March | 2026 | Digital Retribution

BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE (2009)

*A scan of the DVD cover as my copy is an ex-rental with a crappy cover*

I like the idea of animation being turned into live action. Every time I have heard of a cartoon from my youth or an anime being made into a live action feature I have jumped on board to see the result. Have I been disappointed? Maybe I should let films like He-man, Aeon Flux, Fat Albert, Underdog and The Flintstones live action films answer for me.

Yeah, that’s right. Not a great strike rate .

Blood The Last Vampire is based on the OVA (original video animation) of the same name that was released in 2000. It was originally supposed to be part one of three, but the other two never emerged. Since then though there have been manga, novels and an animated TV series, and now, a live action film.

Blood the Last Vampire tells of Saya (Gianna Jun) who is a 400 year old vampire/human half breed dedicating her life to the destruction of vampires. She gets support from a secretive agency known only as The Council, who place her in situations where vampire infestations may be arising. Even though she appears to be in the Council’s employ, she is only there until she destroys the demon lord Onigen (Koyuki).

Her latest mission takes her to an American airbase in Japan, where, undercover as a student, she finds the plague greater than expected, and with the Council going through some, shall we say, management changes with extreme prejudice, she also finds herself ultimately alone, which is not what she needs when also has to protect Alice (Alison Miller), the daughter of one of the officers on the base.

*The vampire close in on Saya and Alice*

The cast of this film is wonderful. Gianna Jun as Saya plays the part to a T and considering she does a lot of the wirework herself, kicks some serious arse! Special mentions also have to go to Koyuki, whose elegance brings something different to her major fight scene, and also to Colin Salmon, who seems to pop up everywhere in genre stuff of this period, and never really disappoints.

*Standard issue master-styled character*

The script on the other hand is average. It employs cliché after cliché, and for those familiar with American pop culture it is hard to find much original with this story, which appears to be a remix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Marvel character Blade. Occasionally the script offers moments where it tries to get some kind of legitimacy with comparisons, disguised as references, to classical literature such as Mary Shelley’s Franksenstein and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, though ultimately they feel tacked on. The script however isn’t the worst part of the film.

Tragically, the CGI in this is nothing short of deplorable. I not an opponent of CGI effects, and I enjoy it when CGI effects are employed well in a film, but it is not here. The blood effects are almost all CGI, and have solidity to them that looks completely unrealistic, especially as how a lot of the action sequence are in slow motion, which doesn’t hide its lack of realism. As a matter of fact, it makes it look even worse. If I were the filmmaker and my CGI blood looked this bad I would want to get rid of the blood scenes ASAP and would have played all the fighting in fast forward.

I’d like to say that the CGI demons are an improvement, but they are not. Badly designed and poorly executed CG make for a poor cinematic experience. I reckon even the CGI guys from Van Helsing would have laughed at this one. To say I may be being unfair because CGI has come so far, it doesn’t even stand up to films of the period.

In films like The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police one can overlook the crappiness of the CGI as the subject matter doesn’t appear to be taking itself too seriously, but in this film it looks out of place and awkward. Rubber monster suits and physical arterial blood sprays would have been preferable.

So does Blood the Last Vampire change my opinion of the terrible cartoon to live action films we have so far seen? No it doesn’t, but not because it wasn’t a faithful adaptation or because it was treated with disrespect; the fault this time falls directly in the lap of the special effects department, and a little in the scriptwriters direction. What a shame!

Blood the Last Vampire is a great example of wonderful ideas executed poorly. I appreciate that this is a lower budgeted film, but I firmly believe that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should – did Jurassic Park teach us NOTHING?!? Just because these filmmakers had the ability to do effects digitally definitely doesn’t mean they should have, as those effects are what ultimately wreck the film.

Extras: A few extras on this disc:

The Making of Blood covers the making of the film, mainly the physical effects and wirework. It doesn’t go to deep into the making of the film, but it does show the difficulties that can come from a stunt heavy film.

In addition to a trailer for this film, there are also trailers for Tokyo Gore Police, Ichi, The Machine Girl, Ong Bak 2: The Beginning and Godzilla: Showa Classics.

Film: 4/10

Extras: 4/10

Rewatchability: 2/10

The DVD was purchased ex-rental from the now-closed VideoEzy Miranda

DARK WATER (2002)

If you remember horror in the early 2000s, you remember one thing: j-horror.

Movies like Ring, Ju-on The Grudge and their many competitors and imitators and remakes flooded the western dvd and cinema market, making us finally aware that the scariest thing in the world is a 7 year old girl with wet black hair, when in actual fact it’s a 14 year old girl with an attitude.

Trust me.

Based on a book by Koji Suzuki, Dark Wayer was directed by Hideo Nakata, who directed Ring, Ring 2 and the western version of The Ring 2. This film could have very easily slipped into the series as it’s about a wet, trapped spirit of a young girl… they could have even named it Bore-Ring… but perhaps that is revealing my opinion of the film a bit too early.

*Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) ponders the rain*

Bore-Ring… I’m sorry, Dark Water starts by introducing us to Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki), recently divorced and a former sufferer of some PTSD issues due to very violent books she had been proof-reading for a publishing company.

*Matsubara and her daughter Ikuko (Rion Kanno)*

Her and her daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno), move into a fairly awful apartment block, with a disinterested apartment manager that is in desperate need of some love, but there is something odd about their home.

Water seems to be perpetually leaking from the roof and a fairly ominous stain is creeping across the ceiling in one of the rooms, and more and more, an sense of something strange in the apartment starts to become more apparent, which starts with Ikuko finding a child’s handbag/ backpack.

What is the secret of the water that constantly seems to be in the apartment block, and why does Matsubara seem to be at the corner of the mystery? Is there a presence there, or is her poor mental health to blame?

***Introducing yet another ‘scary’ little ghost girl!***

Essentially this is a well made as any of these Japanese films of this era, and honestly, when it first came out I was desperate to grab anything from Madman’s Eastern Eye brand, a desperation that Hollywood must have felt as there is an entirely forgettable western remake directed by Walter Salles, starring Jennifer Connolly, Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite which is so forgettable I actually falsely remembered that it was Demi Moore who played the Jennifer Connolly role, and when you consider my utter love of Jennifer Connelly you’ll understand just how unbearable that film was!

Now this film is well acted by the cast, and honestly the state of disrepair that the apartment block reveals a Japan that I never knew existed as everything always seems either very new and clean, or traditional and well-kept, but the building is almost a brutalist blight on the opinion that Japan presents itself in its media. I found that to be strange and exciting and does actually really set the tone of being wet and moist and clammy.

This is all supposed to reflect the themes of neglect and abandonment of a child and how it can effect their opinion upon the outside world, but the film moves at a snail’s pace, and I am one for a slow and deliberate horror movie, but it also has to be entertaining.

The problem with this film is it’s like an afterschool special version of a Japanese horror film, or even a Hallmark video version. It feels forced and schmatlzy in its tale and in the epilogue I found myself rolling my eyes and wondering if I should just go outside for a walk instead of enduring this.

A repeat watch of and of the Grudge or Ring films would have been a better option than watching this.

*The menu screen for the Dark Water* DVD

Extras:

Only trailers for Dark Water, Montage, Grudge, Volcano High, Yojimbo, Infernal Affairs and Seven Samurai.

Film: 3/10

Extras: 2/10

Rewatchability: 4/10

*The bag that starts the wholemshebang.*

This DVD was purchased AGES ago from Video Ezy

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Monthly Archives: March 2026

BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE (2009)

DARK WATER (2002)