Now Showing: Blade

 

Blade

Genre: Action/Superhero/Horror

Director: Spike Lee

Writer: Dawson Edwards

Based on Marvel Comics characters

Cast: Damson Idris, Karen Fukuhara, Pierce Brosnan, Gina Torres, Taraji P. Henson, Regina King

Plot: The subway car rocked with a mechanical screech as it tore through the underground tunnel, fluorescent lights flickering against the steel walls. Blade (Damson Idris) sat at the back, his hood low over his face, watching the world move through reflections in the grime-streaked windows. The people around him were tired, oblivious. Some nodded off, others hunched over their phones, the glow of screens illuminating their faces. But not her.

She was maybe sixteen, her headphones loose around her neck as she scrolled through a cracked phone screen. She barely noticed when two men boarded at the last stop, dressed too well for the filth of a late-night train. Their suits were pristine, their skin too smooth, too tight over their bones. One leaned against the pole, head slightly cocked, eyes never leaving the girl. The other stood by the door, unmoving, waiting.

Blade exhaled. They didn’t even try to hide what they were.

The girl shifted in her seat, finally looking up as if feeling it now, the wrongness thick in the air. Her fingers hovered over the volume button on her phone, a nervous reflex, before the taller one moved. He was beside her in a blink, crouching at her seat like a lover about to whisper in her ear. His fingers brushed her wrist, nails just a little too sharp.

Blade was on him before he could speak.

The katana slashed through the vampire’s wrist, severing it clean. The hand dropped to the floor with a dull slap, its fingers still twitching. The creature screamed, a high-pitched, otherworldly wail that sent every other passenger scrambling for the doors. The girl bolted, pressing herself against the window, her breath fogging the glass.

The second vampire lunged. Blade ducked, catching him mid-air, flipping him over his back and slamming his skull into the metal pole. The train lurched, overhead speakers garbling an announcement for the next stop. The vampire groaned, pulling himself up, fangs flashing as blood dripped from his forehead. He grinned.

“You don’t even know, do you?” His voice was like static, layered, unnatural.

Blade stepped forward. "Then tell me."

The first vampire staggered back, his severed arm held close to his chest. "You’re just a janitor, man," he sneered, his voice trembling through the pain. "Cleaning up the streets while the real monsters build the world."

Blade didn’t hesitate. He drove his katana through the vampire’s chest, pinning him to the wall. His body convulsed before collapsing into ash.

The doors hissed open. The girl remained frozen, her hands shaking. Blade bent down, yanking his katana free, the steel still gleaming, untouched by the kill. He flicked the blade once, sending the last remnants of ash to the floor.

"Go home," he muttered. "Stay inside at night."

She didn’t move.

Blade stepped past her, disappearing into the platform before she could ask the questions he had no interest in answering.

His head pounded. The first hit of pain came sharp, a spike behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw, inhaling through his nose, pushing it down. But then came the second wave—deeper, heavier, pulling him under.

The smell of antiseptic. The hum of an overhead light. The echo of ragged, gasping breaths.

His mother’s voice.

Vanessa Brooks (Regina King) was drowning in pain, sweat slicking her dark skin, her hands clawing at the edges of the hospital bed. Her belly was tight, swollen, her body trembling from the effort of holding on. The room was too bright, the fluorescent light pulsing against the sterile white walls. The machines beeped steadily, unnervingly indifferent to her suffering.

Her breath hitched as another contraction tore through her, her back arching. The nurses around her barely acknowledged it. They moved too slow, their faces blank, their hands sterile.

She turned her head toward the doctor at her bedside. "Please," she gasped, her voice cracking. "My baby—"

The door opened. The doctor stepped aside.

A man walked in, his presence so effortless, so calm, it made the air shift. His suit was bone-white, pressed so perfectly it looked like the fabric had never known a wrinkle. Platinum hair slicked back, skin pale, lips a soft shade of pink, as if they had been freshly flushed with stolen blood. His eyes—cold, amused—lingered on Vanessa as he pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, stretching his fingers as if bored by the entire affair.

Deacon Frost (Pierce Brosnan).

