I Finally Watched Bloodrayne for the First Time - Part 1
Uwe Boll is a man of infamy in certain social circles and is relatively unknown outside of those circles. If you are unfamiliar with him, he’s a film director/producer known for taking video game properties and turning them in to cheaply-made, extremely flawed films that have earned reputations as some of the “worst movies ever made.” His efforts were more prominent in early 2000’s with titles like Alone in the Dark, Postal, House of the Dead, and Far Cry, among others. However, one film franchise that he carried into the next decade—which became an entire trilogy—was what most people considered his worst: Bloodrayne.
Loosely based on the Bloodrayne video games that came out in the early 2000’s, these movies were always considered the lowest of the low. I haven’t seen every one of Boll’s movies, because I have better things to do with my time, but I’ve seen enough to know what to expect in terms of quality, style, craft, and acting. With such infamy surrounding the Bloodrayne movies—of which I originally thought there were only two—I sat down with a tall beer in my hand and said, “Why not?!” And when I saw the second one was available afterwards, I said with an even taller beer in my hand, “Why not another one?!”
Bloodrayne (2005) - Review
Pros
Michael Madsen is clearly drunk in every scene and just makes it funny
Stiff acting from most of the cast is pretty laughable
Billy Zane in a bad wig acting hoity-toity
Meatloaf in a bad wig acting….however he wanted to act
One of the goofier sex-scenes I’ve witnessed
Sort of has a plot
Cons
Sluggishly slow plot progression
Action scenes are poorly shot, blurry, and often look goofier than they’re supposed to
So many bad wigs
CGI that didn’t look good then and isn’t entertainingly bad now
Plot & Thoughts
There are probably plenty of other cons I could come up with, but when it comes to a movie like this, many end up being pros at how laughable everything can be. Bloodrayne is a bad movie (duh) but is it entertainingly bad? All the negativity surrounding this movie as Boll’s worst of the bunch led me to believe that it wasn’t even laughably bad. I beg to disagree.
Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a half-human, half-vampire hybrid known as a “dumpere” who is stuck traveling in a freak show among a group of gypsies in the “eighteenth” century. The movie and IMDB claim it’s the eighteenth century, but that would mean it was the 1700’s, which is not accurate based on the clothing and the technology featured in the film, which is more medieval. However, if I correct everything down to the synopsis that was shared with IMDB, I’ll never finish this review.
Rayne escapes her captors in a fit of blood-rage by going around and sucking people’s blood and stabbing them with some blades she acquired, becoming a fugitive on the run. Vladamir (Michael Madsen), Sebastion (Matthew Davis), and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez) are a group of vampire hunters who pick up her trail and start looking for her. Unbeknownst to any of them, she’s a potential ally against the evil vampire lord, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), who rules the region. Kagan is Rayne’s father (?) in that he is the one who killed her mother and bit her while she was pregnant, making her a part-vampire child—I don’t really remember if he was also responsible for the other part of the baby-making process, but I also don’t care. Rayne’s out for revenge against him and soon finds companionship in the ones hunting her.
Kagan won’t sit around and do nothing, however (even though he totally does for the entire movie). He sends his henchmen out to find Rayne upon hearing of her dramatic escape. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, she figures out the video-game quest that she needs to go on to beat Kagan and starts looking for vampire artifacts to power up and improve her character stats. So there are a few scenes where she’s doing some Indiana Jones stuff in between dismembering and disemboweling guys with her signature weird weapons.
It’s clear that Boll and his team were given more of a budget than usual with this movie. I’m sure it still wasn’t that much, considering the quality of the make-up, costumes, and wigs. However, it was shot in Romania instead of the usual tax-free zones of Canada Boll likes to use, it had a lot of helicopter shots to pad out the plot, and it used a fair amount of blood/gore practical effects. There were still some bad CGI moments that didn’t look good back in 2005, but it was clear that the filmmakers were proud of their gore effects by how much was on-screen. Not to mention, there was even a pre-credits sequence that just was a montage of all their gore effects. It was pretty stupid.
I’m not saying that you’re going to have a good time watching Bloodrayne. I tuned out for a lot of it and did some other things while it was going through the duller moments of the movie. When it got to the action, it wasn’t much better, but it was at least laughable for how bad it all looked and the excessive practical effects. Nothing makes you laugh quite like seeing a group of five guys just hitting a torso on the ground with their swords in bored, repeated motions.
The acting is pretty stiff all around, with those who are capable of acting looking either bored, drunk, or both. Kristanna Loken and Matthew Davis are the ones who are trying but who also don’t seem to know what they’re doing most of the time. Michael Madsen is clearly drunk in all of his scenes, but he doesn’t seem like he’s having the worst time of the bunch. Meatloaf and Billy Zane were probably my favorites of the film for a couple reasons. They weren’t in it long enough to really get on my nerves and they both hammed up their performances. Ben Kingsley’s appearance in this movie is as depressing as you might expect. At least in Dragonheart 3 (yes, there is more than one) he was just a voice and didn’t have to sit in a chair with a dumb wig on his head for most of his shots. It’s clear they didn’t have him available for much of the filming time because 90% of Kingsley’s presence in this movie is him on a throne, in an empty room, with a bad wig on his head, divvying up orders. Apparently he always wanted to play a vampire in a movie, but he chose his role poorly.
I can’t really defend Bloodrayne in any way other than it’s not as bad as some of Boll’s other films. It’s not entirely unwatchable, as there are things going on in the plot and some goofiness to the action. It gets pretty dull in some spots as it tries to pad out the film length with some weak characterization, lengthy helicopter shots, and meaningless dialogue meant to build intrigue and distrust in the characters that we don’t care about. But when it gets bad, it gets real bad, and it can be pretty funny as a result.
TL;DR Conclusion
It is very easy for me to say that if you do not enjoy watching bad movies, that you should steer clear of Bloodrayne, though, you probably already knew that and didn’t even bother to read the review. If you are, in fact, a fan of watching bad movies, there is some entertainment to be gained. I wouldn’t recommend watching it without some social lubricants and a friend or two to rip on it, but it’s not unwatchable without Rifftrax behind it. It’s certainly better than its sequel…