[Movie 286 / Day 304]
A live action remake of an anime horror movie, BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE feels like a wasted opportunity. Saya is a halfling, half-vampire, half-human and her raison d’être is vampire slaying. She is sent undercover on an American military base in Tokyo, where she badly disguises herself as a schoolgirl and quickly dispatches a pair of vampires in the school gym, saving the General’s daughter, Alice, in the process.
Turns out Alice isn’t too happy with her PE teacher for leaving her to die and seeks him out in a rundown bar. Turns out the bar is a hang-out for vampires and before you can say ‘Blade’, Alice is legging it down the street being chased by a lot of vampires. It’s worth mentioning here that these vampires look like you’d expect; evil eyes and pointy teeth, hissing like cats. Anyway, Saya comes out of nowhere, brandishing her sword and launches into a long fight sequence during which she dispatches tens of vampires. Just as it looks like she’s in the clear, some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in years raises its ugly head as the PE teacher turns into some kind of badly-textured demon, grabs Alice and jumps onto a roof top. Saya gives chase and eventually rescues Alice for the third time.
A short time later, Saya and Alice are driving around seemingly aimlessly in a stolen Army truck when the vampire queen’s PA swoops down and steals their roof before knocking them into a ravine. At least, I think that’s what happened. It looked like the truck suddenly developed an anti-gravity device before floating down the ravine at an odd angle. Then there’s a fight on the truck as it’s wedged in the ravine. Then everybody falls off the truck and we suddenly enter a dream world.
This dream world is where Saya faces off against the vampire queen and baddest of all badass demons, Onigen. During this fight, a plot twist is revealed, but by this point you won’t care as you’ll still be trying to work out how and why they ended up in this dream world.
Once it’s all over, we fade back to the real world where Saya is nowhere to be seen and Alice is being loaded on a gurney into the back of an ambulance. Another quick fade as Alice loses consciousness and now we’re in an interogation room as Alice is pumped for information over where Saya has disappeared too. A couple of trite lines and credits roll.
And you’ll be glad to see them roll too. The movie is disjointed at best, featuring horribly choppy editing during the fight sequences, terrible, terrible CGI and several wooden turns. The CGI deserves being singled out for criticism as it is absolutely awful – the blood sprays look more like weightless redcurrant jelly and the demons look unfinished, like someone missed a couple of steps during the rendering process.
It’s a real shame; I was looking forward to seeing it as – on paper at least – it’s BLADE being aided and abetted by the MEN IN BLACK, except Wesley Snipes is replaced by a Japanese schoolgirl and Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones are replaced by people that can’t act very well.
BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE is a hash of several ideas, few of which are fleshed out well enough to pull you into the story before something jars you back out of it again.
My Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 5.4 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 91 mins ]