Her body reacted before she did. Every muscle in her tensed, her instincts screaming louder than her pain. She tried to move, but the straps across her wrists and ankles held firm.

Her breathing quickened. “No—no, no, no—"

Frost exhaled as he stepped closer, pressing a hand to the doctor’s shoulder. “You can go,” he murmured.

The doctor hesitated. "She’s still—"

"She’s served her purpose," Frost said smoothly. "Proceed."

A nurse readied a syringe. Vanessa thrashed. "Please," she sobbed, her voice raw. "My baby—"

Frost crouched beside the bed, his gloved hand resting on the edge of the mattress. He looked at her like she was something to be studied, dissected, filed away in memory. "You should be honored," he murmured, his voice a silk thread of amusement. "You’re making history."

The needle plunged into her arm.

She seized.

Her entire body locked, her lungs burning as the cold spread through her veins. Her heart hammered, slamming against her ribcage. She choked on air, on panic. The edges of her vision darkened. She forced her head to turn, her body already slipping from her control.

Her eyes found his.

Frost smiled.

Blade inhaled sharply.

He was on the sidewalk, his hands gripping his knees, sweat beading at his brow. The world flickered around him, too bright, too loud. His breath came in short bursts, his lungs burning. The memory sat heavy in his chest.

The community center stood between two aging apartment buildings, its walls lined with missing persons flyers. Black and brown faces stared back at him, their stories reduced to scraps of paper. Some yellowed at the edges, their ink fading, lost to time. Others were fresh, their colors bold, their hope still lingering.

A woman watched him from the front desk. Dr. Tilda Johnson (Gina Torres).

She was in her late forties, her hair graying at the roots, her expression unreadable. She didn’t ask his name. She didn’t need to.

“You here about the missing?” she asked.

Blade didn’t turn. He scanned the board, his jaw tight.

"I’m here about the ones who won’t be found."

Johnson exhaled through her nose, stepping forward. “That’s most of them.”

She reached into a drawer, pulled out a thick folder, and set it on the counter. "If you really want to help, start here."

Blade flipped through the pages. Police reports. Coroner’s notes. The same patterns. No follow-ups. No deeper investigations. Then he saw it.

LUXE Biotech.

The same logo he had seen on a doctor’s coat in his mother’s memory. His fingers curled over the edges of the folder, knuckles white.

Johnson studied him. "Something wrong?"

Blade exhaled. The headache had dulled, but the anger remained. "Not yet."

Deacon Frost swirled the blood in his glass, watching the security footage flicker across the screen in front of him. A still image of Blade, standing in front of the missing persons wall. His lips curled, amusement tugging at the edges of his mouth.

"You always were a curious little thing," he murmured. "I was hoping you’d take the bait."

He leaned back in his chair, eyes glinting beneath the low lights of his penthouse.

"Let’s see how far you get."

The rain had settled into a mist, the kind that clung to the air and turned streetlights into dim halos. Blade walked with measured steps, but his mind was moving too fast, processing too much.

LUXE Biotech wasn’t new to him, but now it was different. Before, it had been just another name on another building. A shell corporation run by parasites. But now, it had weight. It had history. His history. He wasn’t just hunting anymore—he was reclaiming something.

Tilda Johnson had warned him. This isn’t a simple nest. It’s the kind of place you don’t come back from.

She wasn’t wrong. But Blade had never been the type to walk away. The community center had emptied out for the night, but Johnson was still inside, hunched over files and half-empty cups of coffee, her glasses sliding to the edge of her nose.

“You sure you want to go through with this?” she asked, not looking up.

Blade tossed the folder onto her desk. “Tell me where to start.”

Johnson sighed, pulling out a separate set of documents. She flipped through them, tapping a printed security feed.

“Bronx,” she said. “They call it a storage facility, but that’s a front. Nobody knows what’s inside because nobody who goes in comes out.”

Blade flipped through the images. The perimeter was fortified—reinforced steel gates, motion sensors, armed patrols.

“You sure you don’t need backup?” Johnson asked.

Johnson sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Then I guess you should talk to Carter.”

That made him pause. Dr. Alaya Carter (Taraji P. Henson). Her name carried weight. Once, she had been one of the loudest voices against corruption. A civil rights attorney who had built her career exposing fraud, police brutality, human trafficking—anywhere power was exploiting the vulnerable, she was there.

