Did you know that Henry Cavill, Michael Fassbender, and Dominic Purcell did a horror movie together?
It’s not every day that you get a horror flick about immortal Nazis who threaten to use ancient runestones to revive the Third Reich; but it did happen in Joel Schumacher‘s underrated 2009 B-horror picture Blood Creek. Starring the likes of Henry Cavill and Michael Fassbender before either was thrown into the world of live-action comic book characters, as well as Dominic Purcell at the height of Prison Break (Wentworth Miller even gets a cameo here), this film follows two brothers (Cavill and Purcell) as they return to a West Virginian farm that’s hiding a dark and terrible secret. That secret? A Nazi supervillain (Fassbender) who is attempting to rule the world, starting first with this small corner of Appalachia.
What Is ‘Blood Creek’ About?
Okay, so there aren’t technically any traditional Nazi zombies in Blood Creek (originally named Town Creek), but there is a Nazi necromancer (Fassbender’s Richard Wirth) and a few actual zombies throughout the film’s perfect hour-and-a-half runtime. Unlike a movie like Overlord (a fellow horror film with a somewhat similar premise), Blood Creek relies on a dark and somewhat true history of 1930s Nazis while ushering it into the present day (well, 2007). Particularly, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Hemmler’s obsession with the occult. This is something that’s been portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well, but unlike the first Captain America film, Blood Creek takes a much darker and increasingly bloodier approach. Though, with a name like Blood Creek, what did you expect?
In Blood Creek, Wirth travels from Nazi Germany to West Virginia in 1936 to stay with the Wollner family, who have recently immigrated to the United States, after discovering that a Nordic runstone was used in the foundation of their barn. According to Wirth, these sorts of stones contain magical properties that, when harnessed with enough blood, can render the user immortal and usher them into a higher state of being. Though the Vikings left these stones behind, their earthen power remains, and the Nazi necromancer spends years researching Wollner’s stone before the fall of the Third Reich a decade or so later. But just because Hitler and his cause failed, didn’t mean that this Nazi was done. Not unlike how Nazis continued to operate around the world following World War II (and were often conscripted into other nations’ space programs, à la Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) so too does Wirth continue to vie for power.
It’s this intricate and horrific backstory (that also includes torture, bleeding victims out, and drinking said blood to achieve more power) that Blood Creek opens up with, and it only gets scarier from there. Nearly a century later, Wirth has mutated into an inhuman monster and only hopes to push himself further into his occultic power to generate a third eye. This, in his mind, would make him unstoppable, and allow him to revive the thousand-year empire. Of course, some Nazi leaders actually did believe in these sorts of New Age or occult practices and sent their emissaries all over the globe in search of supernatural power. The Nazis seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark aren’t as fictional as we might be comfortable believing, and Blood Creek only takes the concept a step further.
The Stakes Are High But Personal In ‘Blood Creek’
But Blood Creek isn’t just about a Nazi Michael Fassbender who runs around drinking people’s blood (though that is a major part of it). Rather, this Joel Schumacher horror story centers on brothers Evan (Cavill) and Victor Marshall (Purcell) as they go on a revenge mission to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 the monster before he can hurt anyone else. When the film starts, Victor has been missing for two years, leaving behind a wife and two boys. It’s only when he shows up again at Evan’s home that the movie really picks up, and he pulls his younger brother into a battle against a supernatural evil he never dreamed could exist. That might sound a little like the very first episode of Supernatural (there are certainly some interesting parallels there), but Blood Creek is secure in its R-rated identity, and it proves that time and again.
Though it’s not all about revenge for Victor – he also hopes to stop the Wollners from abducting any other victims like himself for Wirth to feast on and gain power from – he becomes easily consumed by it. Evan, on the other hand, struggles to understand what’s going on, acting as our emissary on the screen. Cavill and Purcell are both great here. Cavill, of course, is still pretty young and was primarily a television actor (on The Tudors) at the time, so his American accent occasionally slips, but he more than makes up for it with a strong performance. He and Purcell balance each other out well, with Victor’s extremism (taking more than a few cues from his Prison Break character) and Evan’s cautious demeanor conflicting at all the right moments. While these two would eventually become DC Comics characters, it’s a shame they never worked alongside one another again after Blood Creek.
The bond between the Marshall brothers is strong, and it makes Blood Creek an enjoyable watch. Of course, some serious tensions arise when it comes to one family (the Marshalls) arriving in Town Creek to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 another (the Wollners), but horror flicks often give us some of the best moral dilemmas. Clocking in at 90 minutes, the intensity of Blood Creek doesn’t offer us enough time to really sit down and flesh these issues out. Everything is pretty “ride or die,” and Purcell’s Victor seems to understand that much better than Cavill’s Evan. But the balance between them, Evan attempting to figure things out while Victor goes in guns-a-blazing, works better than expected, and adds a much-needed realistic flair.
Henry Cavill’s Character Leaves The Door Open For More
What’s even more interesting in Blood Creek is that it ends in almost the same way it begins. In the 1936 flashbacks that open the feature, we learn that Hitler sent men to eight specific sites in the United States, throughout West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other states on the eastern side of the country. The movie ends the same way, with Evan and Victor meditating on that sobering thought that there might be others like Wirth out there. As a result, Victor returns to his family, and Evan heads out in search of these other farms and families, with a map that neatly traces all of these locations into the form of a swastika. A bit on the nose, sure, but a fascinating tease that actually succeeds at whetting our appetite for more.
It’s unclear if Blood Creek hoped to inspire any sequels or if it was just following the traditional horror movie routine of leaving things open-ended enough to keep one guessing, but there’s no doubt that future stories about Evan Marshall taking on other vampiric Nazi zombies would be just as exciting. Given the Nazi’s oppression with immortality and physical transformation (including werewolves), the possibilities are endless concerning what Evan could encounter after the events of this film. Sadly, we’ll never know. Blood Creek didn’t do well at the box office, and, generally speaking, doesn’t have the best reviews. Additionally, Cavill and Purcell seem to have moved well on from this horror feature, and director Joel Schumacher passed away back in 2020.
While not a perfect film by any means, Blood Creek is still one of those action horrors worth exploring. If you dare.
Source: collider.com
