The teaser's promises went unfulfilled

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2004)

When I saw the teasers for this movie, I started looking forward to it. The idea of vampire and werewolf characters suggested that the film would have action scenes which might rival the Matrix, simply because the characters are supernatural creatures and probably capable of extraordinary feats. However, the choreography was one of the worst I've ever seen. I particularly recall a fight between a vampire and a werewolf - the vampir took out two rather impressive-looking metal whips and started showing off with them, and I thought, now it's going to get really, really impressive. The disappointment that followed was worse, because you only ever saw one of the combatants on the screen at a time. There were no martial arts anywhere. There was showing off on one side and a werewolf getting a whip in the face on the other. It's one of the worst ways of screening a fight I've ever seen, and unfortunately much the same is true for the rest of the movie. The fights never get enthralling because they stay single-character affairs, there is no sense of struggle because you don't see struggle. One of the great disappointments of 2003.