First off I should preface that I have not seen the original anime for Blood. Yes, I know, it’s a terrible travesty. At the same time I enjoyed Blood: The Last Vampire very much – however I am heavily biased. I love everything Japanese – their culture, their language, their looks and their cinematography. And anyway, live action adaptations of anime would have sold me any which way. Therefore I would have to urge all of you to go and see this film, if only for the fact to get some real vampire culture back into the spotlight and not the failure that is Twilight.

The story of Blood: The Last Vampire is nothing new. Basic premise is half-vampire wandering earth killing other, evil demons whilst in search of the Ultimate Demon to which she has kill with vengeance. Saya is the name of our demon slayer, and she is not a sweet young Japanese girl, as you might suspect. She is a member of a very secret organisation simply called “The Council” that hunts vampires. The other main character of the story is an American girl by the name of Alice McKee, who I find to be incredibly annoying. We first see her arguing with her father in the typical teenage fashion, before storming off like an overgrown toddler. She does however, become more likeable. Despite the fact that I was severely disappointed she didn’t burn to death or get her face smashed in, by the end of the film I was starting to like her and the way she managed to remain pathetically human but still managing to help out our Superhuman heroin.

Our villains provide most of the motivation for the plot – the diabolical Onigen, the most powerful Demon in the world, killed Saya’s father and she is bent on revenge. The Onigen’s right hand man also killed the lovely old man Kato, who raised Saya in place of her father. They have an army of lesser vampire demons that feed on humans in a particularly violent way, which is how “The Council” manages to track them. Saya is enrolled in an American Army base that is teaming with said demons, consequently eradicating them in one of the most awesome sword fighting scene’s I’ve seen in a long time. Saya slices the faces of these guys, for god’s sake! How can that not get your blood pumping?

A side note on the CGI here is to make my one bemused observation. I know they had enough money to make everything look exceptionally believable in this film (that was made quite clear with the great fighting sequences and face-slicing), but for some reason during the epic battles with the demons, every time a sword sliced through them these huge coin-sized droplets of blood would fly everywhere. I didn’t really see the point of that, unless it was a cunning symbolic way of showing that these people were not human and therefore have crazy blood splatter when they’re cut to pieces. And for some strange reason all the vampires that are getting their guts ripped out look oddly human, despite changing into their real forms only moments before. I think someone forgot to check the continuity there.

But no matter, it’s pretty minor in the scheme of things. No one these days goes to films to judge the CGI effects! (Anyone with a life anyway). The story wraps up nicely in the end, though our other main character Alice seems to go a bit off the rails. I admit I was a little confused at the ending, because it seemed to raise more questions than anything else. I suspect it is a ploy for a sequel, if they were ever able to get the funding. It would have been better with a more concrete conclusion though I think, instead of just leaving the viewers to sit there thinking “and what just happened?”

Overall I found it entertaining. It probably won’t make into my top five favourite movies, but I still enjoyed it very much. The film is very female-centric, but it doesn’t turn it into an emotional chick flick in the least. It’s refreshing to see an almost completely female main cast kicking around some seriously badass moves. The martial arts are bang on and they went to great lengths to include proper Japanese customs and culture, without screwing it up, for which I am very pleased. I’d give Blood: The Last Vampire a rating of 4 out of 5 stars for a great action horror film.

Trailer

[See post to watch Flash video]