Red Days 2: Cecilia – review

Director: Brett William Mauser

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Back to the communist People’s Monarchy of California that we looked at when I reviewed Red Days. Cecilia was the missing daughter of that film’s primary protagonist and revealed, when she returned to her family home, to be a vampire. In this actress Xiomara Bermudez has been replaced by Nicole Mattox as the titular character.

The start of the film sees her in her father’s (Sergio Cantu) garage, body parts litter the floor and she is distraught. However, as an indistinct loudhailer is heard she retrieves, with some difficulty, a blade from a head and walks out to face armed cops. They shoot but, of course, the wounds heal (this was a, I think, deliberately glossed over in a SFX way and could have looked better) and she says, “my turn”.

Nicole Mattox as Cecilia

The film cuts to Day 1 and the nuclear explosion in California – one of the seven sisters, seven nuclear bombs in different states. In California the explosion led to the takeover by the Monarchy but also Z particles – an airborne zombie plague, held off by alcohol. We see (reshot with Mattox) Cecilia’s fate, where she walks the streets dazed and is eventually got by… something.

vampire captor

When she wakes, she is chained, near bodies, and has both puncture wounds on her neck and amnesia. She has been taken by two vampires, one of whom is somewhat dismayed that the other didn’t drain her. This is something they need to do before the vampire virus takes hold. In quick succession she is threatened by a vampire, who is got himself by invading zombies. Cecilia plays dead but a zombie grabs her arm, ready to munch on it, when cops come in and kill them. They check Cecilia (and it is noted that the bite on her neck is not a zombie bite) but she plays possum and she has no pulse. When the cops are gone, she gets out of her irons by smearing zombie guts on her wrists.

invitation needed

The film follows her as she becomes used to what she is – for instance, her inability to enter homes that are occupied without an invite – there is an sfx for the barrier she comes across, her cross burning her, her need to feed on blood and the burning effects of the sun. She meets a Texas ranger (from the equally seceded Republic of Texas), Jim (Cliff Dean), who knows what she is, is able to incapacitate her and comes into the film again later. At her lowest ebb she is found trying (and failing) to commit suicide and is handed off to a representative of the Corporations.

the agents

She is put through her paces with other survivors, involving a test where they take on a zombie each. The other candidates turn against her when they realise she has does not appear on camera, however Cecilia is offered chance to use a serum that should remove her vampiric weaknesses. A similar super soldier serum is being offered to three other women, including Kim (Lisa Butala), but Cecilia’s serum is different as it is cut with Lycan DNA due to her vampirism. The serum is partially successful, she loses her need to drink blood, whether her strength and speed are enhanced is unclear, but all the other vampire weaknesses remain. Cecilia also has gone somewhat mad but is part of a four woman team of agents working for the Corporations…

fangs

The film concentrates less on the wider Monarchy of California and more narrowly at Cecilia and one specific conspiracy storyline and this works in its favour. However, the pacing might have gone wrong if it wasn’t for Nicole Mattox who plays both early, heartbroken and later madcap Cecilia brilliantly and with gusto – though I will say she is channelling her inner Harley Quinn in the latter half. One confusing thing was the suggestion at the end of the film that Cecilia would return in Knight Watchmen. Jim, when he returns, has become a Knight Watchman – a Texas PI and executioner combined. However, director Brett William Mauser had done a web-series entitled Knight Watchmen back in 2022, with Nicole Mattox playing Cecilia but without Cliff Dean. Whether the intertitle refers to that series or a new vehicle isn’t clear, at least as I write. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this, mostly down to Mattox’s performance in truth, and more than the first film. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.