Blood: The Last Vampire

I just got back from seeing this movie and was disappointed. I actually knew relatively little about the movie aside from the plot synopsis going in, and still I was disappointed.

The more I think about the movie, the lower I have been setting the ranking. The acting was for the most part okay or sub-par: the main character, Saya, had one look, the sulking schoolgirl. Alice, the white girl side-kick seemed to do well, but have terrible direction, as if her character was never quite in the right mood for the scene.

The action scenes were pretty weak. School girl swings her sword and a demon gets cut in half and super CGI ichor comes out. Whole bunch of demons attack, girl swings her sword and a couple demons fall spurting CGI ichor. I don't need an action scene to be believable, but I do expect it to have life. There was one action scene that reminded me of old school ninja movies (which is actually a good thing) but for the most part the action was dull and little more than a series of decent stills strung together.

The writing was campy and sub-par. A number of scenes caused the audience to laugh because the dialog and scene as a whole just came across as ridiculous.

I think the best way to describe the movie is a Frenchman making an American movie from a Japanese script.

With credit to the creators of this live action edition of Blood: The Last Vampire, they really didn't have much to work with to begin with and before I pick apart the movie I feel obligated to preface with this. As an owner of the original Anime and a fan of the Blood series in itself, I was looking forward to a nice tie-in with the saga of Saya the Femme Vampire Slayer. What I got in this movie was a nice collection of katana action, low-budget CGI and poor acting. This isn't to say that BTLV is a bad movie, just one that I would only recommend to fans of the series itself.

What the movie tries to do with the aforementioned anime, is take that exact same story and expand it a bit to give us some history on Saya. We are shown her human father, vampire mother and even a childhood love interest. Our Saya is given emotion (she even cries a bit) and worst than that, she is given a sidekick in Alice McKee (Allison Miller). Though I found Saya (Gianna Jun) to be a very good casting choice, which coupled with the choppy but interesting action scenes, made her seem similar to the anime Saya, I found Alice to be absolutely unbearable. The character Alice is the American element to the movie, being a rebellious teenager stealing daddy's car, talking back and doing all the annoying things that teenagers in movies tend to do.

The jerky camera angles, made some of the early fighting scenes very confusing. However it does get better as the movie progresses and some of the battles are quite interesting once the camera settles down. The acting was not bad as a whole aside from Alice whose crying and screaming were so fake I found myself shaking my head every time she had a burst of "emotion". The direction was good enough and we get a back story as it progresses unlike the original anime. Still when it ended I was a bit confused about Saya even with the history given and it made me wonder why they didn't stick with more of the elements from the anime series.

If it were only up to actress Gianna Jun and her portrayal of the killer Vampire Saya, I would rank this with high points but the weight of the bad acting by the supporting cast, the already silly story, awful CGI and the unnecessary military portion of the movie drug it down way below that. Although I would watch it again, this would probably be due to my being a fan of the character moreso than a movie watcher.

Full review: www.SpicyMovieDogs.com

This movie has everything going for it.

There's action, tragedy, great cinematography, good directing.

But, there is a great problem with the script, its almost like budget cuts came in half through the movie and its not that they sacrificed quality in the process.

It feels like they were half way through a 3 hour epic and they wrote in a quick step to the final scene, to make it 2 hours.

Sure if you want to play up to the existential art-house of cinema the ending would have played out, but the entire movie before it wasn't going in that direction.

It seems like some parts of the movie were directed by somebody else, especially the flashbacks. The flashbacks alone crap on the rest of the movie.

I guarantee this movie for entertainment. A bit of tragedy and entertainment. But there is definitely a hole in the movie that should make everyone who watches it think 'WTF', how did it even get to this point, where is the rest of the movie.

If it had the rest of the movie, its 9/10.

For what it is, its a quality action/vampire movie.

For what it's not, wait for DVD(as long as its on a big TV and HD) because some of the sword scenes are brutal.

The movie started out quite promisingly. But after the first 30-odd minutes, I could tell it was going to be a drag.

The stunts got old really fast, the slowmos got quite irritating (and there were *plenty* of them), the monsters that pop up do so in copious amounts for what seemed like a really small scene, the REAL monsters look like badly made puppets - and the finale was... hhmmmm. Quite a let down. Trite comes to mind. Oh, and a LOT of WTF moments.

Sorry, I'm quite prepared to leave my brains at the door for a good action flick, but this is really not it. I would have to leave my brains on the moon to find this an exciting weekend-type movie.

And I cannot for the life of me figure out how the hell this movie got an 8 rating at this point in time.

This is one movie that needs a do-over. I say this as a fan of the original anime. The leading actress was good, her teacher (Kato) was good, actually, the cast were fine, it was the script that's bad and the CGI was awful. This movie needs some money thrown at it with a better writer. I believe the director had his hands tied 'cause there wasn't enough money for what he wanted to do. I've seen directors make a wonderful movie out of nothing but then, at least the script was sound. Here, the director had no chance 'cause the script sucked and he had no money (haha!) I blame the producer for this. It's their job to bring in good talent. Talented writers, directors, actors, and money.

I hope someone with balls picks this film up and does a sequel that does the original title justice.