Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

Director: Chris Nahon
Cast:
Gianna Jun/Saya
Allison Miller/Alice
Liam Cunningham/Michael Harrison
Koyuki/Onigen

Plot: Saya, a kickass Japanese school girl fights vampires and demons in her school girl outfit and with her trusty samurai sword.

Review:
Have you ever wondered what it was like to get raped? No? Well you're about to find out with this film. I'm a HUGE fan of the 2000 anime of the same name. It was only 45 minutes long was bad ass with great action and one of the coolest heroines ever. So when I heard they were doing a live action film, saying I was stoked was an UNDERSTATEMENT. I couldn't fuckin' wait! I saw the trailer and it looked awesome!
Well I finally got around to seeing the film a few days ago. After the opening scene, which was pretty nifty, I was like this might not be too bad...but then the movie kept on going and I felt like crying in shame at how bad this film was. Everything that made the anime awesome was missing. The action set pieces ranged from mediocre to actually kinda cool to shitty. Mistake number one right there. The action wasn't all that thrilling except for maybe one or two scenes. I was bored for most of the film. That should NOT be the feeling during a gory action film with samurai swords and awesome vampires. I should NOT be bored!
You must be asking well if there is gore, it can't be all that bad. Well you're wrong. Wait till you see the gore in this film. This film might single handily have the WORST CGI I've ever seen. They never heard of the less is more rule. They use CGI for everything from the demons (which look corny and fake and took me out of the film) to the blood. That blood, oh wow! The blood was done so badly it didn't even LOOK like blood. It looked like black goobs that shot out of the body. What the hell?! Are you serious movie? BLOOD IS RED! Can't you get ONE thing right? At first I let that go, thinking maybe that is what demon blood is like...then when humans began to bleed like that...that is when I knew it was ALL bad.
I don't even remember the soundtrack or the score, so I guess it wasn't HORRIBLE, but it wasn't memorable and some of the editing got on my nerves. They needed a new editor.
Most of acting was bad, or it might have JUST been the bad writer. I couldn't decide if this was a case of bad actors or bad dialogue and script. I will be the nice guy for this review and blame it on the latter.
Then we had the character of Alice. Why was she hear again? No seriously...Why?! She added absolutely nothing to the film...like AT ALL! She could have been written out or killed off and the movie wouldn't have changed ONE BIT! Plus her character was annoying and she took away screen time from Saya, you know our main character. I didn't care about this Alice chick. I wanted to see Saya kicking ass! I don't care about this girl. And why was EVERYONE out to kill her? This film had a knack for either OVER-explaining or UNDER-explaining. With the character of Alice it was the latter. In the words of the GREAT Nostalgia Critic: "EXPLAIN MOVIE EXPLAIN!"
Along with her we got MANY other pointless characters that took away from the action and our main character. Again, why were so many of these characters needed? All I wanted was Saya.
Which brings me to the main woman herself, Saya. Did they at least do her right. I am VERY proud to say she is the ONE saving grace of the film. She was beautiful and perfectly captured the character of the anime. She really knew how to kick that ass (even if I couldn't TOTALLY buy her as an action heroine, but I let that one go). I was having fun when ever her character was on screen. Saya is just a great character and Gianna Jun was great as her and saved the movie from being a TOTAL disaster.
Plus I liked some of the directing and the film had an overall glossy look to it that I appreciated. And not ALL the action scenes were terrible. There was one with Saya versus a WHOLE lotta vampires outside the bar that actually got me to perk up and got me invested in the scene.
But overall, this film was akin to getting raped up the ass...with a sandpapery broom stick. yeah...that is what this film was like O_o. I'll stick to the anime.

OVERALL GRADE: 4/10