Alright, Before I begin, let me say I’m not just giving this film a bad review because it’s a Uwe Boll film, I know a lot of people don’t like his work, and most fan boys can’t stand him, but I’m a fare guy and I give everyone’s films a chance. Now with that said, on with my review.
I have never played the video game “Bloodrayne” at all, yet I knew of it. I did not know much about the story except that our heroine was a vampire killing monsters and demons. That’s about the extent of the story that I knew to be “Bloodrayne”. So I went into this film not really knowing the whole back story and so on… Anyway I thought the whole concept was kind of boring at first, and with such poor character development at the beginning of this film, I actually shut it off after watching the first ten minutes, came inside to my office and called up friend and fellow filmmaker Scott Goldberg, just to tell him I didn’t think this film was worth watching. So anyway after bullshitting with Scott about horror films and local legends here on Long Island, I decided to go ahead and attempt to get though “Bloodrayne”. Needless to say the film did in fact pick up and get better, but not good enough for me to like it.
The overall screenplay and story were all over the place, it seemed like Boll just tried to cram together a lot of information about the characters at once and it was kind of an overload of information, and not enough time to really get to understand all of them. I also felt like as a viewer I was being told by the characters what was going on, when I can clearly see, what was going on. I didn’t need the actors in the film to remind me. Another thing that really bothered me about the film is that there seemed to be a lot of senseless horror scenes added in. What I mean by this is that to me it seems that Boll tried to hard to please the horror fans with adding all this over the top gore to try to please us with. The fact of the matter is, as not only a critic of horror but a fan of horror, when someone get killed I like the killing to have a point. There is just one kill in this film that just drove me crazy, and it’s when a townsmen working for the vampire hunters gets cut in half at the waist line and then like 4 vampires stand over his already dead body and slice it up with swords for no reason at all. It was so pointless it actually cried “I’m a pointless shot” out. Like it was simply put there for us stupid horror fans to say this film was cool. Sorry but I’ll take a good story over a shit-load of gore any day.
“Oh what and actor will do for a paycheck”. This was the headline of a review that was written when the film was released in theaters by a local newspaper here in New York. Well they were right about that, as their were actually some pretty well known actors and even an academy award winning actor in this film. Kind of funny what one can do with a lot of money. And because of the bad script, we got just alright acting in this film, I mean hell you can’t expect good acting when you have such a lame script.
As far as effects go, I must admit the CGI and Make-up effects were pretty decent, the costume design was good as well as the sets. Production Value overall was not that bad. However in my mind they were not good enough for me to give this film my seal of approval.
Overall, I can say the only thing that made me respect Uwe Boll more was the fact that he let us all get a good look at a half naked Kristanna Loken during a pretty rough sex scene. Ok and casting Meatloaf as a vampire was pretty cool also, he kind of reminded me of Jabba the Hutt. But from my point of view I really didn’t care much for the film, in fact I liked “Alone in the Dark” better bad CGI and all.
Note: On the flipside of things, the DVD does come with the “Bloodrayne 2” video game for your PC. Hey they have to sell the DVD somehow.
– Horror Bob
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
