BloodRayne - Film Review
To truly appreciate just how far video game movies have come, one might recommend viewing Super Mario Bros., however there is a place far darker and grimmer than even that. There was a time that the infamous director, Uwe Boll, cornered the market on these atrocities, and thus we continued our journey into what just might be the nexus of foul blockbuster movies.
*General Information
BloodRayne is a fantasy action movie based off the once-famous BloodRayne video games. It is the third video game movie Uwe Boll directed and was apparently produced by Boll's own company, Boll KG Productions. It hit theaters on 6 January 2006, which was around a year after the second video game hit store shelves. If the poster alone doesn't make it clear, BloodRayne completely bombed at the box office by making less than even one fifth of its original budget. It was also nominated for a whopping six categories at the Golden Raspberry Awards, although it didn't win any (I guess that's good?). Somehow, this movie spawned two direct-to-video sequels in 2007 and 2010.
**
BloodRayne is a fantasy action movie based off the once-famous BloodRayne video games. It is the third video game movie Uwe Boll directed and was apparently produced by Boll's own company, Boll KG Productions. It hit theaters on 6 January 2006, which was around a year after the second video game hit store shelves. If the poster alone doesn't make it clear, BloodRayne completely bombed at the box office by making less than even one fifth of its original budget. It was also nominated for a whopping six categories at the Golden Raspberry Awards, although it didn't win any (I guess that's good?). Somehow, this movie spawned two direct-to-video sequels in 2007 and 2010.
**The original game's tasteful cover art
The BloodRayne franchise appears to have hit its zenith at the same point as when this movie came out as almost all of the merchandise for the IP released throughout the early 2000's. I never played the games although I've heard they're actually quite good. T&A was center stage in video games back during that time, however the games were apparently on par with the likes of Dante's Inferno and God of War. The last gasp of the franchise was in 2011 when a side-scrolling beat 'em up installment was released for Xbox Live and PSN. Unfortunately, BloodRayne now appears to be little more than a relic of the PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube era.
The Story
The human-vampire hybrid, Rayne (played terribly by Kristanna Loken), escapes from carnival captors/rapists to go on a mission of vengeance against vampire lord, Kagan (Ben Kingsley). Kagan raped and murdered Rayne's mother and is also somehow Rayne's father too. Rayne ends up getting embroiled in a race between Kagan's forces and vampire hunters known as the Brimstone Society as they search for three body parts that belonged to a long-dead legendary vampire.
***
****
The Story
The human-vampire hybrid, Rayne (played terribly by Kristanna Loken), escapes from carnival captors/rapists to go on a mission of vengeance against vampire lord, Kagan (Ben Kingsley). Kagan raped and murdered Rayne's mother and is also somehow Rayne's father too. Rayne ends up getting embroiled in a race between Kagan's forces and vampire hunters known as the Brimstone Society as they search for three body parts that belonged to a long-dead legendary vampire.
The story pretty much just plods along without much sense of urgency, which isn't helped by the characters making incredibly stupid decisions throughout the whole thing. The McGuffin hunt never really goes anywhere once Rayne inevitably faces off with Kagan, while information is routinely dumped on viewers via exposition (frequently by Michael Madsen). Let's be honest though, if you cared about the story, you would've stopped watching after the first five minutes.
Special Effects/Atmosphere
The majority of the movie looks like fairly sub-standard dark fantasy as everyone's clothes are a little too clean and neat, while set-design is pretty ho-hum. I will applaud Boll's work on the vampire lair that Meatloaf shows up in as it's decked out with actual Romanian prostitutes (they're cheaper than paying extras) and corpses of people that apparently serve as fountain drink dispensaries for blood. Beyond that, most of the dungeons and castle areas look like they belong to a theme park.
The majority of the movie looks like fairly sub-standard dark fantasy as everyone's clothes are a little too clean and neat, while set-design is pretty ho-hum. I will applaud Boll's work on the vampire lair that Meatloaf shows up in as it's decked out with actual Romanian prostitutes (they're cheaper than paying extras) and corpses of people that apparently serve as fountain drink dispensaries for blood. Beyond that, most of the dungeons and castle areas look like they belong to a theme park.
