Bloody Good Fun In the Dark

Rating: 8/10 (1 April 2002)

I sat down in my theater seat, popcorn and soda in hand, and settled in for the sequel to Blade, one of my all-time favorite horror/action movies. Almost immediately, my heart sank. The look was all wrong. Dim and grainy film stock, rock video editing, comic book special effects and more. And then came Wesley Snipe's first fight with the Blood Pack duo. As good a martial arts fight sequence as I have ever seen. Well, almost saw....whoever did the lighting and production design for Blade II obviously wanted to put us in the dark world of vampires. Only problem is I like details, and only 90% of the fight scene was visible. Nevertheless, I gradually got over the murky color and breakneck editing and found that, as the Reapers appeared, this movie just kept getting better and better. Amazing creatures these Reapers...and very scary, even for a jaded old horror movie fan like me. If only it could have been filmed in the same clarity and technical precision as the original, Blade II would have been a 9+.