It’s always unsettling to see Bruce Banner’s body contort and stretch in uncanny ways so his terrifying alter ego, the Hulk, can come out and play. In fact, it’s an aspect of the character that the Marvel Comics series Immortal Hulk is famous for highlighting. It’s a particularly dark story about Bruce Banner that resonates with many fans and, as it turns out, helped inspire a reinvention of vampires in the Finnish Christmas horror-comedy Red Snow.
Red Snow follows a 16-year-old girl played by Anni Iikkanen whose obsession with Twilight is put to the test when she comes across a real vampire, who is the absolute opposite of what she’s grown to love. Instead, he’s a 49-year-old balding man (played by Hannu-Pekka Björkman) in a Santa outfit, whose mouth opens his entire face up (think in the same vein as Blade 2) to reveal a disgusting sucker tongue that drains blood from his victims.
At Fantastic Fest 2026, The Direct sat down with director Nichols Lynch to discuss Red Snow, its Immortal Hulk inspirations, and his aim to reinvent vampires and introduce something new to the Finnish film landscape.
Immortal Hulk & Blade 2 Inspired Red Snow & Its Vampire
‘Red Snow’ Has Lots of Body Horror, Which Is Immortal Hulk’s Specialty
- The Direct: “The movie, in many ways, reinvents what a vampire is, and so the first thing I wanted to talk about was the design, which is not traditional at all. Can you just talk to me about the conversations in getting to that point, what the design and iterations of what these vampires were going to look like?”
Nichols Lynch: Well, yeah, it sort of started early on because I was thinking… Especially when you make a horror film or horror comedy, you need to have some unique angle. Something that hasn’t been done before, or like most things, has been done before, but not done exactly like that in exactly that context. So, it was a matter of what interests me, and kind of also subliminally, I don’t just—a lot of horror comedy stuff comes from just moments of blink, and then hey, that’s weird, can we ever make that work? I don’t know, let’s go for it.
Lynch noted that the vampires in Red Snow are within the realm of those seen in Marvel’s Blade 2with Wesley Snipes, though there’s still a unique angle to them.
Lynch: And then it was a matter of like, what aesthetic is it gonna be? Because these are sort of in the ‘Blade 2’ realm of vampires, but I wanted them to still have a unique angle on it. And then some concept drawings that I did, and then we worked with a special effects makeup designer, and she started building it.
The director revealed that there are heavy influences from Marvel Comics’ Immortal Hulk series, a story about Bruce Banner (who just recently hulked out in Spider-Man: Brand New Day) that dives into the disturbing nature of Hulk and his transformations.
Lynch: Like I sent her some reference images like stuff, body horror stuff, and then things just like the ‘Immortal Hulk’ comics, which have a lot of like body horror things in terms of how Banner transforms into Hulk, how it’s stretching, and I like that aesthetic a lot. So I sent her those, and then she did like a clay mock-up, and then I drew on top of that, and then she modified.
- The Direct: “Well, I think it’s awesome that you mentioned Immortal Hulk as a reference point. Can you talk more about how that particular comic series played into this film, but then also maybe even other comic book references, into what you wanted?”
Lynch: That’s probably the most specific reference in terms of just the vampire mouth and kind of the aesthetic of it. But it’s like I read a ton of comic books. I’ve been reading comics since I was four years old or something, and still keep at it… The way I tend to work is that I develop the concept to the point where I feel it’s found its identity, and then I start looking for references. So it’s not built on references, but when I know what I’m chasing, then I can look at other stuff and see if, oh, we could take that from that and we could use this thing there.
- The Direct: “When you first started this project, what was your mission statement in what you wanted to achieve at the end of the day?”
Lynch: Well, really, it was like Finland is not like a place where you get to do a lot of genre films, or it wasn’t like that before…Like the past 15 years, it’s been getting a lot more. But let’s say 15 years ago, if I had said that, well, we are gonna do this vampire Santa horror comedy, it’s kind of like somebody in the states saying, that yeah, we are gonna found a third political party and it’s gonna do really well. So basically, the goal for me was to do, like, a really proper high-concept horror-comedy that is a Finnish film and break out into that world, because that’s kind of the space where I want to be making films.
The Direct’s entire interview with Red Snow director Nichols Lynch at Fantastic Fest 2026 can be seen below:
