Rayne who's a dhampir (it's no spelling mistake, but a half-human, half-vampire) sets out to take revenge on Kagan, king of the vampires, who raped and murdered her mother.
Been playing quite a lot of Bloodrayne 1-2 on PS2 so of course it was interesting to see what they've made of it, going from being a video game into being a movie. And I must say that they've done pretty well with the transfer, since we get a lot of things that are important in the game in the movie, and it's fun to see and recognize these things on screen. So at least Mr Boll should get some credit for staying true to the game. I really hope this'll be the case with Silent Hill as well. Resident Evil failed big time in doing so, so at least Bloodrayne's got that going for it if nothing else. But if you haven't played the video game, and do not tend to do so before watching Bloodrayne, the movie has even less to offer.
Bloodrayne takes place in eighteenth century Romania were Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is travelling with some carnival. She's locked up in a cage and has to perform in the carnival, although the word freakshow would be a better term to describe it. She manages to escape, eating away at the carnival people, after all she's half vampire. Later she hooks up with two vampire hunters (one being Michael Madsen), and after some time manages to convince them that she's not a bad vampire (you've seen Blade haven't you? She kinda has the same thing going for her).
 
There also another girl that hangs with the vampire hunters, and that girl being Michelle Rodriguez, the extremely cocky girl in Resident Evil, and she's just as cocky here. To be honest, I hate watching her. Anyway, what Rayne wants to do is to take revenge on Kagan, the vampire king who raped and slayed her mother. And together with the two vampire hunters, she sets out to avenge her late mother.
I expected Bloodrayne to be complete crap since the director, Uwe Boll, has proven to be great at making extremely shitty flicks, just take a look at his House of the Dead, or the other video game adaptation Alone in the Dark. You kinda wonder how the man actually can make such horrible flicks and still be allowed to produce more and more crap. Seriously, I don't get it. But Bloodrayne is actually slightly better than the two previously mentioned, it's not very good but at least it's somewhat entertaining at times.
The surroundings are quite nice and everything has this medieval time feel to it. Sometimes it's just too flashy for it's own good and it just feels kinda unnecessary. The story is easy to follow and the overall tempo in the movie is pretty good, but it's not interesting all the way, and lacks big-time at a few places.
The acting is not as bad as expected. Kristanna Loken who stars as Rayne actually fits really well for the part and is at least better than in Terminator 3 (I guess that doesn't say much). Billy Zane has a very small role in the movie and he's just typical Billy Zane, not great but not bad, although his haircut looks ridiculous. Michael Madsen's character feels a bit too stiff and when he speaks, it's not very convincing and feels kinda forced. Meat Loaf appears as well for a brief moment and is a disaster.
The overall enviroment of the movie is pretty cool, and it gets some credit for staying true to the video game. It sure has a lot of faults, and while some are easy to overlook and ignore, some are just too big and drags the movie down. It's somewhat entertaining but definitely not memorable.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Uwe Boll
WRITING CREDITS: Guinevere Turner
GENRE: Horror, Action, Fantasy
CAST: Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Madsen
COUNTRY: USA, Germany
RUNTIME: 95 min
RATING: 4/10
Bloodrayne Website/IMDB Click here
Bloodrayne Trailer Click here
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