Bloodrayne II – Deliverance (2007)
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
Now that Uwe Boll no longer has a German tax loophole to exploit, he has finally (after a four year reign of terror and cheesiness) been relegated to the Purgatory of straight-to-video features. Normally, I’d be happy to report this, but I work at horror sites now, and STV features are kinda my thing.
Uwe Boll is a terrible filmmaker. This is no surprise. Neither is it a surprise that Bloodrayne II: Deliverance sucks as bad as anything Boll has ever made. But what is surprising is that this disgraceful clown has actually developed a following. People won’t defend his movies with a straight face, but they’ll defend HIM, like that pussy over at Rue Morgue did when he stated in the Toronto Star that Boll was an “insane, two-fisted rogue, and a shockingly HONEST one at that, someone who knows film, knows its history and truly lives for what he does.”
I don’t care that he’s honest. I don’t care that he’s willing to pull a PR stunt where he fights his critics. I wouldn’t even care if the Nectar of Dionysus came from his sweaty German taint. The guy has a doctorate in literature from the University of Cologne. He knows more about what’s wrong with his shitty-ass movies than any of us do. So if this means his terrible filmmaking stems not from his incompetence, and that he’s doing this to us ON PURPOSE, then that doesn’t make him a badass trying to buck the establishment, or whatever kind of bullshit excuse his apologists come up with for defending him. It makes him a dick. And to all you Boll fanatics out there, I can only recommend either a better class of motion picture, or an alternative pastime. The movies don’t seem to be fulfilling you.
And now comes Bloodrayne II: Deliverance, which is so soundly and fundamentally bad on every conceivable level that if it were submitted as an AV Club project in the most jank-ass high school in Arkansas, it would garner a zero and an expulsion. I’ll start with the story, for that is the refuge of critics at the end of their ropes with nowhere else to begin.
In the Old West, Billy the Kid (Zack Ward) is rounding up children and killing townsfolk in the small town of Deliverance, for Billy the Kid is not actually an outlaw, but rather an ancient Transylvanian vampire complete with cheesy accent and horrible clothes. Who can stop him? RAYNE! No, wait, that’s not… Yes, yes it is Rayne, the half-human/half-vampire from the first picture now played by Natassia Malthe (Skinwalkers). It seems that Kristanna Loken (who played Rayne in the first movie) found a better job, developed common sense, or both. She rounds up a band of gunfighters and outlaws led by (naturally) Pat Garrett to defeat Billy in the most poorly shot slow-motion shootouts ever put to Hi-Def video.
Let’s start at the top, shall we? If Billy the Kid is a vampire, and all his henchmen are vampires, why in God’s name are they carrying guns? That’s the beauty of being a fucking vampire: YOU DON’T NEED GUNS! You can leap really far, have superhuman strength, ungodly speed and catlike reflexes and you’re going to SHOOT PEOPLE? That’s like Bruce Lee, instead of beating the crap out of Chuck Norris and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, getting all his friends together to beat them down with pool-cues and nightsticks. IT GOES AGAINST THE POINT!
And they’ve lowered the passing grade on killing vampires as well, for apparently just SLITTING THEIR THROATS is enough to do them in. Wow. Way to neuter your threat, there, Doc. And the silver bullet rule is in effect as well, as before the raid on the town, one of Rayne’s henchmen brings in a box filled with silver bullets and garlic to kill the undead menace. No doubt they got that box from the million or so “Silver Bullet & Garlic Shops” that littered the Western landscape back in the 1800s. Oh, they were there! Zane Grey and Larry McMurtry wrote about them a lot.
Now let’s just say that I’m a hell of a lot more generous than I am, and I’m willing to accept that Billy the Kid is indeed a vampire and apparently never pulled a daylight robbery in his life…Does he have to be played by Zack Ward? Ward, as you may remember, played the little brother on the show Titus back a few years ago. Now when I’m thinking of Transylvanian vampires AND legendary western outlaws, I don’t immediately think of THE MOST PASTY IRISH-LOOKING MOTHERFUCKER ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH!
I must also mention the worst part of this movie. Why is this picture called Bloodrayne II: Deliverance? Not because it’s the name of the town, but because the vampires literally—LITERALLY!—“squeal like pigs” when they’re shot. I…I just can’t make this shit up.
And then there’s Natassia Malthe as our heroine. Is she good in this movie? No. No she’s not. But I have a feeling that she’d be good in something else. She does have presence and she does know her way around a line of dialogue. But acting is a lot like pitching in baseball. If you don’t have run support, you can’t really do anything. She’d probably do well with a script that gave her something to do, or a director to give her guidance, neither of which is present here. Writing her off as talentless just wouldn’t be fair.
But the only surprise in this fetid dog-turd comes near the end. It seems one of the movie’s three writers (whom I shall not name, for that means the movie won and I lost) popped open a remedial history book or, failing that, saw Young Guns II. Pat Garrett does indeed shoot Billy the Kid in the back. But after the previous ninety minutes, I was expecting this flick to go the whole nine. Billy the Kid is a FUCKING VAMPIRE, but this one little bit of history just HAS to be preserved. That’s like making a movie that connects Hitler and World War II, except that he forms the most rockingest heavy metal band in history. “Adolf and the Himmlers will melt your fuckin’ FACE!”
Speaking of which, I hear that there will be a Boll-directed THIRD entry in the franchise, set in World War II with the Nazis as vampires. Already this doesn’t make any sense. If the Nazis are vampires, why are they killing the Jews? They wouldn’t be the ones carrying CRUCIFIXES around, now would they? And yes, I played the video game, and it didn’t make sense THERE, either.
“I can’t wait for THAT ONE!” wrote the lying critic…
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