9
Bloodrayne isn't so much a bad movie as it is a mediocre one, and in movies nothing is worse than mediocre.
Had it been bad, I probably would have enjoyed some elements of it. I would have, perhaps, found it campy or silly or just worthy of ridicule, but what I saw last night was really just, just mediocre.
It's hard to pinpoint what I didn't like about the movie.
The dialogue wasn't very good. The acting was passable. The stunts may very well have been decent. But the thing is, during every. Single. Fight. That. Happened. In. The. Movie. They. Used. Short. Cuts. That. Aways. Broke. Up. The. Action.
Annoying, isn't it?
Now imagine watching that.
It looked like there were some decent fight scenes, decent, mind you, not great, but the camera never stayed with a particular angle long enough for me to tell.
I'm guessing that's because there were really only a few well-choreographed fights and the rest were crap, so Boll decided to go with these choppy scenes to muddle the good with the bad.
The film itself felt that way as well.
There wasn't really anything going on in the scenes, which is weird, because it felt like they took forever to sit through.
The movie opens in a tavern and within seconds a vampire is dead. Minutes later you see some fair special effects work when Rayne makes her appearance. But there really wasn't any substance.
It's almost like Boll tried to stuff too much story into the movie, forcing himself to skip major plot points. But then he went back and removed the plot entirely, leaving only the jumbled scenes.
It's really hard to explain.
Think of it as experiencing a bunch of scenes from the video game accept you're not in control, you're watching your buddy play and he's not very fun to be around.
I mean, stuff, weird stuff, would pop up in the movie and Rayne would deal with it and move on and you're left thinking: What the fuck was that?
Like what was up with that Zombie Monk guy? And really, there isn't anything more I can tell you to help you understand what I'm talking about.
And why didn't the other monks care when she killed him? I mean, shouldn't they care?
There were some interesting scenes in the movie: Like when Rayne first goes on a little rampage. I kind of liked how that was handled. And the vampire special effects—about 50 percent of the time—were cool.
And Boll really did a good job with the movie's sole, and completely needless, sex scene. I say that with complete sincerity.
Kristanna Loken is smoking hot and the scene is both passionate and alarmingly well-directed. It's as if Boll is as fascinated with a topless Loken as the rest of us.
I'll have to see Boll's other movies to figure out if this one is better, but my guess is that it is.
I had a scary thought as I drove home last night from the movie.
What if Boll really is a gamer who just wants to make good movies? What if he's struggling to improve his skills and just happens to have the financial backing to be able to do that in front of an international audience?
I'll leave you with the short take on this review, uttered by one of the four other people in the theater as he walked out during the ending credits: Holy Shit.