Then, a year ago, she vanished. No resignation. No scandal. Just disappeared.

Six months later, she re-emerged with a massive investment portfolio tied to LUXE Biotech.

“Where is she?” Blade asked.

Johnson gave him an address, but her expression was heavy. “I don’t know what she is anymore. She used to fight for us. Now she stands next to the same people she swore to tear down.”

Blade exhaled. “Then I’ll find out which side she’s really on.”

The private club smelled like expensive scotch and old money. Blade didn’t belong here, and he didn’t care to blend in. The bouncers tried to stop him at the entrance—it didn’t go well for them.

Carter was near the back, seated in a leather booth, a glass of wine in her hand. She was different from the last time he had seen her in the papers. The fire in her eyes had dimmed, replaced with something colder.

“Didn’t think you were the cocktail type,” she said, setting her drink down.

Blade took the seat across from her. “Didn’t think you were either.”

Carter smiled, but there was nothing warm about it. “Things change.”

Blade leaned forward. “You disappeared. Then you came back with a LUXE paycheck.”

Carter exhaled. “Walk with me.”

She led him toward the balcony, away from the crowd. Outside, the city sprawled beneath them, a maze of skyscrapers and shadows.

"You think this fight is about swinging a sword at monsters in the dark," she said. "But the real monsters don’t hide. They sit in boardrooms. They pass laws. They shape the world while you’re busy cleaning up their scraps."

"You used to fight them," Blade said.

"And I lost." Carter’s voice was steady, but there was something buried beneath it. "Every win I had, they found a way to undo. Every case I won, they wrote new laws to make sure it never happened again. So I changed my strategy."

"You mean you sold out."

Carter turned to face him. "I adapted."

Blade’s fingers curled into fists. "You work for them."

"I work with them," she corrected. "You think you’re different from them? You kill one vampire at a time, thinking you’re making a difference. But they don’t care about the ones you kill. They’ll make more."

Blade’s voice was quiet, lethal. "You saying I should stop fighting?"

"I’m saying you should stop fighting like you haven’t already lost."

Carter pulled something from her bag and handed it to him. A file. A location.

"The facility you’re looking for," she said. "Bronx. Tonight."

Blade didn’t move. "Why are you giving me this?"

Carter’s smile was sad. "Because I don’t want to be right about you."

The facility was a fortress. Blade crouched in the shadows, Makoto (Karen Fukuhara) at his side.

The first guard went down silent, a blade through the throat before he could reach for his radio. The second barely had time to turn before Blade’s katana severed his spine, his body crumbling into ash.

Then the alarms exploded. Floodlights bathed the compound in white, and the air was suddenly alive with movement. The first wave of enforcers poured out—vampires in full combat gear, wielding serrated blades and automatic rifles.

Blade’s katana tore through the first three bodies in raw, heavy swings, messy but effective, their screams swallowed by the storm of bullets that followed.

Makoto moved like liquid, her blade flashing through the chaos, cleaving through torsos and necks as bodies crumbled around her.

A massive vampire lieutenant emerged from the doorway, built like a linebacker, his skin scarred from years of survival. He rushed Blade, his claws like daggers, slamming him into the concrete hard enough to crack the pavement.

Blade gasped, struggling to breathe, his ribs screaming.

The lieutenant snarled, fangs bared.

"You’re just another experiment," he growled. "You don’t even know what you are."

Blade drove his katana upward, straight through the vampire’s jaw, splitting his skull in two.

The body collapsed into ash, and Blade was moving before it had even settled, grabbing his sword just in time to block another attack.

The air was thick with blood and gunfire. Makoto let out a sharp breath, her shoulder bleeding, but her blade didn’t falter.

"More coming," she muttered.

Blade exhaled. "Good."

They cut their way through the rest, but it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clean. By the time they reached the inside of the facility, both were bloodied, breathing hard. Then they saw it. The blood tanks. The bodies strapped to tables. The ones who had been drained dry.

Makoto’s breath hitched. "This is—"

"An industry," Blade finished.

