Sucks: Day #290 - BloodRayne (2005)
Viewed October 17, 2006
Okay, so I get some of what Uwe Boll does. I get the whole make-it-cheap-and-fast thing. I get the whole cast-whoever-is-available thing. What I don’t get is the change-everything-about-the-storyline thing. After all, someone somewhere down the line had to have actually played the games that his films are based on, didn’t they? Well, if Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead and BloodRayne are any indication, maybe not.
Just like his previous two films, BloodRayne jettisons the basic storyline of the games in favor of a more formulaic story of vampires bent on conquering the world. (The quirky characters and storyline were the only things that made the original BloodRayne video game worth playing.)
In the film, half-vampire Rayne (played by Kristanna Loken of Terminator 3 fame) escapes her carnival captors and hooks up with a bunch of vampire hunters led by Valdimir (Michael Madsen). He and fellow hunters Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez) and Sebastian (Matthew Davis) are on the trail of chief vampire Kagan (Oscar-winning Ben Kingsley, obviously in need of a paycheck). Meanwhile, other figures loom on the sidelines including Katarin’s father Elrich (Billy Zane - yes, you heard that right) and Leonid (Meat Loaf Aday). Additional medium star power is provided by Will Sanderson, Udo Kier and Michael Paré.
If that all seems like a mish-mosh destined for the glory of so-bad-it’s-good, you’d be mistaken. BloodRayne is straight-up so-bad-it’s-bad.
It starts with Boll’s world-famous casting policy. He basically scheduled the filming, then casts around to see who’s available, wants a paycheck and a few weeks on location. This is the only way you can end up with Billy Zane playing the father of Michelle Rodriguez, who is only twelve years his junior. With the exception of the lead (who, one assumes, Boll put at least a modicum of thought into), the cast is universally mis-cast. Only Zane (as he so often does) tries to infuse his character with some kind of life (even if it’s an oddball mentality incongruous with his position in the film). Madsen, in particular, needs to be pointed to. He can be very effective in the right role (like Kill Bill), but when he coasts, he gives nothing. (And word is, he was never sober on set.) Ben Kingsley should know better than to get involved in this kind of thing. But he’s been able to bring some substance to low-budget films in the past (things like Slipstream come to mind), yet just doesn’t seem interested here.
It must be said, as I mentioned in my review of T3, that Kristanna Loken has real screen presence. She’s the one thing really worth watching in BloodRayne, and not just because she’s an attractive woman. She has a way of making the dreadful nature of her material less noticable. She can’t really redeem it or anything, but at least she can keep me interested, which is more than all the rest are able to do.
So here it is in a nutshell: BloodRayne is a bad film that virtually no one will enjoy. If all you want is a lot of blood, a bit of flesh and lots of underclad pretty girls (real Romanian hookers, people! - they’re cheaper than actresses), there may be enough for you here. But I doubt even the most purient out there will ever want to see it again.