BloodRayne (2005)
Did you ever see a movie you were really kinda embarrassed to admit you saw? Despite all the grossly stupid and inept movies I’ve subjected myself to over the past few years, I will never be able to escape the fact that I *chose* to watch Uwe Boll’s BloodRayne. I can’t even mount a defense for this decision, other than to see if it could match the bewildering awfulness of his earlier House of the Dead. The good news is, it’s not as bad as the latter movie, but the bad news is: it’s still Uwe Boll.
Rayne wakes up from a terrible nightmare: she dreamed she was in another Uwe Boll movie.
Premise: 2/5
The premise? Another video game license Uwe Boll can turn into quick cash. Oops, sorry . . . that’s a little cynical. Lemme try again: Kristanna Loken is hot and should kick ass while showing as much skin as possible—we’ll throw blood-drinking in there for “flavor.” Okay, okay, that’s pretty cynical too—even if it is chillingly accurate.
Back in some century that still had swords and castles, evil vampire Kagan boffed some peasant girl or another and out came baby Rayne, one of the only “dhamphir” births to actually survive. Kagan, for whatever reason, isn’t really happy about having a half-breed kid on the loose, and so he murders Rayne’s momma because she won’t tell him where to find the child (hey, next time you’re looking for a kid that’s supposed to be the prophesied one to kill you, maybe you wanna check the conspicuously wide fireplace for any hidey-holes?). The child grows up and gets dragged into a carnival that exploits her being burned by water and healing from cuts by drinking the blood of a sheep for their freakshow. Mindless crap ensues where she eventually escapes the carnival while three very bored actors (sorry, the “Brimstone Society”) talk about some prophecy or another and some artifacts that are too powerful to be allowed to fall into Kagan’s hands or he’ll be unstoppable. Then, both these “plot threads” merge together and Rayne ends up facing Kagan in a battle to the death. I wonder who will win?
The obvious caption here would be "Got Blood?" But I'm all about class now and don't go in for cheap jokes like that.
Well, I hate to be so sarcastic, since the plot is almost half-interesting for this movie and actually seems somewhat coherent this time around, but everything else is so half-baked and uninspired it kills any potential pretty early on.
Cast: 2/5
As previously stated, and sadly an opinion that I seem to share with Mr. Boll (no offense to her, I just hate agreeing with Uwe Boll on anything): Kristanna Loken is hot. She also looks like an ass-kicker, so you get two great tastes that taste great together—of course, her dialogue is enough to make Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando seem articulate. She might be a good actress (jury’s out on this one), but I just don’t think she had anything to work with as Rayne, which comes as no surprise, given the director. Michael Madsen plays Vladimir, the Brimstone guy who takes Rayne in and trusts her when no one else will. He sorta seems to just come in drunk to the set and spout out any lines Uwe gives him while trying not to fall asleep—and I can’t say as I’d do anything different if I were in his shoes. Michelle Rodriguez from Lost is in the movie too, playing yet another bitchy hardass, only this one with a feigned British accent that I just can’t take even remotely seriously. Some other guys are here too, whose names and characters I’ve already forgotten, most likely because they really suck. Oh, but did I mention this movie also has none other than Sir Ben Kingsley in it?! Yeah, guess who’s playing Kagan. Well, by “playing,” I mean “sitting in a chair and looking heavily medicated.” Why would Gandhi do this? He can’t possibly need a paycheck that badly! Also noteworthy, for two very different reasons, are the bit part played by Meat Loaf and the bit part played by Billy Zane. Meat Loaf plays this vampire guy who, I gather, is supposed to be like some kind of Roman hedonistic guy with no real bearing on the plot whatsoever. He also has among the most ridiculous wigs I have EVER seen in my life. Billy Zane, on the other hand, plays the father of Michelle Rodriguez’s character, who’s also a vampire—his screen time is brief, but he hams it up so much the movie got a legitimate laugh out of me whenever he was on screen, and not the laughs of derision every other scene in the movie gets. If everybody goofed in this movie like he did, it would’ve been a whole lot more entertaining (although I’m not sure Uwe Boll got the joke, which, again, wouldn’t be surprising.)
He would do anything for love, and yes, that includes "acting" in Uwe Boll's "BloodRayne."
Technical: 2/5
Who doesn’t love fountains of blood spraying everywhere? I know I’m a fan of that, and apparently so is Uwe Boll, since after the climactic battle we get treated to an overly long (at least 5 minutes, and probably more than that) montage of all the scenes with blood spraying and splashing around that have already been in the movie. I mean, the gore was fine the first time we saw it, but a montage of all those scenes all over again when the movie should actually be over? It ranks up there with his use of the actual video game footage shots in “House of the Dead” for the sheer WTF factor. Other than that lovely gore and his bizarre revisitation of it, there’s not much that stands out about this movie to comment on. His sets are decent, and the CG morphing he uses for when vampires “show their teeth” is actually not too shabby. Unfortunately, his fight scenes look like they could use a choreographer older than ten, and I’m simply not convinced that the allegedly cool tonfa-sword-things that are Rayne’s weapons of choice are even remotely practical, or, in fact, all that cool. Rayne usually looks like she’s more interested in not maiming herself with them than gutting the baddies, and by all appearances she damn well should be. Swordchucks would be much safer and more practical than these goofy things.
Guy shoulda read that "Sword Swallowing For Dummies Book" his family got him for Christmas.
Popcorn Factor: 3/5
Do not mistake that 3 rating for this being a good movie, because it certainly isn’t. What it does have is a lot of blood (a veritable rain of blood, if you will), a hot ass-kicking chick, Billy Zane (alas! too briefly), some people who really ought to know better than to star in an Uwe Boll movie embarrassing themselves for our pleasure, action (however poorly conceived, though I’ll admit there’s actually a cool fight or two), and a completely out-of-the-blue sex scene that’s less erotic than it is silly. In other words, BloodRayne is a perfect medley of B-movie cheese that only just falls short of the illustrious “so bad it’s good” mark. I got a laugh out of it, but I’m obviously a damaged individual, so your mileage may vary.