BLOODRAYNE 2: DELIVERANCE - REVIEW

Because BloodRayne was SOOOO good.

Here's a sequel for ya.

With a new Rayne, about half the budget and an even lesser known cast comes BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, a sequel that I can't imagine anyone was begging for but which nevertheless exists. This time, director Uwe Boll sets things in the Old West where our heroine is made to face off against, wait for it, a vampiric, Eastern European Billy The Kid. See, the problem with the first film, I felt, was that it just wasn't silly enough. Serious lack of vampire cowboys in that movie, frankly. Well, you sure won't be disappointed this time. Initially, I thought this movie was a fan-made thing: the opening titles and the film itself looked so cheap that it took me like 5 minutes to realise that this was an actual movie. That said, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't end up enjoying this movie just a little. It's not good, don't get me wrong, but in terms of cheapo vampire cowboy movies, it delivers something dumb, silly and entertaining enough that it's not too much of a chore to sit through. The acting throughout is, of course, godawful and the production values often makes the film feel like a home movie or a Halloween weekend at a western-themed theme park, but some performances are so over the top and so off that they end up being kinda fun. Michael Eklund's demented preacher makes Nicolas Cage look like a reasonable dude and he seems to enjoy camping things up every time he's on screen. Our Billy The Kid, Zack Ward, embraces how ludicrous his character is and the movie he's in to deliver a truly perplexing but completely memorable performance: the accent, the cartoonish pronunciations, he's great.

Sadly, every bad movie has... bad things in it. 

Like I said, the film looks pretty cheap and as cute as its attempts at referencing waaaay better films (Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti westerns, mostly) are, in no way do they distract us from the film's shortcomings. Also, in terms of action, there's very little of it and when it does happen it's either in the dark or it's so messily put together that you can barely tell what's happening, or both. BloodRayne was an inept flick in basically every way, mostly because it took itself so weirdly seriously. This time, there's a more self-aware, tongue-in-cheek tone and this actually works much better. BloodRayne 2, in that sense, is a better film than BloodRayne: it knows it's stupid, it knows it has no reason to really exist but it goes for it and decides to have some fun regardless. And that's fair enough. Plus there's no grumpy Michael Madsen to kill the vibe, so that's a plus. The new Rayne, Natassia Malthe, may not be quite as "outgoing" as Kristanna Loken but she honestly does fine despite many, many flat line reads. At least she looks good in that goofy costume! As odd as that is to say, this sequel takes the franchise in the right direction and even though the bar was left pretty low after the first film, Deliverance raises it just enough to provide some lols and... vampire cowboys.

BloodRayne 2 is by no means a great flick and unless you have very low movie standards, I wouldn't really suggest that you bother with any of the BloodRayne flicks. For those thirsty for cheap cowboy blood and more Uwe Boll video game-based goofiness, however, this one's trashy but somewhat fun.

Surprisingly amusing.