***Meatloaf seemed to be the only one showing real effort, but that might've just been because he was surrounded by prostitutes
One of the most memorable aspects of this movie are the numerous continuity errors that flow through this thing. In one of Michael Madsen's scenes, it appears that they decided to leave in a scene where you can hear (and see) Madsen turning a page in his script during one of his many exposition dumps. My favorite error though was when there was a scene where Ben Kingsley's wig apparently went missing and he was simply bald. Now, as this movie apparently takes place in the 18th Century, I figured that maybe Kingsley's hair was supposed to be a wig, however this was disproven by the movie when it shriveled up when Kagan was defeated by Rayne (spoilers, sorry).
The Acting
There is no doubt that the big name actors in this movie were slumming when they signed on, but Michael Madsen looks like he was genuinely under duress during the filming of this movie. There are several scenes where he's simply moving as slowly and lazily as possible. There were a couple of fight scenes where Madsen kind of just shrugs off his attackers as though he can't be bothered to deal with that right now. Ben Kingsley looked like he was sleepwalking through this movie (perhaps that's why he lost his wig), but nothing beats Madsen's awful performance.
There is no doubt that the big name actors in this movie were slumming when they signed on, but Michael Madsen looks like he was genuinely under duress during the filming of this movie. There are several scenes where he's simply moving as slowly and lazily as possible. There were a couple of fight scenes where Madsen kind of just shrugs off his attackers as though he can't be bothered to deal with that right now. Ben Kingsley looked like he was sleepwalking through this movie (perhaps that's why he lost his wig), but nothing beats Madsen's awful performance.
****Michael Madsen looks bored, even when he's being stabbed
I haven't seen Kristanna Loken in too many things (she plays a Terminator in T3), but her performance in this movie was completely forgettable. It's pretty clear there were two big reasons why she was cast for her role however those assets only go so far. Her acting was wooden, which might even be worse than the awful acting by co-star, Michelle Rodriguez. I think Rodriguez was still trying to establish herself at this point in her career so you can see she puts in a little effort. Despite that, her random British accent is hilariously bad and her awful outfits (one appeared to be a pink denim jacket) just made things worse.
The Best of the Best: Meatloaf (the singer) having a sex orgy with real-life Romanian prostitutes while wearing a powdered wig.
The Worst of the Worst: Ben Kingsley's wig that may or may not be a sentient alien life-form.
The Worst of the Worst: Ben Kingsley's wig that may or may not be a sentient alien life-form.
Calhooey Score: 2/10 - So bad it's good
Would I Recommend?
This movie hits that sweet-spot of being uniformly bad through-and-through to the point of where it is entertaining just to behold. The laziness of some of the actors might drag the film down a bit, but I find that it amplifies the hilarity even more. This is a great bad movie to watch, just please don't take it seriously for a single second.
-------------------------------------------------Spoiler Comments-----------------------------------------------------
- I wonder if Billy Zane got his hair done by the same person that did Ben Kingsley's.
- Speaking of hair, mullets were apparently really in-style during the 18th Century I guess.
- I loved that Michael Madsen's plan to rescue Rayne from Kagan's castle was to stage a two-man siege. I was amazed and astounded that it didn't work for some reason.
- I guess Sebastian's story about Vladimir killing his parents because they turned into vampires was so hot that Rayne just had to jump his bones right then and there.
- If I hear the term "dhampir" one more time, I think I'll go postal...
----------------------------------------------------References--------------------------------------------------
*TvTropes. (n.d.). BloodRayne film cover image. Retrieved from: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Bloodrayne.
**Wikipedia. (2020, May 18). BloodRayne video game cover image. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BloodRayne_(video_game).
***Hoffman, J. (2007, August 31). Meatloaf BloodRayne image. Retrieved from: http://jordanhoffman.com/2007/08/31/bloodrayne-2006-uwe-boll-d/.
****Cinemorgue. (n.d.). Michael Madsen image. Fandom. Retrieved from: https://cinemorgue.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Madsen.
Comments
Post a Comment