BloodRayne (2005)

A Dhampir named Rayne hunts down vampires and ultimately seeks revenge against the man that attacked her mother and made her the way she is.

REVIEW: I won't lie, Uwe Boll is a bad filmmaker. He makes cheap video game movies and about all of them have been terrible, to say the least. But despite that, I have to admit that I do personally like a few of them, even going as far as owning them, and chief among those is the BloodRayne trilogy.

BloodRayne is based off a video game about a half-human/half-vampire, or Dhamphir, named Rayne who, much like the infamous Blade, uses her vampiric super powers and abilities to kill vampires and rise up against the vampire master that originally made her. The video game that this movie is based off of however takes place during World War II and that's one of the main differences, a disappointing one at that, between this movie and the game.

The movie itself takes place in medieval times, when the Brimstone Society, an organization present in the video games that is sworn to protect the world from supernatural threats, is in its infancy and still weak. Kagen, a Master Vampire, is the most powerful in the realm. There is, however, Rayne, a young Dhamphir who may be a threat to him, and to make things worse for Kagen this Dhamphir is his daughter and she does not have him in her favor, and is currently in the midst of a one woman war of revenge against him for murdering her mother.

The story is interesting and had the potential to be pretty epic, but unfortunately it's not executed to the best of its abilities. Depending on what kind of movie you were looking for, you may end up ultimately disappointed with it here, as it takes lots of pointless side-detours that doesn't really have much to do with the main plot, and even though the movie is a quick 90-odd minutes, the entire thing feels overly stretched and even unnecessarily convoluted by the end. It really felt like Uwe Boll was trying to make this big fantasy/horror epic, but on a miniscule budget that just couldn't match up to his intentions for the movie.

The acting is on the bland side, and that's putting it mildly. It may not be the worst acting in a movie like this, but its not particularly anything resembling good either, especially from big names that you've come to expect much better work from, like Ben Kingsley and Michelle Rodriguez, who is known for roles like Resident Evil and the Fast and Furious franchise. But at least neither of them were anywhere near the annoyingly bad levels that Michael Madsen brings to the table here, a man that I usually enjoy watching but in this movie it was downright painful every time he spoke. The sole exception to this is  Kristanna Loken from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines as the title character. I actually found she did pretty decent with the role, however it's not like much was required of it as the role was written to be pretty one-note and didn't give her a whole lot to work with, emotion-wise.

But at least in a movie about a half-vampire and a team of monster hunters teaming up to fight a vampire lord and his minions, the action must at least be entertaining. Well one could think that, but one would be wrong. The action in this movie is, unfortunately, rather stiff. Don't expect excellent swordplay from this film, as it's all pretty wooden and slowly-acted out, as if the actors were still just rehearsing the choreograph among themselves and didn't realize the cameras were rolling yet.

No beating around the bush or sugar coating anything here, BloodRayne is just not a good movie. However, if you like cheap-looking, badly-acted, laughable sword fights kind of B-Movies, even if it is technically a theatrical movie in origin, than I say go ahead and give this one a try. It was clearly successful enough to spawn two even-cheaper sequels, and admittedly there were some rather nice practical effects in this movie; The vampires all have their fangs and even sometimes show monstrous faces to show that they are in fact Vampires, and those scenes looked pretty cool, and there's even moments when someone gets bitten when you see veins revealed in their skin by way of a pretty nifty special effect, so the movie has that stuff going for it, plus a pretty entertaining overall plot, so I suppose it's not all bad.

There's also a certain level of so-bad-it-entertaining in a 'sit around some rainy weekend night with some friends and a few beer and have fun laughing at how bad this movie is' kind of way, and really, the entire point of a movie is to be entertaining and that's a pretty entertaining evening right there, even if it's not the kind of entertainment the movie set out to make.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward