Action

The third BloodRayne film (and second with Nastassia Malthe in the title role) sees the titular dhampir slicing up Nazis, and so the chronology of the third film rejoins that of the first game. During a raid on a death camp train, Rayne accidentally infects a Commandant Michael Paré. Becoming a dhampir himself (a human/vampire hybrid), he and Mengele-figure Clint Howard (because who else are you going to cast as a Nazi scientist other than Clint Howard?) plan to use Rayne’s blood to grant Hitler immortality.

Vampires and Nazis notwithstanding, the important thing here is that this is yet another Uwe Boll film. So what exactly does that mean for you, the discriminating viewer? As regular visitors to this site might know, I have, in the past, actually praised some of Boll’s more recent efforts. I may well have destroyed whatever critical credibility I could lay claim to by being so impressed by Tunnel Rats, but damn it, it was good. Here, though, is yet more evidence that the Indefatigable One is not at his best when dealing with video game material. Also World War II. Opening an action movie about vampires with shots of Auschwitz-bound prisoners is not, methinks, in the best of taste. Furthermore, Boll’s decision to go with a washed-out, gritty feel does a disservice to his heroine. The world of the BloodRayne video games is a fantastic, exaggerated one, Gothic in every sense. It is a world of decadent costume balls, and villains headquartered in castles, and it is the cartoonish, occult-obsessed, iconographically berserk side of the Nazis that lends itself to the kind of stories we fine in the games, not to mention the look of the character. Rayne’s revealing costume, hardly practical, looks even sillier when placed in a context of grime, washed-out colours and snow.