BloodRayne.

Review #2317: BloodRayne.

Cast: 

Kristanna Loken (Rayne), Michael Madsen (Vladimir), Ben Kingsley (Kagan), Michelle Rodriguez (Katarin), Matthew Davis (Sebastian), Will Sanderson (Domastir), Geraldine Chaplin (Fortune Teller), Udo Kier (Regal Monk), Meat Loaf (Leonid), Michael Paré (Iancu), and Billy Zane (Elrich) Directed by Uwe Boll (#1765 - In the Name of the King, #1924 - Alone in the Dark, #2144 - House of the Dead)

Review: 

I forgot that Boll wanted to be a filmmaker because he saw Mutiny on the Bounty as a kid...the Marlon Brando version. This was the third film in what you might as well call the Boll Gaming Cycle that came in the wake of House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark (2005). The movie is based on the action-adventure game series of the same name, which began in 2002 involving various locations being visited by a member of the "brimstone Society" to deal with supernatural creatures and Nazis. An "unrated" director's cut came out on DVD, incidentally, which apparently came out with a copy of BloodRayne 2 on it (incidentally, the series has had just one game released since the film came out). The next video game movie Boll did for theaters was In the Name of the King (2007). You might recognize that the screenplay was written by Guinevere Turner, who apparently delivered a first draft a few weeks late that Boll went right in to pick and choose what to use immediately (which was apparently 20%) for the actors to apparently take a crack at it. While the movie was a financial failure, Boll would direct two sequels for the direct-to-video market: BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007) and BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), in which only Michael Paré appears in each film of the "trilogy". 

It probably goes without saying that Boll has not managed to achieve anything in the manner of effective entertainment even when having a video game right there for adaptation. In the aim of blood, dirt, and sex, the success rate is about on the same level as an apple becoming a tomato (one interview had him stating it would possibly be two hours but it ended up being 95 minutes long). It certainly never seems sexy even with its attempts at doing so with leather outfits and I kid you not, hiring actual prostitutes to be in a scene (as one does when filming in Europe). The thing about Boll is that he seems to direct things as if it was a blunt instrument to plow through regardless of who is cast or the scenario. He has a lead actress in Loken that might as well be playing T-X from Terminator 3 all over again. He has a movie where one actor called it an "abomination" that still would say yes to being in another Boll movie. The best parts in the whole movie is either Meat Loaf lounging around with prostitutes or the bits and pieces where Madsen seems interested enough to actually make effort (probably the result of liquid courage, but I can think of worse ways to get through a film). It probably is most amusing to see Zane in the film when you have the whole context: Zane liked being with such a "decisive" director even in a small role and he apparently gave Boll the idea to use Romar Entertainment (which Zane was involved with) as a way to handle distribution of the film to a target of 2,000 theaters...only 950 theaters ended up getting the film on opening day and Boll later sued Zane (incidentally, Zane co-starred alongside Loken in Boll's Darfur film, released in 2009). Christian Slater might not be a particularly great actor, but at least him being in the aforementioned Dark film seemed to make sense. But Kingsley? An Academy Award-winning actor wanting to play a vampire deciding to join here? I suppose it must be a British tradition in the Michael Caine sense, but even Caine was better at this, because Kingsley barely delivers actual substance to what is meant to be a villainous role. One sees more effort in the makeup job than from Kingsley, who can't even play to the cheap seats for something funny. The movie is listless and barely seems competent to actually approach what you might call filmmaking. It just feels like a movie patched together, where even a sequence of someone trying to dodge traps (and water, because ooooh, water) has little weight to actually level attention to. The sex scene might actually inspire confusion over how it is staged more than anything, and yet somehow this is a movie that is more tolerable than Bolero (1984), even with all of the godforsaken wigs. As a whole, this is merely just a boring bad flick, not even measuring up to the lesser vampire movies you've probably seen before. It isn't completely incompetent as with some of Boll's previous line of work because it just is blah B-movie stuff that really should not have tried to be anything more. It is dull and goofy in ways that would probably be amusing with a couple of beers for the turkey night, I suppose.

Overall, I give it 2 out of 10 stars.

House of the Dead.

Review #2144: House of the Dead.

