Bathory (Claire Bermingham). He ignores this and walks away.
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| Sia Kravchenko as Nadia |
Thirty years on and Michael Rákóczi (Aaron Groben, Nightcomer) is grown and a cop working for a corporation, PNCR. Elsewhere, Bathory turns a woman, Nadia (Sia Kravchenko), but the new vampire must kill for her turning to be complete. Michael is still eager to know about the dead woman in the car, when he appeared at the orphanage. He seeks out fellow Orphan and data broker Valeria (Victoria Myssik) in, what appears to be, that world’s equivalent to the dark-web. However simply bringing up the subject of his search triggers Bathory’s corporate alarms. Luckily, and unbeknown to him, Michael has a guardian angel in the form of Gabriel…
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| cityscapes |
The look of this world was superb – though not perfectly executed, due mostly to working at budget. The filmmakers drew something alien in its post-modernity. Cityscapes are dominated by giant advertising holograms. The world seems to be permanently dark but lit by a million neon points of light. The heavy filtering on the photography adds to the stylised look. It is a bold, brave production choice. There is so much to explore generated in this opening episode and I do hope we get to delve into this world further.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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