Director Uwe Boll happily churns out another piece of Hollywood trash in BLOODRAYNE, a video game adaptation set in a medieval world where a half-human vampire escapes from a carnival in Romania and goes after her father, an evil vampire overlord. Along the way she joins up with a team of ruthless vampire hunters, where the stage is set for a final showdown...

Okay, where do we begin? This is a trashy B-movie, yes, but it's no different to a dozen or so others I could mention. B-movie lovers might actually enjoy it, given that it's relatively action-packed and fills the relevant quotients of gore (CGI augmented for the most part, unfortunately) and nudity (brief). The main problem BLOODRAYNE has lies in Boll himself, who shoots the various fight scenes very poorly and who has trouble getting authentic performances out of his cast members.

Kristanna Loken (TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES) is the titular character and to say her performance is wooden would be an understatement. She's absolutely terrible; rarely do we see such bad acting from leading actors, but this badness is the stuff of legend. Boll knows this, so he rounds out his cast with a ton of familiar faces. We get Ben Kingsley as the hammy villain, cameos from Michael Pare and Geraldine Chaplin, Meat Loaf chewing the scenery with relish, and even a bewigged Billy Zane, playing it tongue-in-cheek. The main actors are a slumming-it Michael Madsen and an out-of-place Michelle Rodriguez. A weird bald guy, Will Sanderson, seems to be in competition with Loken as to who can give the worst performance. I'm going with Loken.

Saw 'Bloodrayne' and its two sequels out of curiosity to see if they were as bad as their terrible reputation. As well as seeing whether one of the worst directors of all time Uwe Boll was capable of making a good film. On top of that, like Ben Kingsley a lot as an actor and he is reason enough to see anything he's involved in. Did not have my hopes up, because even looking at the advertising and trailers 'Bloodrayne' looked awful.

The terrible reputation and dubious advertising do not lie. 'Bloodrayne' to me and many others really is that bad, bad actually is an understatement. Have come to the conclusion that Boll is incapable of making a halfway decent film, have not seen everything of his but all that has been seen has been terrible and as bad as their reputation. As someone who is usually very generous rating and reviewing films, 'Bloodrayne' does stand out as one of the worst films seen recently and actually full stop. Everything is abysmally executed and there are no redeeming qualities at all, have said that about very few films seen recently.

'Bloodrayne' couldn't be more inept visually. Photography that is both chaotic and static, bacon-slicer-like editing, drab costumes that don't fit the setting, continuity errors galore (more than anybody can count), afterthought-like visual effects, lighting completely lacking in atmosphere, those can all be found. The music sounds cheap and is never dynamic with anything on screen, often working against it and like it belonged in another film entirely.

Writing is horrendously stilted and cheesy, enough to make one want to vomit and the unintentional camp later on becomes exhausting. The action has no momentum or excitement whatsoever, is chaotically edited, under-rehearsed choreographically and a lot of it is incomprehensible. It really takes ineptitude to a whole new level. As is the story, it never comes to life and is not easy to follow often. Boll's direction is typically non-existent and cold, comparing him to Ed Wood is rather insulting when although Wood's films were the complete opposite of fine heart one could see that he had his heart in the right place (something that has never been the case with Boll). The characters are walking cliches that are neither interesting or worth rooting for, instead bland and irritating.

You know something is wrong when the best performance comes from an angry-looking Michelle Rodriguez. Elsewhere there is an emotionless lead, Meat Loaf's uncomfortable cameo and Michael Madsen and Billy Zane going through the motions. Worst of it is Kingsley in his worst ever performance, taking hamminess and chewing-scenery-to-pieces to mind-boggling extremes.

Summarising, completely bloodless and appallingly awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Before you decide to watch "BloodRayne", there are a few things you might want to consider. First, it's a based on a videogame and these sorts of things are notoriously awful. Think about it...what GOOD videogame movies can you think of off the top of your head?! But bad ones...."Super Mario Brothers" and "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" probably come to mind. So, it's not surprising that "BloodRayne" is now #27 on IMDB's infamous Bottom 100 list. And, if neither of these convince you it's crap...it was directed by Uwe Boll. Boll has made a career out of making crappy films about videogames, with such classics as "Far Cry", "Alone in the Dark" and "House of the Dead" to his credits. Surely, the man can take the barest of plots and convert them into long, bloated films!

The film begins with a vampire woman being held like an animal at some sort of freak show where she is tormented. Eventually, however, she escapes and, inexplicably, joins up with a group of vampire slayers(???) to kill the man who apparently raped and killed her mother long ago. Vampires teaming up with vampire slayers?! That's like expecting Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi to team up for a buddy picture!! They explain that BloodRayne is different...she is a vampire who lives to kill vampires! That's because she's a half-vampire! If this sort of thing makes no sense, don't blame this film...vampire lore is constantly changing these days. Try reading a few recent vampire novels and you'll see what I mean....as now, many can go out in daylight, some are born vampires, some sparkle, BloodRayne can wear a crucifix and much more.

So is this any good? Well, it looks nice...and this isn't surprising because Boll loves to spend money to make big and nice looking films. Also, it has a few respectable actors in it...another Boll touch. Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley and Geraldine Chaplin both prove that with enough money, an actor with a good reputation is willing to undermine it a bit. As for Meatloaf....well...Mr. Loaf is in the film as well.

So why all the hate...as well as the abysmal current score of 2.9? Well, much of it is because there is so much fighting...it is numbing. Another issue is the dialog, which at times is pretty limp. I think it's also a bit dull and not fun to watch. But, I would argue that there at least are worse videogame-based films. It's not as bad as "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" nor "Super Mario Brothers"....hardly a glowing endorsement, but it wasn't quite as bad as I'd anticipated. I think much of it's low score is because the film lost so much money AND because Boll's name is pretty much synonymous with the word 'sucks'.