The door hissed open. Carter stepped in, flanked by more enforcers. Shock on Blade’s face was apparent despite the black shades.

"You set me up," he said, his voice low but angry.

Carter exhaled. "I gave you a chance to walk away." The alarms screamed to life. The second wave of enforcers crashed through the doors. Blade barely had time to react before he was dodging gunfire. Makoto was a blur, slicing through the chaos, but even she was slowing.

It was desperate. It was brutal. Carter was already gone. Blade’s breath came hard.

Carter stepped onto the rooftop where the helicopter was waiting. Deacon Frost sat inside, swirling blood in a crystal glass.

“I told you he’d come,” he said.

She had chosen her side. Now, she had to live with it.

The room was silent except for the distant sound of sirens, their wails stretching through the city’s veins. Blade stood at the window of the safehouse, his shoulders rigid, watching the glow of streetlights blur against the rain-slick pavement. His hands were still raw from the fight, his knuckles stiff where dried blood clung to his skin. Makoto sat on the edge of the bed behind him, unwrapping a bandage from her forearm, the wound beneath still red, still fresh. Neither of them had spoken since they made it out.

She let out a slow breath, rolling her neck. “We almost died back there.”

Makoto watched his reflection in the glass. He looked past her, through her, like she wasn’t even in the same room. Maybe he was still standing in the blood-soaked halls of LUXE Biotech, still swinging, still cutting down anything in his path. She knew that feeling. Knew it too well. He wouldn’t come back from it tonight.

She stood and crossed the room, placing a hand against his back, feeling the tension beneath the leather. “You’re holding onto it.”

His eyes, hidden behind the shades, stayed locked on the window.

Makoto exhaled and reached for the zipper of his vest, pulling it down with slow precision. His breathing hitched for a fraction of a second, then steadied.

“This isn’t love,” she said.

Blade turned, expression unreadable.

“Never was,” he muttered.

And that was it. No tenderness, no hesitation. Just release. Just skin against skin, frustration poured into something physical, something neither of them could say out loud. Her nails dug into his back, his grip was rough against her hips. Their pain, their anger, their exhaustion—it all burned through them in movement. The betrayal, the blood, the bodies left behind. For a moment, none of it mattered.

When it was over, she lay beside him, staring at the cracked ceiling. He had already started pulling his armor back on before she even caught her breath.

Neither of them said a word about it.

It was a gorgeous view of the city. One of the finest penthouses money could buy. The 130 floors below it wouldn’t be enough to keep her safe. The steel cut clean through Carter’s neck. It wasn’t graceful, much like the others. It was forceful, savage, done with a weight behind it that made the moment stretch. Her body hit the floor before her head did. The silence after was deafening.

Blade exhaled, chest rising and falling in slow, deliberate breaths. His grip on the hilt was tight, his shoulders square, the muscles in his jaw tense as he stared down at what was left of her.

Makoto swallowed hard. The blood had splattered across the carpet, pooling beneath Carter’s lifeless body, but in Makoto’s mind, it wasn’t Carter’s blood at all. It was her mother’s. Her father’s. Her brother’s. The same blank, hollow stillness that had been in their eyes the day she found them slaughtered.

Blade wasn’t looking at Carter like she had been a person. He was looking at her like she had been an obstacle. Something to be removed. Something in the way.

For the first time since meeting him, she wondered if he was becoming the enemy he swore to destroy.

Finding Frost wasn’t hard.

Carter had given them everything they needed before she died. Addresses, private security details, the blueprints of the LUXE tower. Whether she had done it to help Blade or just to prove a point, he didn’t care.

When they arrived, the halls were already crawling. The vampires weren’t sloppy this time. They had been waiting. Armed enforcers lined the corridors, their weapons gleaming under the cold white light. Blade and Makoto tore through them with a brutality that left the walls streaked with blood.

By the time they reached the top floor, Blade’s sweat was slicking his skin beneath the coat. His grip on the katana was steady, but he could feel the weight in his arms now, the exhaustion creeping in at the edges. He ignored it. He pushed forward.

Makoto’s breath came in sharp, ragged bursts as she twisted her katana through the throat of the vampire in front of her, its body collapsing into ash before her feet. Blood—hers, theirs—streaked her face, her grip tightening around the hilt as more enforcers poured through the broken glass doors of the LUXE tower’s top floor.

