I have been mugged at the movies!

Rating: 1/10 (24 September 2003)

I am stunned and horrified to read the comments on this movie.
I can scarcely find words to describe how badly this movie stinks. I can only assume that many of the US reviewers were fooled by a bunch of English accents and dreary shots of a dismal Eastern-European city into thinking that this was somehow a classy piece of work.
Beckinsale was a leather clad plank - I felt no sympathy or empathy for her character simply because her character did not exist - she was just speaking a few words.
In fact this applies to damn near everyone else in this mess. There were virtually no character building moments at all - we just have no idea who these 2-dimensional S&M fetish-freaks are at all.
There is no plot to speak of - all we need to know is laid out wholesale in the opening monotone monologue. If the director had not been so keen to slap his now-fiancee up on screen at every opportunity, he might have realised that there was a story to tell - that of the unwitting human caught in the middle of events he doesn't understand. Had we seen the story through his eyes we would have been shocked at the initial battle and surprised as the extent of the 'underworld' is revealed to us. Quite simply the director is telling the wrong story.
Instead the movie treats the audience like bunch of slack-jawed morons and spoon feeds us the whole story up front just so we don't have to worry our pretty little heads with such nasty complicated stuff as plot.
Okay. I love vampire movies. All of them Nosferatu, right through to Blade, and I'm pretty sure that in all of these pretty much the whole point is that vampires are like, *evil* and, you know, *drink blood*.
Wearing a bit of leather bondage tat and moping around a big old house at night does not make you a vampire. Where was the blood-sucking? We barely even saw a set of fangs - these were simply the most boring vampires I've ever seen.
The werewolves were a bit better, but the CGI was very poor and the man-to-sort of mutant pig-gorilla thing transformation is totally eclipsed by twenty year old classics like American Werewolf and The Howling.
The less said about the noise which passes for a soundtrack the better. In fact I've said too much already. So I'll stop.
I hated this film so much I can't even be bothered to rant about it any more.
Go see this film if you want leave feeling like someone hit you over the head and stole your money - or just find a dark street and wait to be mugged for a similar, but possibly more entertaining experience.