Cast: 

Jonathan Cherry (Rudolph "Rudy" Curien), Ona Grauer (Alicia), Clint Howard (Salish), Ellie Cornell (Casper), Tyron Leitso (Simon), Will Sanderson (Greg), Enuka Okuma (Karma), Kira Clavell (Liberty), Sonya Salomaa (Cynthia), Michael Eklund (Hugh), David Palffy (Castillo), and Jürgen Prochnow (Kirk) Directed by Uwe Boll (#1765 - In the Name of the King and #1924 - Alone in the Dark)

Review: 

Its funny to go backwards when watching an Uwe Boll for the third straight year. This is the film that got people to look upon Boll and say, "What the hell is this doing in so many theaters?" It is loosely based on the video game of the same name that had originally appeared in arcades from Sega in 1996. Apparently, plans for a film first came around in 1998 with the idea that Jesse Dylan would direct from a script that had the involvement of Dylan and Mark Verheiden (most known for scripts such as Timecop). The outline (as provided by a magazine of the time) apparently involved a small college town involving a zombie haven to go with deaths at a rave and "necro-warrior" nerds that rally to fight the walking dead. However, by the time production actually came around, here one is with Boll as director and a script of differing names: the screenplay was done by Dave Parker and Mark Altman (you may recognize him as the co-writer of Free Enterprise (1998), the rom-com involving fans of Star Trek) while the story was done by Dan Bates and Altman. 2002 saw Boll and his production company take charge with said script to make this film, which began production in Vancouver. This was the 8th feature film for Boll as a director, which had seen prior works of horror and dramas such as Heart of America (2002), which most people would probably associate with the DVD markets. A direct-to-video sequel came in 2005 that had Altman serve as writer for screenplay with one returning cast member but, well, no Boll as director (amusingly, Boll would do the sequels to his other video game films of the time). By that time, Boll was ready for his two-pronged 2005 experience of Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne. There apparently is a director's cut that adds in some dialogue and alternative takes to go with pop-ups and you know, I'm just not there for that, man. 

You know that label "so bad it's good"? Sometimes you just want to call that label a crock of crap, and I think you really need to find films like this to really test the theory that a film can be so bad that it could come back to enjoyably goofy to watch. But this is the third straight Boll film to leave me with more irritation than before I pressed play, and I find little redeeming factors beyond the fact that the movie is probably one of few video game adaptations to feature clips from the game that they are adapting (well, technically the film is meant to be a prequel of the first game, which means rather than having an agent name G as the lead, you have the rave stuff here). Someone apparently counted the amount of clips shown at 32! Even the B-movies from the 1960s had something worth following along with in their ambition, this movie just has the turn-table technique for 360-degree shots that make me want to roll my eyes in the same way. Blank slates being spooked by zombies has never felt so lifeless, but by God did Boll accomplish it here. You can predict every movement for 90 minutes but feel so tired when doing so that it doesn't even feel worth it to do so. I know it isn't the worst, because those who have seen Alone in the Dark know what true misery is, but it is up there in the turd mountain. Cherry looks like he would rather be stuck anywhere but here with such a thankless lead role that does him no favors. What's the point of setting up a thing about students looking for a rave if the characters are too damn boring anyway? Even the one shot of nudity just seems to be "okay, next". I swear, if you throw a dart board at a bunch of names of cheapie films, you could land on one with Clint Howard involved in some way with pretty good odds (he also happened to appear in Boll's two previous films). He doesn't exactly rein in a good performance, but I'm sure the checks cleared all the same regardless. Cornell and Prochnow would've been a more interesting pair to really focus on when it comes to scoundrels and people who shoot guns, and yet...you get the idea. If you can remember a single thing about the "villain" in Palffy, you deserve a medal, because the whole thing about "immortality serums" and hordes of zombies under his control is handled with about as much grace as a dirt road with broken glass all over. As a whole, it is a Uwe Boll movie with little to show for its efforts, as it is the kind of thing that looks and feels way cheaper than $12 million. How could anyone approve of this? Well, 20 years have gone by and I certainly can't say that people are going to look upon this film as a lost classic, they just will see it as bland trash to throw onto the pile.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Tomorrow: God help us, Wired. 

Alone in the Dark.

Review #1924: Alone in the Dark.

