This movie was destined to be bad. It's pedigree was awful. It's written by two nobodies and directed by perennial fuck-up Uwe Boll, so it's pretty much doomed from the get-go. And, yet, it's actually not too bad.
Yes, you read that right, Uwe Boll made a movie that's not dreadful. In fact, as a director, this is probably his best film and, by a damn sight, better than Bloodrayne. I know that's not saying too much, if anything, but, really, the movie was actually tolerable. If Boll was a young, first-time director, I might think he actually had some promise.
Now, this is not to say that the movie isn't absolutely full of flaws. Oh, how it has flaws. The dialogue is often pathetically awful and the plot iself can best be described as "fucktarded", but the actors themselves are pretty damned good, a trait that's a bit surprising coming from a Boll film.
Natassia Malthe doesn't look the part and was a bit flat at the beginning, but she quickly surpasses Kristanna Loken in the Rayne arena. But the real charm of the movie comes in the acting of the supporting cast, though they're often wasted and, in the end, spent as fodder after being drained of their comic relief value.
The plot and the villains are a waste and you wonder how the hell this movie keeps dragging along, particularly through brain-numbing bits and fight scenes that make no logical sense, but you suffer through the bad parts, because there's some promise there.
Yes, that promise never pays off and there's more plotholes than you can shake a stick at, but it's probably the most realistic attempt at making an entertaining film that Boll has ever made, much less on the shoestring budget holding this film together.
So, in that arena, it gets kudos. The rest of it is still pretty bad, though it doesn't even rank in the league of Bloodrayne or Alone In The Dark.
