Let’s not waste each other’s time. I’m going to give you my honest opinion about this film, and it won’t be the same as everyone else’s. Firstly, Uwe Boll is way too easy to make fun of. (It's not that most of this mockery isn't well deserved, it's just that turning every review of his work into an anti-Uwe rant is lazy ad-hominem cliché that says very little about the flicks themselves.) Secondly, this film is not quite as awful as everyone says. You may now either leave for a trendy website which will parrot back the median consensus, or hopefully, stick around to obtain a different point of view.

Don’t get me wrong, this film isn’t art. It’s not even very good as genre. However, unlike ‘Alone in the Dark’ it never gets boring, and unlike ‘House of the Dead’ a few scraps are enjoyable on their own level. In some ways this is really disconcerting. Is it possible that Boll will cease to be the 21^st century’s Ed Wood, and become just another boring hack?

Well, no need to panic just yet. This flick is as deliriously cheesy as Boll’s earlier efforts. Take the acting for example. Performances tend to range from ludicrous to sadly confused. Even bit players seem uncomfortably self-conscious while mouthing their silly, silly lines. For the dubious honor of worst actor in an Uwe Boll film, there are quite a few nominations. Michael Madsen as Vladimir and Billy Zane as Elrich are equally pointless and off-putting. Meatloaf is very annoying in the role of an annoying vampire who flounces about pawing women and being annoying. (But oh Lordy he burns up good!)

Michele Rodriguez has always bugged the crap out of me, and I‘ll admit I don‘t truly know why. (Probably because the first film I ever saw her in was ‘Resident Evil’, in which she made Milla Jovovich’s character seem warm and lovable.) Since I am a gentleman, I won‘t make any jokes about how working with Boll might have drove her to drink. (But I really want to!) I will say that her attempt at an English accent is less laughable then one would expect.

While the acting is uniformly mediocre, ironically the worst outstanding performance of the film is that of Oscar winner Ben Kingsley. Actually, that is slightly inaccurate; Kingsley does not give an awful performance as he never seems to give any perceivable performance at all. He mouths off sinister treats, bloody marching orders, and the requisite villain to hero “join me” speech, all with the same flaccid emotionless tone someone would use to place their order at Burger King. I did a bit of research online, but still could find no note of the motivation behind Kingsley’s odd disinterest. The most plausible theory I can offer is that Kingsley felt slighted in some way by Boll, and therefore delivered the barest minimum of effort he was contractually obligated to. I certainly hope this is not true, as it is unprofessional on any level and would speak more to Kingsley’s character than to Boll’s. When a player skimps on their performance, it is the audience that suffers first and foremost. (And please, no belly-aching about how normal people don’t realize how much work goes into acting. Most actors should try working in a coalmine or assembly line for 12 hours straight before they whine about how grueling it is to put on silly clothes and pretend to be a monster.) However, this is but base speculation on my part and I must give Kingsley the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he simply felt that conducting himself with utter hollowness would apt convey the soulless evil and joyless ennui of his tired patrician character. (Wow. I am putting way too much thought into this.)

Thankfully, the film’s most central player is also its most talented; Kristanna Loken, who plays the titular (or should that be tit-ular?) Rayne. Noting this however is damning the film with faint praise. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Loken quite a bit. She’s a lovely young lady and I enjoyed her back in the day on ‘Mortal Kombat: Conquest’. (A long-canceled syndicated action series that in levels of sheer exploitive dumbness measures up well against anything Boll has ever done.) As fond as I am of her however, she wasn’t the right person to play Rayne. While her physical resemblance to the character is pretty uncanny, Loken simply lacks any semblance of the character’s charisma. A soul has to cut her some slack though, this problem mostly stems from the watered down character that appears in Guinevere Turner’s script rather than any flaw of Miss Loken’s. The digital Rayne was a smartass with a mean streak and a heaping helping of raw sexuality. Here the character is weak, confused, and timid. (And unforgivably, does not deliver even ONE witty, biting, or even noteworthy line.)

Which of course brings us to writing, always the highpoint of any Boll effort. ‘Bloodrayne’ could have been an easy slam dunk, if only they had stuck to the original story. “Sexy, tough, vampire chick fights zombies, kicks demon ass, and kills nazis in many amusing ways.” How could anyone mess this up? Well, how about we get rid of all the WW2 occult stuff and set the film in the middle ages. (Or rather, the goofy, sweaty, renaissance festival so many hack filmmakers imagine the middle ages to be.)

Our story begins proper in a traveling freak show. A young Rayne is routinely tortured by her captors for the entertainment of the crowd. The real Rayne would have torn these people a new Boll hole. She escapes, bites some people, eventually finds her way in the world (and because this is a Boll film, experiments briefly with bisexuality) eventually joining up with a group of vampire hunters sworn to stop her father. Save for a few mangled references to relics of Beliar, the plot has absolutely nothing to do with that of the game it is based upon. (Not that it was any great masterwork of narrative.) It’s also rather slapdash on its own level, with superfluous plot points and characters cropping up, and dropping into oblivion just as quickly.

Along her silly, disorienting journey, Rayne meets the usual assortment of stock fuex-medieval cretins. The only real highpoint of the film is its ending. (And no, not for the obvious reason.) Though comprised mostly of a hammy collage, it presents the audience with some genuine ambiguity, as it is unclear whether Rayne has decided to follow in her father’s footsteps. (My god! Ambiguity in a Uwe Boll film!) To her credit, Loken conveys this remarkably well, and without a single word.