Cast: 

Christian Slater (Edward Carnby), Tara Reid (Aline Cedrac), Stephen Dorff (Commander Richard Burke), Frank C. Turner (Agent Fischer), Matthew Walker (Professor Lionel Hudgens), Will Sanderson (Agent Miles), and Mike Dopud (Agent Turner) Directed by Uwe Boll (#1765 - In the Name of the King)

Review: 

“You feel the failure already in front of you.” 

You know, there are little things you can dwell on every time you see a film by Uwe Boll. For one, he actually published a dissertation that resulted in him holding a PhD (for narrative structure in TV and literature!). But yes, Dr. Uwe Boll did grow up with a love for film, shooting films on handheld cameras when he was a teen in Germany. Hell, he two whole documentaries dedicated to him and his film "process" (one aptly titled Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story), so obviously there is something to look into when it comes to a man who clearly doesn't take criticism siting down (or retire easy, as evidenced by his return to filmmaking after spending six years...in the restaurant industry). Remember that Boll was in the midst of his video game movie phase, one where he resolved to make his movie fast and cheap. This film was no different: seven distinct scripts were in circulation for this film with no consensus for which one would be used. Of course, maybe it would have worked out better if they went with the one done by rookie writer Blair Erickson, who came up with a first draft that aimed for a thriller with horror in the shadows...which Boll decided needed to be done on a different level that turned it into an action film. You have four production companies: Boll KG Entertainment, Herold Productions, Brightlight Pictures, and Infogrames Entertainment, all part of an adaptation of the video game series of the same name that was developed by Infogrames in 1992 all about a private investigator looking at a haunted house with undead creatures. With the movie, here is a detective of the paranormal for our lead...a survivor of evil experiments that make him sense spooky stuff and heighten his abilities (hence why he can do a ridiculous somersault kick from the ground). Yes, a movie about a long-lost Native American tribe that believed there was a door between two worlds and a totally secret Bureau 713. Oh, and an evil scientist is there or something.

Sure, his non-video game films may inspire interest in the idea that they may show some sort of passion from its director. But only misery exists in this film, and God knows misery loves company. Boll may think that his critics were out to get him because of his ways of making films, but...yeah man, making a bunch of crappy movies with the mood of a funeral parlor is not going to do any favors. Putting a text crawl in your movie (read by Boll himself!) because test audiences didn't know what the hell the movie was about only speaks misery. How can you take a movie seriously when the gaffes pile up more than the dead bodies? How do you make a scene where a guy is saying he is showing three pictures to someone but is shown presenting four pictures? How can you make a movie where the visible bullets (light in the dark shots) are shown to miss their targets completely? How do you have an actor play a dead body and then not cut away when they are tilting their head? These fundamental errors compact a movie that maneuvers through 96 minutes of screentime with pacing that can only be described as "constipated". Even B-movies have some sort of charm to carry whatever bullshit they want to peddle in weird horror enjoyment, but all you get here is a movie that has the charm of an Internet hack getting punched in the face. It actually is a contest to see who comes off worse in the acting department: Slater, who looks like he wants to sleepwalk the entire movie on autopilot, or Reid, who says her lines with zero conviction while being hamstrung by the most perplexing lines ever put on film (the one about asking why you would put all the pieces of a puzzle far away from each other is extra primo); go figure, the one thing that Boll talked about with Reid is the fact that he couldn't get her to participate in a scene where she takes her top off - yeah, because that would've totally helped. A broomstick and a bucket have more connection than these two, and the one who ends up with the most "interesting" performance is Dorff, chewing at the scenery whenever he is able to appear on screen in ways that would make a drill sergeant blush. Walker isn't even a real "mad scientist" to make fun of, acting with the urgency of a man taking his sweet time to drink coffee at 6am. The effects are laughable, reminding one that even a man in a trash bag would be more convincing than this CG mess, and it amusing to see monster action in the dark that looks worse than a quick-time event in a video game. The attempt at sequel-baiting with the last shot (after stating that the whole city was evacuated...seemingly in the span of a day) with the most blatant rip-off a better movie in years is the final nail in the bed of rakes that has no redeeming features except for people who want to see crap in the crappiest of ways possible. I just can't see myself giving myself a star for this movie, and I would like to congratulate Uwe Boll for joining the zero-star club that makes him part of such company such as James Nguyen, Rick Sloane, and Coleman Francis. Enjoy the honor and for the rest of us, pick literally any other movie than this.

Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars.

Next Time: On the third day of Turkey Week, Double Down.