This is a pity. While I’ll confess that I never had the highest of hopes for the film, it did at least look interesting, in that it’s based on an anime film and features a lot of swordplay in Japan.
The story revolves around Saya (Gianna), who is a half-breed vampire out for revenge for the death of her father, who was murdered by a demon called Onigen. Saya's in league with a group called the Council, who are pretty much your bog-standard shadowy organisation types. The film is largely set in Tokyo, in a strangely modern version of 1970 where everyone seems to have a car phone and no one is wearing anything embarrassingly flared or out-of-date.
They concoct a plan that basically involves Saya killing lots of demons until Onigen notices what’s going on and reveals itself. Despite the fact that most of Tokyo’s population seems to be ostentatiously demonic, the Council decide that Saya should infiltrate a school and murder a couple of demons masquerading – for no good reason – as students. This means that the cute samurai sword-wielding girl must don a typically Japanese sailor suit school uniform, which becomes her costume for the rest of the film. Obviously.
We are then introduced to Alice (Allison Miller). Given that the character has little to do except be rescued and cry, it is amazing how bad Miller’s performance is. She is by no means the low point of the film, but her lengthy screen time means that she is one of the most noticeable negatives.
Alice witnesses Saya in action, she alerts her father (the general of the local US military base), and then becomes a target of lots of hungry demons. Saya saves her and they bond and Alice teaches Saya what it means to be human and Saya kills more demons and faces Onigen and there’s a plot twist that’s straight out of Star Wars and oh god it’s all so derivative.
I don’t really know what’s worst about the film. It might be the hammy acting, or the atrocious writing. Very possibly it’s the action sequences, which utilise underwhelming CG, have far too much bullet-time (guys, The Matrix came out a decade ago) and which go on for far too long (to the point of being boring; not a complaint one usually has with a film of this genre). It might be the utter letdown of an ending, which may or may not be hinting at a sequel. Most likely, however, is that the worst thing about the film is that it does not contain a single original idea. It is a poor man’s Blade, which is terrible because Blade wasn’t exactly the best film ever made.
I said at the start that I like good vampire films, which has made the past year a disappointing one for me: vampires are back in vogue in Hollywood, but everyone in Hollywood seems to have forgotten what gives vampires their bite. In a year that saw Twilight: New Moon and Lesbian Vampire Killers, Blood: The Last Vampire manages to be at the bottom of the dust pile.