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Blood: The Last Vampire Blu-ray Disc Review

By brenden ⋅ October 19, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE (2009, Blu-ray released October 20, 2009 - MSRP $34.95)

I watched Blood: The Last Vampire on Blu-ray a couple of nights ago and I’m struggling to tell you what the hell it was all about. I’ll tell you this though, it looks fantastic, sounds fantastic and has some of the coolest martial-arts that I’ve seen on screen in a long, long time. And I’ve seen a lot of martial-arts films lately!

Apparently there are vampires in this film. I know this because of the title. But you wouldn’t know it from watching. I mean, some of the characters kind-of look vampiric but everyone who is evil and sporting fangs or wings or what-have-you is referred to as a demon. All right. I’ll take it. This is a world filled with demons. And in among them, trying her damndest to wipe them all out is a half-blood girl (human and demon!) named Saya, played by Gianna Jun (aka popular Korean actress Jun Ji-hyun). She works for a mysterious “council”, wears a school-girl outfit and slices the crap out of anyone who she suspects to be a vamp…um, I mean, a demon. This all sounds so cool on the surface. And we’ve seen the concept play out before in Blade and Buffy, proving it can be done well and that we’ll come back time and again to enjoy it. But it just doesn’t really work in Blood: The Last Vampire. And it’s because the script doesn’t give the set-up a chance. It doesn’t give the characters a chance.

From the first frames of the film we really want to connect with Saya. We want to like her a lot. And Gianna does a great job getting us there with what little she’s given. But the script fights her at every turn. She isn’t given much to do outside of brood and fight. And anything or anyone who has history with her, from her family, to the head demon she hunts, to the “council” is so shrouded in mystery that it bears little-to-no weight upon the story. And while the script uses most of these details to spring an Empire Strikes Back style twist on us at the end, we never truly find out who these council jokers are and why Saya works for them. But ultimately, very little of the story details matter. They are used to take us from battle to battle. And oh, what battles they are!

Cory Yuen (Transporter 2, X-Men) has choreographed some fantastic martial arts battles for Blood: The Last Vampire. And they are staged, lit and photographed magnificently! Sadly, because of the lack of story, they tend get a little repetitive and allow the horrible CGI to distract. For every demon limb or head that gets hacked off, gallons of poorly rendered blood is spilled. And when it looks this crappy, you can’t help but stare at it and wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. And don’t even get me started on the demons in their true form. It’s like a little stop-motion creature just leapt off an old Technicolor frame of a Harryhausen film and into slick, HD-land. Yikes! Really bad CGI. I don’t think I’ve seen effects this poor in years.

What’s not bad at all is the amazing, reference quality transfer of the Blood: The Last Vampire Blu-ray Disc. This thing looks incredible! One of the best Blu-ray discs I’ve had the pleasure to look at. And, if you can believe it, the disc sounds even better than it looks! This is the Blu-ray you want to put in to prove to your neighbours that you’ve got the best sound system on the block. Consider me blown away! Sony has really hit a home run with this Blu-ray.

The bonus features on the disc are fairly slim but offer a glimpse into the making of the film. There is near-20 minute featurette on the making-of the film. You’ll get to see a lot of behind-the-scenes shots but very little discussion about how it was actually made. The 17 minute “Battling Demons: Behind the Stunts” allows a more in-depth look at the action sequences and fantastic martial arts work that went into the film. There is also a Blu-ray exclusive series of storyboard galleries.

Previously on The Blu-ray Blog: Blood: The Last Vampire (2009 - Live Action) Coming to Blu-ray in October

Tags: Animation, Anime, Blood: The Last Vampire, Japan, Martial Arts, Sony