Game – Movie Review: BloodRayne (2005)

Uwe Boll…

On the one hand it’s awesome that he feels so passionately about video games that he has tried several times to turn them into movies. From The House of the Dead to Postal to Alone in the Dark, his back catalogue for video game movie adaptions is impressive.

However, on the other hand, he is terrible at it. All those movies listed above are shockers and in no way reflective of the games they are said to represent. Putting it as bluntly as possible, Uwe Boll is not good at this.

If you’ve seen all those movies then you don’t need convincing of this but just to add more fuel to that fire, we have here BloodRayne. The first movie in a trilogy and based off the video game of the same name.

The setting is 18th Century Romania where vampires reign and humans survive, although a small group called the ‘Brimstone Society’ try to fight back.

Rayne, played by Kristanna Loken giving it a valiant attempt, is a dhampir. All you Vampire Hunter D fans will be aware of what that is. For those who haven’t seen the classic manga, a dhampir is a human vampire hybrid. Created when a male vampire impregnates a female human. The big difference is that a dhampir lacks a lot of the vampiric weaknesses including the thirst for human blood. However, the payoff is they also have a lot of human weaknesses too.

She has one goal, to kill her father. The vampire king, Kagan (Ben Kingsley) who raped her mother. To even get close to Kagan though she will have to learn to trust others, starting with the Brimstone Society and its members. We have Vladimir (Michael Madsen), Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez) and Sebastian (Matthew Davis), the latter ends up falling for Rayne.

If those cast members has raised an eyebrow, well elsewhere in movie we have Meat Loaf playing a hedonistic vampire lord. Udo Kier playing a monk and Billy Zane who plays Elrich, father of Katarin.

It’s a talented cast but no-one puts in their best work by any stretch, in fact the likes of Kingsley and Madsen look like they wish they were anywhere else but here. Whereas the likes of Rodriguez, Davis and Zane play the same character they’ve played in so many movies before. You can’t blame anyone for not trying, as the story is nonsense and so much of the dialogue is awkward.

Perhaps the most unforgiving thing about BloodRayne though is just how boring it is. Similar to Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead, Boll can’t seem to make up this mind with what kind of movie he wants. Is it a horror movie? Is it an action movie? Is it a weird, really weird rom-com?

It’s not the worst of his video game adaption films but it’s not far off. A talented cast, good setting and bloody moments can’t lift it out of its bland and tiresome hole.