She barely had time to react before the next one lunged. A hulking enforcer, faster than he had any right to be, his blade swinging in a deadly arc toward her chest. She sidestepped, her katana meeting his with a metallic clash, sparks flying from the impact. He was strong. Too strong. She could feel it in the way her muscles screamed as she held her ground.

Then she felt the shift in weight.

Too late. The second blade came from the side, gleaming under the flickering emergency lights. She saw it a split second before it connected.

The double doors at the end of the hall stood open.

Frost was waiting.

He stood near the windows, a glass of dark crimson in his hand, his expression amused, like Blade had just arrived late to a dinner party. He was tall, elegant, his platinum hair slicked back in a way that made him look effortless. His suit was pristine, not a wrinkle in sight, the softest shade of ivory, as if daring the world to touch him.

“You look like hell,” Frost said, swirling the glass absently.

Blade took a slow step forward.

Frost smirked. “It’s cute how you think this ends with me on my knees, begging for my life. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

Blade said nothing. He was already closing the distance.

Frost sighed, finishing his drink before setting the glass down on the bar. “You know, you should be thanking me.”

Blade’s grip tightened on the hilt. “For what?”

“For making you,” Frost said simply.

Blade’s pulse pounded.

Frost tilted his head slightly. “You ever wonder why she screamed so much that night? Why she fought so damn hard to keep you?” He exhaled, stretching his fingers. “It wasn’t for you. It was for her. She was a fighter. I admired that.”

Blade took another step.

“She begged, you know.” Frost’s voice was almost thoughtful. “Not for her life, but for yours. I was going to kill you, but she wouldn’t stop—she just wouldn’t stop. So I gave her a choice.”

Frost smiled. “I let her die slowly.”

The lights above him flickered, and suddenly, he was back there.

His mother’s body arched off the hospital bed, her face contorted in agony, her veins blackening beneath her skin. The monitors around her beeped erratically, but no one moved to help her.

Frost had been standing at the foot of the bed, watching. Calm. Amused. The way he was watching now.

Vanessa Brooks turned her head toward Blade, her eyes glassy, unfocused. Her mouth opened, but the only thing that came out was a raw, wet gasp.

Then, she collapsed. The machines flatlined. Frost had smiled. Blade lunged.

The fight was a storm.

Blade swung wild, raw, fueled by something bigger than rage. Frost was faster, more refined, his movements precise, effortless, as if dancing through the blows. He deflected, countered, every attack sending Blade reeling, his strength faltering against Frost’s control.

Frost moved in, slamming a fist into Blade’s ribs, sending him crashing into the glass table. It shattered beneath him. He rolled, pushing himself up in time to parry Frost’s next strike.

It was ugly. Desperate. A blur of fists, steel, and blood.

Frost grinned through it all. “You were always meant to serve us. But you don’t even know what you are.”

Blade barely dodged the next strike, catching Frost by the collar and driving him into the steel beams, his fist hammering against Frost’s face, breaking skin, splitting flesh.

Frost wiped the blood from his lip and laughed. “You’re so predictable.”

He caught Blade’s wrist, twisting it with ease, and drove his knee into Blade’s gut.

Blade doubled over, vision swimming.

Then, he saw it.

The sun.

The first streaks of morning were crawling over the skyline, filling the room with soft, golden light.

Frost was still smirking when Blade threw him through the window.

The glass shattered, and for the first time, Frost’s grin faltered.

The sun hit him like fire. He let out a choked sound, a mix of rage and disbelief, before his body caught alight, burning away into nothing.

Blade stood over the edge, breathing hard.

Behind him, Makoto groaned, clutching her side, and missing a hand, but she was alive. That was enough.

They left the tower burning.

The morning news flickered on a television in a diner across town. The anchor spoke of the mysterious fire at the LUXE tower, speculating on its origins.

Johnson sat in the booth, watching the screen, sipping her coffee. A still photo appeared. A blurry image of a man standing near the flames, his face obscured, but the shape of his coat unmistakable.

BLADE.

He looked over his shoulder.

The shades were still on.