“Blood” is not the name of the last vampire. I guess the title suggests that blood is central to being the last vampire, since you’d have quite a harvest all to yourself. Or, that there is much blood in the film, even if it is the worst CGI blood I’ve ever seen.
The badly rendered blood is not the film’s worst effect, though. That would be the transformed vampire-as-plush-toy-demon, an ugly computer image that jerkily leaps through the air and sprouts wings like a misguided Pokemon from the mid 1990s.
Blood: The Last Vampire is a live-action adaptation of the popular same-named anime from just over a decade ago. This version suffers from being too faithful to its source material. Instead of developing its characters into something resembling humans, they remain as utterly one-dimensional as they were in animated form in 2000. It’s as if the director, Chris Nahon, knows how anime works but cannot adapt its strengths into a (barely) feature length live-action narrative. Why, pray tell, is the story (again) set in the 1970s? And why tell exactly the same story, without anything fresh or provocative to sweeten the deal?
Saya (Gianna) is a vampire with a conscience who hunts down other vampires. She collaborates with the Council, most prominently represented by Harrison (Liam Cunningham, who also has bills to pay). Council agents wear hats and coats and look secretive. They are a covert organisation aimed at eradicating vampires from the planet, and when the movie begins, the main vampire – the female Onigen (Koyuki) – is in 1970s Tokyo. Some of her minions have infiltrated a local American army base looking for food and fun, and this is where Saya enters as the new girl in class who quickly reveals herself to be the new girl with a sword and martial arts moves. She befriends a near victim, Alice (Alison Miller) whose father runs the army base, but anything that requires a pause in the bloodshed is quickly rushed through so as to get to the next beheading/impaling/plush toy bat transformation.
Blood: The Last Vampire is a bad martial arts movie, a terrible adaptation and an awful horror.
The badly rendered blood is not the film’s worst effect, though. That would be the transformed vampire-as-plush-toy-demon, an ugly computer image that jerkily leaps through the air and sprouts wings like a misguided Pokemon from the mid 1990s.
Blood: The Last Vampire is a live-action adaptation of the popular same-named anime from just over a decade ago. This version suffers from being too faithful to its source material. Instead of developing its characters into something resembling humans, they remain as utterly one-dimensional as they were in animated form in 2000. It’s as if the director, Chris Nahon, knows how anime works but cannot adapt its strengths into a (barely) feature length live-action narrative. Why, pray tell, is the story (again) set in the 1970s? And why tell exactly the same story, without anything fresh or provocative to sweeten the deal?
Saya (Gianna) is a vampire with a conscience who hunts down other vampires. She collaborates with the Council, most prominently represented by Harrison (Liam Cunningham, who also has bills to pay). Council agents wear hats and coats and look secretive. They are a covert organisation aimed at eradicating vampires from the planet, and when the movie begins, the main vampire – the female Onigen (Koyuki) – is in 1970s Tokyo. Some of her minions have infiltrated a local American army base looking for food and fun, and this is where Saya enters as the new girl in class who quickly reveals herself to be the new girl with a sword and martial arts moves. She befriends a near victim, Alice (Alison Miller) whose father runs the army base, but anything that requires a pause in the bloodshed is quickly rushed through so as to get to the next beheading/impaling/plush toy bat transformation.
Blood: The Last Vampire is a bad martial arts movie, a terrible adaptation and an awful horror.
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