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| Can Hollywood make any more decent Vampire Films? Answer: No. |
| I'm sure that I wasn't the only one eagerly anticipating this movie, what with it's flashy action shots, sexy leather, and Kate Beckinsales. Unfortunately, this Len Wiseman directed crap-fest is basically another example of HURRAY-FOR-GOTHS! The pace starts off fast, but you'll quickly lose interest once you realize that none of the characters are very interesting, and even worse, lack any real motivation (That is, until you wait until the very end.) The movie opens with the seen-too-often trailer clip of Selene (Beckinsale) jumping of the building and landing oh-so-cooly. Too bad I've seen it 5,000 times before, it lost it's effect. Well, at least now I can see something new... a trendy looking person in leather and trenchcoat shooting a weapon in each hand down a long corridor... oh wait, I liked that scene the first time I saw it... when it was in the Matrix. (And we all liked that joke the first time we heard it, from David Spade.) From then on, the movie just gets boring and convoluted, desperately trying to make you care, but failing miserably. |
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| But don't worry, they didn't just fail at pacing and characters, they made one of the stupidest ideas in vampire history... LIQUID SUNSHINE!!! That's right, the werewolves somehow managed to figure out a way to LIQUIFY LIGHT WAVES!!! Sure, they could've said that the bullets were filled with holy water, maybe even garlic juice, hell I thought it would have been better if it were Van Hellsing's piss, but that's ok, because they drop the subject of where it came from entirely after they bring it up. I like to think it came from happy thoughts and rainbows. |
| "Should I even be looking at this?" |
| Nevermind the poor, on the run werewolves inventive ammo, let's look at the powers the Vampires posses. Well, you see the Vampires... well... They can jump off large buildings... they have reflections... and ummm... oh yeah, they have the power to do nothing but hang out in a mansion all day. That's right, if they're not fighting werewolves, all these vampires are good at is hanging out in a mansion, being as boring as the movie. Just like Goths. Minus the mansion. And minus us paying 8 bucks to watch it. That's creativity for you. |
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| "Umm, I dunno, what do you guys wanna do?" |
| Well, sooner or later they were going to have to bring a plot into this movie, besides "Vampires and Werewolves don't get along too good" So in comes Michael, whose boringness is kept expertly in check with that of everyone else. It seems Michael is a guy who works in a hospital who works in a hospital when he's not.. umm... doing other stuff. Well, the werewolves want him, and Selene wants to know why. So, she tries to get help from their coven leader, Kraven. You can tell he's the leader because he's the only one without an English accent, and he has a power that the other Vampires don't possess, he can deliver lines in such a painful, reading-off-the-script style, it can annoy any mortals within earshot. Well, Kraven (who is the way too predictable turncoat of the group) tells the bitch to mind her own damn business, but Selene ain't havin' none of that, mmm-mmm girlfriend. |
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| "What's my line?" |
| So, off she goes to find out what Michaels's all about, when all of a sudden, his apartment is attacked by werewolves! Oh-No! Selene pulls out her trusty gats, that can shoot about 6-shots per second, and starts blasting the Werewolves off the wall. It's not stopping them fast enough, so she decides to make an escape by shooting through the floor. It's a good thing that she didn't realize that Auto handguns can only hold about 16 shots each without a special clip which she didn't have, or else she'dve been fucked having expended her entire ammo with-in five seconds of continuous firing. I guess that's the other power vampires posses. |
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| "Hi. You won't care about me until the movie's over." |
| Well, before Selene can save poor Michael, he gets bitten by Lucien, the bad dog amongst werewolves. But don't worry about that guy, because the writers thought it best you assumed they did bad things because they were bad guys. So, after the attack, Selene takes Michael in her car back to the Vampire orphanage... UNTIL LUCIEN ATTACKS AND CUTS SELENE'S SHOULDER! Well, after they get away from him, Michael, being the carefully described guy who works in the hospital, tries to dress Selene's wound. I thought this was a cool scene, because it showed that Michael was no longer in any preconceived real world, but a world of fantasy were Vampires are real, and they can regenerate themselves, thus shocking the hell out of this logical character. Oh wait, they didn't do that. The vampire passed out from blood loss, because evidently regeneration is a power that comes and goes when it feels like it. So, the passed out Selene drives into the water, where Michael has to rescue her and perform CPR to bring her back to life. Which brings up a very important point... |
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| "I'm like a doctor and stuff." |
| Well, the rest of the movie is confusing and stupid and oh yeah, I'm sick of thinking about it, so here's the quick version. Selene goes into the vampire chamber where their old masters are put into a sleep chamber like Michael Jackson. This is typically the heaviest guarded place in the entire mansion, but luckily Selene slipped in unoticed when the guard was doing nothing with the rest of the vampires. She awoke Viktor, the only one in the group that seems to actually be a vampire, for help. They eventually learn that Michael is a vampire guy, and the werewolves are going to change him into a half vampire werewolf guy that will be more powerful than both races. That's right, you heard them, a hybrid that can kick the shit out of everyone. I can't WAIT to see this! In the mean time, Selene is trying to save Michael and getting into many gunfights down long corridors against five people, without getting hit... or maybe her regeneration power came back full force. You never can tell with Vampires. Well, finally at the end, it is revealed that the war started because Viktor killed his daughter because she was in love with Lucien. Since Vampires are the masters and werewolves are the servants, that wouldn't do, so centuries later here we are, watching them duke it out, even though the war would've been over when it started seeing how Werewolves guarded the Vampires during the day when they couldn't do anything. "Haha... I killed your love... ok, I have to go to sleep now, please protect me." Yeah. |
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| Well, as the end draws near, Lucien is shot with one of the vampires inventions... liquid SILVER bullets! It took the whole liquid sunshine thing for them to figure it out. These bullets are supposed to be an instant kill, but Lucien spends the last 20 minutes, crawling around, pining for you to be sorry for him. Too bad, you should have let me care about you closer to the middle of the movie, now the only people I feel sorry for are the people who paid for tickets. Luckily this crap fest is almost over, so in the thrilling conclusion the hybrid monster is supposed to come, and be more powerful than either race. I guess they miscalculated, because Nightcrawler of X-Men fame showed up instead. I guess that explains why the monster couldn't do anything it was hyped to, and got it's ass handed to him by the old vampire dude, but c'mon, he's just an elf. Seeing the failure before her, Selene takes a cheap shot at Viktor, slicing his head in two. The End of a crappy movie... and the beggining of another! Yes, they end it with an overly cheezy Yes-there-will-be-a-sequel scene... and in this sequel? TWO NIGHTCRAWLERS!!! Hopefully there won't be anymore old vampire guys to fight, or they'll be fucked. |
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| He may be a Vampire, but he looks about as mentally there as Ronald Reagan. |
| Nightcrawler was in two movies this year. Can you guess which the good one was? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't this one. |
| "I'm here to audition for The Matrix." |
| OK, OK, now not everything about this movie sucked... let's look at the films plus side... KATE BECKINSALE IS HOT!!! |
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| Final Thoughts: A great concept for a story that was unfortunately poorly thought out and horribly executed. Everything that I might've liked about the movie was ruined by poor acting, poor writing, and cliches. I felt no connection with any of the characters and just waited for the whole mess to be over. But if you like to see people shooting guns in different directions while being dark and mysterious (and possibly walking in the rain) then this is the one for you. |
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| Spoilers Below. |