Afflicted 2014

Two childhood friends Clif Prowse and Derek Lee Derek set off to travel the world and film their travel web series Ends of the Earth, chasing a last wish as Derek endures an AVM, a cerebral arteriovenous malformation that could end his life at any moment. What begins as a hopeful dream soon spirals into a nightmarish, blood-soaked journey that questions friendship, mortality, and the line between reality and myth.

In Barcelona, the pair reconnect with old acquaintances Edo and Zach, and Derek crosses paths with a woman named Audrey. That same night, a playful intrusion by their friends into Derek’s room reveals him bleeding and semi-conscious, with Audrey nowhere to be found. Though Derek cannot remember the attack, the others jump to the assumption that Audrey planned to rob him. The situation drives a rift: Clif and Derek part ways with Edo and Zach, while the ominous sense of danger lingers in the background, underscoring how quickly trust can dissolve under the weight of fear and suspicion.

As the journey continues to Italy, the abnormal begins to feel personal and undeniable. Derek collapses and sleeps for a full day, and at a restaurant the next afternoon he violently vomits up his meal. At a vineyard, sunlight provokes an extreme reaction, forcing him indoors and shrouding him in burns. A hotel room scene escalates when Derek, under mounting strain, whips a wall with his bare hands in a moment of unscripted ferocity. Over the following days, Derek’s strength, speed, and agility appear superhuman, yet he stubbornly insists that there is nothing wrong with him, even as he grows sicker from an inability to eat. The doctors become a distant option as fear blooms into something darker and more immersive.

The pair are nearly struck by a car while en route, and Derek’s confrontation with the angry driver and passenger ends with him overpowering them and licking the blood from his hand. Clif begins to suspect vampirism, and their search for answers becomes a test of endurance rather than a quest for truth. Online research proves unhelpful, leaving them with more questions than answers. Derek attempts to quell the rising terror by consuming blood from a butcher, then from a piglet, only to vomit after both attempts. A desperate bid to steal human blood from an ambulance fails, and Derek sinks into a catatonic state. Clif, in a cruelly desperate act, cuts his own arm to feed Derek, but the moment is interrupted when Derek escapes.

Tragedy strikes when Clif is hunted down and killed by the now fully transformed Derek. In a brutal turn, Derek regains his senses, realizes what he has done, and shoots himself in the head. The wound heals with only a faint scar, and Interpol agents arrive to arrest him, forcing a chaotic escape with Clif’s camera bag in tow. Derek hides in an abandoned warehouse in Paris, where he replays the footage of his encounter with Audrey and discovers her phone might hold the key to the mystery. He retrieves the phone and begins texting everyone in the contact list, hoping to draw someone into his web. A reply from a man named Maurice invites a face-to-face meeting, and Derek tailors a plan to lure him in.

Maurice’s apartment reveals a tangled history: a bloodstained saw, a black-and-white photograph of Audrey, and a bitter knowledge of Audrey’s betrayal. Maurice attacks from behind, but Derek overpowers him. The vampire’s hunt goes public when Derek tapes Maurice tied up for a live-stream that lures Audrey into the trap. GIGN storms the apartment, and Derek is shot to the brink of death before entering a frenzied state that allows him to slaughter the entire squad and slip away.

Audrey finally confronts Derek in the abandoned building and explains the grim truth: there is no cure for vampirism, and her intentions were misguided—she would have cured herself if a cure existed. She reveals that she chose Derek because he was dying, thinking she was offering him mercy. In the ensuing confrontation, Audrey urges Derek to feed every four to five days or risk becoming a predator who kills indiscriminately on a daily basis. The revelation weighs heavily as Derek posts a final online entry, declaring that he can never contact his family again. In a stark, chilling turn, he films himself feeding on a man who has child pornography on his phone, underscoring the darkest impulses that now haunt him.

The film’s final stretch shifts to a grim as a teenage boy and two teenage girls sneak into a pool in Italy and are attacked. The boy escapes but discovers the bloodied corpse of one of the girls. Back in the vampire’s orbit, Clif—now also a vampire—emerges and strikes at the boy, closing a brutal loop of transformation and vengeance that haunts the trilogy of fates set in motion by the duo’s reckless voyage. The result is a raw, unsettling meditation on temptation, survival, and the costs of chasing life at the edge of death.