t's the early 1700s, Eastern Europe. A trio of weary members of an order called the Brimstone Society—Vladimir (Madsen), Sebastian (Davis) and Katarin (Rodriguez)—walk into a tavern. We learn that the Brimstone Society is an order of vampire slayers, because immediately a cagey, blood-sucking, stealthy, predatory immortal very thoughtfully steps up and stands in front of a mirror (in which he casts no reflection) so he can be detected and killed by Sebastian. The tavern owner tells the three of a red-haired "she-devil" appearing as a freak in a nearby carnival.
At the carnival, Rayne (Loken), the she-devil freak, is brought out to be gawked at by the locals. As part of her "act," Rayne drains the blood of a slit-throated sheep, which means admission to this show must be expensive indeed, because the milk, wool and meat of a sheep should generate a lot more money in a pre-industrial culture than would admission to a sideshow. Rayne escapes the carnival after biting and drinking the blood of her captors. The trio from Brimstone follow Rayne.
There is a very bad vampire lord named Kagan (Kingsley), who is overrunning the countryside with his human thrall/minions. "BRING ME MY THRALLS!" roars Kagan at one point. Rayne, a human/vampire hybrid called a "dhampir," has a vendetta against Kagan, which she only finds out about courtesy of a gypsy fortuneteller (Geraldine Chaplin) who, along with other guest stars Udo Kier and Billy Zane, pops into the narrative to give isolated blocks of exposition. Rayne joins forces with the Brimstone Society to bring down Kagan, collecting a few major vampire talismans along the way. We know talismans are important and powerful, because one is referred to with the classic line "It is no mere trinket!"
Can the fire-haired Rayne end Kagan's reign and save the world? Seems likely. As is the case with all stories in which heroes must collect certain talismans to bring down a bad-guy overlord, there's this prophecy. ...
Not as soul-deadening as usual
With soul-killingly wretched video-game adaptations under his belt like House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark, Uwe Boll is widely considered one of the worst directors of all time. For his big-screen adaptation of Bloodrayne, Boll hired the remarkably talented screenwriter Guinevere Turner, who starred in and wrote Go Fish and who, with director Mary Harron, adapted American Psycho. The results are a dramatic improvement over Boll's other work. Still pretty bad. But not so bad as to cause the feeling that razor-toothed liver flukes are zipping back and forth among the audience's innards.
To the film's credit, there is some nice cinematography, and the period production values are as good as those of some of the Hammer films from which Bloodrayne draws inspiration. Yet for each glimmer of quality there is at least one blemish of necrosis. The cast, as a whole, seems fairly uninterested. Michael Madsen, with a bad hairpiece that makes him look like a retired roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd, seems passionately uninvolved, as does Lost's Michelle Rodriguez. Ben Kingsley, Oscar winner for Gandhi, does have nice moments playing Kagan as a different kind of not-so-sexy beast, but for the most part he sits on a throne and scowls from under a Salieri-like wig. Kristanna Loken, though not given much to do as an actress in a lead role, has a strong presence as Rayne. Bad pseudo-British accents run rampant. Yet some of the action is nicely staged.
Bloodrayne is, make no mistake, a dud. Gaps in logic abound, as when Brimstone members watch a marauding enemy army go past from atop a hillock with no cover, and when characters show up for no good reason other than that the plot necessitates it. However, it is a watchable dud, a great many steps above the abominations Boll has inflicted in the past.
