Bloodrayne is a film that is shockingly competent. On almost every level the film is
competent. For the first fifteen minutes my jaw was on the floor. This film had wall-to-wall competence. Then things stopped making sense, the action picked up and the film felt like it had skipped a reel. And I remembered I was watching a film by Dr. Uwe Boll. And whatever his strengths may be
coherence of plot is most assuredly not one of them.
The film tells the story er tries to tell the story of Rayne, a half vampire who isn't like Blade, because she has big breasts, and her battles with Ben Kingsley, who might be her father. He apparently made regular house calls to rape Rayne's mother, probably to punish her for naming her daughter something stupid like Rayne.
Ben Kingsley, playing a bored guy in it for the paycheck/vampire overlord, is afraid of Rayne because of some prophecy that is never revealed to the audience. Rayne hates him because he raped her mother and well, the plot's mechanics call for her to hate him. Everyone hates Kingsley's character because he's some evil guy, but I didn't see him do anything even remotely mean to anyone except Rayne. He just looked like some sad old guy with a huge nose, which isn't exactly what I think of when I picture evil.
The story starts with Rayne as a circus freak, drinking the blood of goats. One night, someone sneaks into her cage to rape her in her sleep. (Rape is apparently Dr. Boll's second favorite plot device next to prophecies.) Luckily, she has an empty bottle of liquor to kill the guy with. After killing the would be rapist and sucking his blood Rayne goes crazy, killing everyone in sight, including her best friend, and all of this is told completely out or order, Tarantino style for no discernible reason. Wisely, the temporal shift gimmick is completely abandoned after the 20 minute mark.
Meanwhile, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez and Matthew Davis are stalking the countryside looking for Rayne because well, I guess that prophecy. Billy Zane, playing a guy wearing a dead skunk as a toupee, is Rodriquez's father (which is beyond absurd as they couldn't look more dissimilar) who works for Kingsley or, maybe not. It doesn't really matter because he is only in the movie as a plot device to play Judas and speed up the action in the third act anyway.
Rayne and the three musketeers meet up and form a quartet before joining an army and going on a Rocky style training bend. (Everything is imminent until Rayne has to have training scenes, and then they have weeks to dawdle away). Rodriguez hates Rayne for some reason and Davis arbitrarily gives her some loving after revealing that his parents were vampires. Then they all go on a quest.
Much of this movie relies on characters following psychic premonitions which they have no foreshadowing or basis for or following prophecies that are never clearly explained to the viewer. In that sense it is very much like a video game where, during the loading screen, you are told your level objectives. Rayne feels like the outline to a video game itself rather than an expansion of one. A psychic tells Rayne of three oracles (the aforementioned quest) taken from an ultimate vampire, that for some reason give the owner of said objects magical powers. So, Rayne goes on a mini-game style quest to find each one of the three oracles. but she only finds two, and they don't seem to actually do anything for her. More confounding is that these oracles are parts of an ancient vampire's body and could, according to yet another prophecy, allow their bearer to control the world. But for some reason, no one questions that this original vampire was killed and dismembered, making these pieces not that intimidating.
There are even scenes that feel like boss fights. In a monks' temple there is an ogre underground that Rayne must fight and kill to get the key to open a door that reveals a jump puzzle that Rayne must complete in order to get to one of the mystical objects.
The acting is all pretty bad. Aside from a hilarious 10 minute scene where Meat Loaf Aday shows up and throws some much needed enthusiasm into the film with a character that looks like Beethoven and acts like Syd Barrett sadly, he is quickly dispatched. Michelle Rodriguez is hilariously awful as the brooding angry chick who's in it for the money, while Michael Madsen plays the older, wiser, drunker warrior with a cool voice, who is in it for the money. Billy Zane over acts enough to make it physically painful for me to watch him, and Ben Kingsley's performance made me feel like he had taken a few Quaaludes before each take.
Kristanna Loken is passable as Rayne. Her accent comes and goes, but so does everyone else's, and she looks very pretty. She also does a nude scene, which aside from its obvious interest piquing also doubles as the funniest bit of soft-core porn this side of the Toxic Avenger.
the movie has some above average gore and CGI effects. There is nothing here as awful as the monsters in Alone in the Dark and the effect shots are pretty well integrated. It's not amazing, but it is impressive considering the film's pedigree. Annoyingly, these gore shots are inserted with no context in the middle of fight scenes where you have absolutely no idea what is going on. The angles were so overly close that most action scenes were just disorienting. And when there were wide angles, they were poorly framed, or worse yet, shot at 16 frames a second during the finale.
