Having just finished watching the uncut edition of Kurt Wimmer’s Ultraviolet, I followed up with the reading of a handful of reviews after being bombarded by the video store employees with claims that the film wasn’t worth the rental price. I will now stop and pause in an effort to help level the scales of critical checks and balances a bit. Here’s my argument:
First, the director’s vision was pared down to seventy-three percent of his original running time by the studio prior to the film’s release. Imagine taking out over a quarter of your favorite movie and expecting someone to like it afterward and you’ll see why this is a serious concern. What’s more, with a work of science fiction, which must establish its own distinct set of rules and regulations, such drastic editing will no doubt cause the work’s narrative cohesion to drastically suffer as a consequence.
Some have cited that the work never justifies why the Hemophages are being persecuted by the humans via the Archministry and that said party, considering they are vampires, are never focused upon as such. My refutation is that the two complaints answer themselves in that by not citing the threat, it is thus implied that the Hemophages are a menace to the human population as vampires tend to be. Though Ultraviolet is intentionally imitative of a comic book/video game style in its appearance, pacing, and characterizations, this doesn’t necessitate that all plot elements need to be expressly explicated at said level for the viewer.
Yes, the film can be seen as a hybrid cross-pollination of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner; the Wachowski Brother’s The Matrix; Alex Proyas’s Dark City and I, Robot; James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta; the director’s own Equilibrium; Paul Anderson’s Resident Evil pictures (he penned both scripts); and Karyn Kusama’s Æon Flux (yes, I’m implying something here, i.e. sheer genre volume in relation to time and positive critical and audience reaction). The latter three films’ similarities to Wimmer’s are merely arbitrary in that they house female action heroes battling corporate/governmental evil while, with the exclusion of Anderson’s works, the other films’ resemblance to Ultraviolet lie in their plots involving a protagonist functioning within a totalitarian regime. Granted, Ultraviolet shares quite a bit of imagery and possesses many of the same motifs as Equilibrium but, considering they are Wimmer’s works, how can one cite such as a primary complaint within a director’s canon anymore than one can protest that a writer, painter, or any other artist doesn’t completely and utterly shift his or her own style with each new project? Yes, repetition is one thing, otherwise known as spinning your wheels, but merely having a consistent, signature style is another. However, with this in mind, the film does present the highly critical dilemma of the purely efficient police state in which it has eradicated its own need. Thus, the sociological value of the film, unlike any of its precursors, not only posits this idea but further permits us to view how the authoritarian corruption of the state, merely in an effort to remain in power, is perpetuated in that its leader is knowingly shifting scapegoats as he steadies his sights upon the majority due to the fact that his previous patsy, the now politically insignificant minority, has been all but eliminated.
With this said, I don’t mean to imply that the work is a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. I am merely attempting to legitimize a work which I believe was unjustly and brazenly treated by the critics who, after having spotted a handful of themes which treaded on familiar territory, allowed themselves to grow bored prior to permitting the work to justify itself much in the same manner that some labeled James Wan’s Saw as a mere effigy of David Fincher’s Seven (which, upon closer inspection, draws a completely divergent conclusion than its predecessor). As such, I view Kurt Wimmer’s Ultraviolet as a mere competent work of dystopian sci-fi which, perhaps, hits slightly below the mark (less so than Kusama’s film) but is by no means dragging the bottom of the river.
And for those pondering why this film is included in a horror review achieve, bear in mind that the film is superficially about vampires but, more terrifyingly, its central theme revolves around an all-too-real horror: the threat of genocide due to the abuse of power.
-Egregious Gurnow
- 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
