Blade & Vampires & Reapers & Tigers & Bears

Rating: 6/10 (17 February 2006)

When you do a sequel, one option to not simply repeat the events of the first film is to up the ante. In this follow-up to the first Blade(98), we not only have the standard vampires to contend with, but a new threat called Reapers, which feed on vampires, just as vampires feed on humans. There is also an elite group of bad-ass vampires teaming up with bad-ass Blade (Snipes), though you tend to forget they're vamps at this point; they come across as a new team of super-heroes. Of course, sooner or later, vamps tend to revert to form, but there's less of the standard bloodsucking and more of the standard martial arts swordplay. The plot is a bit more complex than the 1st pic, with some backstabbing and counterplots revealed late in the game. The new monsters, the Reapers, a more extreme version of vampirism, provide the horror angle.
So, in all, you end up with a film with numerous genres mixed together to form an unusual super-hero horror soufflé. You need only be familiar with director del Toro's monster picture "Mimic"(97) to appreciate the flavor he strives for. Like his previous film, this is heavy on grotesque creature visuals, quite unusual even in this day and age, but usually covered in a familiar slime. The combo of computer FX and advanced puppetry is admittedly impressive, though some of the long shots of creatures jumping from wall to wall become cartoon-like. Snipes as the hero is more relaxed in this 2nd go around, and they brought back Whistler (Kristofferson), supposedly killed in the 1st flic, a somewhat contrived plot turn. Perlman as another vamp overplays his hand a little, but del Toro was right to bring him along for "Hellboy" a couple of years later. The climactic fight is pretty brutal, with both combatants showing off their superhuman abilities to the extreme. By the end, however, you may wish Blade had focused more on his life mission instead of reacting to the machinations of others throughout most of the story.