BLOODLANDS

Three renegades on a rescue mission battle a powerful vampire master and an unscrupulous land baron on the wild frontier of colonial New Zealand.

A “TUI RUWHIU” FILM
WRITTEN BY TUI RUWHIU

It’s 1840 and throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, niho taniwha (vampire) clans ruled by their master Maku terrorize the kainga (villages) and pa (fortified settlements) of the Māori population. For settlers pouring into the country in the belief they’re going to start life in the “Britain of the South’, talk of evil cannibalistic monsters who drain their victims of blood at night is just native superstition designed to discourage them from spreading throughout the land.
Aided by human familiar, land agent William Croft, Maku and his clans begin to prey on the settlers, while seeking to perpetuate the myth surrounding their presence. In their way, three brave souls running from their pasts—feisty red-headed beauty Sarah Marlow, Māori warrior Tutahua, and Father Thomas O’Hara, a catholic priest—who go on a crusade to rid the expanding colony of its bloodsucking curse as they seek to rescue a young girl kidnapped by niho taniwha to be reared for food.