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The original film was only 49 minutes long but was astoundingly good, using computer generated animation alongside traditional cell work that gave it a unique and special look and coupled with some amazing action sequences made it a must see. This time the writers have expanded this film to fill some 80 odd minutes and by doing so have added story elements from all the other versions of the story that sprang into life after 2000 including a TV series, and lots of Manga comics all that expanded the story and universe with varying results. The vamps in the film are not actually vampires but demons that take human form and can change into flying things along with their true demon horrific forms. It’s shocking then that in this day and age of brilliant computer effects the CGI for the demons in this film is awful and looks so cheap that even the worst make up job on Buffy looks better! The action is also shot in that fast then slow way which not only gets really annoying but prevents you from seeing who or what Saya is actually killing on screen. This effect is also a lazy way of covering up poor CGI blood spurts and dismemberments as the scenes are so blurry you cant see how crap it really is! So bad CGI aside the story sticks pretty close to the original film having its stunning subway opening sequence intact but shot so badly you just want to watch the original again, then it follows it closely with Saya going to Tokyo but now meeting an annoying girl rather than the school nurse from the original. Shockingly missing is the scene where Saya and the nurse are trapped inside a burning building being attacked by 3 demons and having the nurse save the day by driving a jeep through a wall to escape. It diverges again at the end with a shockingly crap showdown between Saya and Onigen lifted right from a Chinese martial arts film! No, what you get here is a cheap and cheerful version of the far superior Manga version that does more in its short running time than this manages in double that. Jun is great as Saya and is the best thing in it, Miller is annoying as Alice and Salmon and Cunningham’s American accents are appallingly bad as is their performances. The fight scenes are okay in places and terrible in others in fact this is a mess of a film that feels like its been re-edited to try and release something that at least will make some sense and make some money back for its producers. Rating: ** Starring Gianna Jun, Allison Miller, Liam Cunningham & Colin Salmon |
There was great anticipation for this live action adaptation of the 2000 Manga original film and the trailer looked promising and exciting. The story is a good one, Saya (Gianna Jun) looks and sounds like a 16 year old Japanese girl but is in fact the offspring of a human father and a vampire mother and is in fact over 400 years old! She has been working for centuries for a shadowy organization called the Council and using her amazing samurai sword skills to dispatch vamps all over the world for them.
