Andy’s Rating: one notch below Really Liked It (9/13)
Back in 1998, it seemed like everyone was trying to reinvent the vampire genre, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I can’t recommend highly enough) to the BBC series Ultraviolet. In that tradition comes Blade, a story about a half-human, half-vampire who makes it his mission to hunt down vampires. While he should be a full vampire, Blade (or the Daywalker, as he is known to his enemies) keeps a partial human identity by injecting himself with a strange mixture of garlic and other elements, which keeps his darker side at bay. Meanwhile, the vampire families maintain a truce with local politicians, where they agree to keep a low profile in exchange for relative safety from attacks. But when a rogue vampire arrives with a plan to take over humanity, Blade has to intervene to stop him.…
In many ways, Blade is a typical action-horror film, with the exception of being somewhat brutal in its depictions of vampire deaths. (Since a vampire can only die from a stake through the heart or beheading, Blade comes up with some…interesting methods of torturing various creatures of the night.) The story is generally pretty dark in the depictions of the vampire culture, but not overly depressing. It was written by David S. Goyer, who also wrote Batman Begins and another great movie from 1998, Dark City. He is also writing upcoming screenplays for The Dark Knight, Thor, The Flash, and Captain America, so his superhero credentials are up to date. If you like vampires or superheroes, Blade is worth watching at least once. A review of Blade II will follow next week.
Addendum 1/22/07: I have changed my initial review score of 10/13 to 9/13. The more I think about Blade, the more parts of it just seem to fall flat for me. Although the story has more promise in the beginning, the ending is a little too straightforward. There aren’t really any special touches that make the ending seem clever; it just kind of plods along through the resolution. The special effects seem more fake near the end of the movie, and when you look at the vampire temple, you think, “Wow, that really does look like a vampire temple set.” By the end, the movie has a very “small” feeling, where you feel like you’re watching actors on a set, and not characters in a story. It’s not a bad movie by any stretch, but the ending does suffer in comparison to the earlier parts of the movie.
Comments (1)
I give this a 'meh'. I liked II a lot better, but I am a Guillermo Del Toro slut.
Posted by Nate | January 18, 2007 12:43 PM
Posted on January 18, 2007 12:43