It's leaps and bounds better than his past work, but it's just depressingly average in its best moments.
The film tells the story er tries to tell the story of Rayne, a half vampire who isn't like Blade, because she has big breasts, and her battles with Ben Kingsley, who might be her father. He apparently made regular house calls to rape Rayne's mother, probably to punish her for naming her daughter something stupid like Rayne.
Ben Kingsley, playing a bored guy in it for the paycheck/vampire overlord, is afraid of Rayne because of some prophecy that is never revealed to the audience. Rayne hates him because he raped her mother and well, the plot's mechanics call for her to hate him. Everyone hates Kingsley's character because he's some evil guy, but I didn't see him do anything even remotely mean to anyone except Rayne. He just looked like some sad old guy with a huge nose, which isn't exactly what I think of when I picture evil.
The story starts with Rayne as a circus freak, drinking the blood of goats. One night, someone sneaks into her cage to rape her in her sleep. (Rape is apparently Dr. Boll's second favorite plot device next to prophecies.) Luckily, she has an empty bottle of liquor to kill the guy with. After killing the would be rapist and sucking his blood Rayne goes crazy, killing everyone in sight, including her best friend, and all of this is told completely out or order, Tarantino style for no discernible reason. Wisely, the temporal shift gimmick is completely abandoned after the 20 minute mark.
Meanwhile, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez and Matthew Davis are stalking the countryside looking for Rayne because well, I guess that prophecy. Billy Zane, playing a guy wearing a dead skunk as a toupee, is Rodriquez's father (which is beyond absurd as they couldn't look more dissimilar) who works for Kingsley or, maybe not. It doesn't really matter because he is only in the movie as a plot device to play Judas and speed up the action in the third act anyway.
Rayne and the three musketeers meet up and form a quartet before joining an army and going on a Rocky style training bend. (Everything is imminent until Rayne has to have training scenes, and then they have weeks to dawdle away). Rodriguez hates Rayne for some reason and Davis arbitrarily gives her some loving after revealing that his parents were vampires. Then they all go on a quest.
Much of this movie relies on characters following psychic premonitions which they have no foreshadowing or basis for or following prophecies that are never clearly explained to the viewer. In that sense it is very much like a video game where, during the loading screen, you are told your level objectives. Rayne feels like the outline to a video game itself rather than an expansion of one. A psychic tells Rayne of three oracles (the aforementioned quest) taken from an ultimate vampire, that for some reason give the owner of said objects magical powers. So, Rayne goes on a mini-game style quest to find each one of the three oracles. but she only finds two, and they don't seem to actually do anything for her. More confounding is that these oracles are parts of an ancient vampire's body and could, according to yet another prophecy, allow their bearer to control the world. But for some reason, no one questions that this original vampire was killed and dismembered, making these pieces not that intimidating.
There are even scenes that feel like boss fights. In a monks' temple there is an ogre underground that Rayne must fight and kill to get the key to open a door that reveals a jump puzzle that Rayne must complete in order to get to one of the mystical objects.
The acting is all pretty bad. Aside from a hilarious 10 minute scene where Meat Loaf Aday shows up and throws some much needed enthusiasm into the film with a character that looks like Beethoven and acts like Syd Barrett sadly, he is quickly dispatched. Michelle Rodriguez is hilariously awful as the brooding angry chick who's in it for the money, while Michael Madsen plays the older, wiser, drunker warrior with a cool voice, who is in it for the money. Billy Zane over acts enough to make it physically painful for me to watch him, and Ben Kingsley's performance made me feel like he had taken a few Quaaludes before each take.
Kristanna Loken is passable as Rayne. Her accent comes and goes, but so does everyone else's, and she looks very pretty. She also does a nude scene, which aside from its obvious interest piquing also doubles as the funniest bit of soft-core porn this side of the Toxic Avenger.
the movie has some above average gore and CGI effects. There is nothing here as awful as the monsters in Alone in the Dark and the effect shots are pretty well integrated. It's not amazing, but it is impressive considering the film's pedigree. Annoyingly, these gore shots are inserted with no context in the middle of fight scenes where you have absolutely no idea what is going on. The angles were so overly close that most action scenes were just disorienting. And when there were wide angles, they were poorly framed, or worse yet, shot at 16 frames a second during the finale.
It's leaps and bounds better than his past work, but it's just depressingly average in its best moments.