Synopsis: Saya, a 400-year old Vampire demon slayer, must hunt down and kill the demon who wiped out her entire family.
“Blood the last Vampire” started out as a 45 minute Original Video Animation (OVA) that was to serve as the first volume to a story that would unfold over three different mediums. Animation was the first, then followed by novels and finally, two video games. The novels and videogames did not reach the international masses as they were never localized for the overseas market but the Anime public embraced the OVA with reverence. It was instantly hailed as a milestone in Japanese Animation which pushed the boundaries of what traditional animation was. And it is also due to the very “fan reverence” that led Producer William Kong (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “Hero”) to ponder the feasibility of making a live action adaptation of the Anime.
Which was probably the worst decision in the history of wrong decisions that French cinema has ever made.
There are some stories that fare better in their original medium. The universally despised film “Dungeons and Dragons” come to mind. But “Blood the last Vampire” just screamed to be adapted to a live action vehicle. It had all the major components of a summer blockbuster. The main protagonist is a 400 year-old (but looks 16) half bloodsucker, half human female demon slayer, potential for huge action sequences, a cross cultural setting and it’s about vampires. It is what Hollywood would label as a “sure hit”. So, it would have needed a pretty ‘remarkable’ cast and crew to screw it all up.
Someone really dropped the ball on this one. Be it the producer, the director, the scriptwriter or a combination of all three, there is no way any self respecting filmmaker would have released a movie like this one. Granted that this is about vampires/demons people are expected to suspend their disbelief. However, this movie requires us to take that disbelief and hang ourselves with it. I have to admit, the first 20 minutes were intriguing enough but there was so much rehashed from the anime that it would be hard to give any of the filmmakers credit for doing so. And once we are past that marker, everything just falls to mediocrity.
I’m actually really happy to see Jeon Ji Hyun (Gianna Jun to the American public) acting again after so long. Her breakthrough film “Il Mare” is one of my favourite films of all time and I have been following her career ever since. That said, I do believe that the role of the main protagonist, Saya, was miscast. Ji Hyun persona is just too sweet and feisty to carry off the brooding demon hunter with a chip on her shoulder. Don’t get me wrong, Ji Hyun is a joy to watch but in “Blood the Last Vampire” they basically get her to play the arrogant teenager for most of the movie. But on that note, she is probably the only aspect that is keeping the audience from walking out of the theater.
Chris Nahon only other film that I can recall is the Jet Li vehicle “Kiss of the Dragon” which incidentally was also a movie with a wafer thin plot. His penchant for fast jump cuts betrays his MTV background and it does not lend any benefit to Cory Yuen’s (”Hero” and “House of Hidden Daggers”) chorography. All of the action sequences are a myriad of staccato and slo-mo scenes that confuses us rather than showcase the elaborate stunts that Cory Yuen laid out. A fight scene is something along the lines of what we viewed in Zhang Yi Mou’s “Hero” or the “Wong Fei Hong” series starring Jet Li. Heck, even the fight scene in “Doom” had more adrenalin pumping through its imagery than Blood’s failed attempt at action.
I would venture into the visual aspect of the movie but to keep it short and sweet, lets just say that I’ve seen better computer generated imagery (CGI) in the portfolios of students looking for summer internships. There is one rooftop fight scene where the CGI is so badly composited you will wonder if you are watching the work-print or the actual movie itself.
I believe that the real problem here is that the filmmakers failed to grasp the concept of a Japanese anime. The story may be non-existent, but it would be a cold day in hell if the Japanese did not produce a visual arresting piece to mask the lack of story. How such travesty as the live action “Blood the last Vampire” made it through the quality assurance of William Kong, I will have no idea, till I find him, strap him to a chair and grill the information out of the bloke.
So to recap, we have a French director, a Hong Kong producer, a Korean actress, all trying to adapt a piece of Japanese animation to an American audience.
No wonder everything went to the crapper.