Blade

What do you get when a pregnant women is bitten by a vampire? The answer: Wesley Snipes and a trilogy of strange yet enjoyable vampire hunter movies. 

Blade is a vampire hunter, born part human and part vampire. Armed with a vampire’s strength and a human’s ability to walk during the day, he is the ultimate fighter, waging a war against bloodsuckers. When one particular vampire poses a significant threat to the human race, it’s up to Blade with the help of his weapons designer and a newly bitten doctor to take out the omnipotent vampire overlord and stop the world from being destroyed in an ancient prophetic apocalypse. 

Like many action sci-fi movies of the late ‘90s, Blade is a film that has a fair amount of potential, but does suffer from some serious flaws and bad CGI. The intrigue of the movie is in the novelty of the protagonist himself. There is a lot of fun in a character that has the best of both worlds, as it were, but what’s interesting about Blade is that he takes a side and sticks to it rather stoically. Rather then occasionally running with vampires, he’s forever running them down and this makes his battles particularly interesting because it’s a case of fire against fire. His war against vamps, coupled with his own internal demonic struggles is undeniably fascinating to watch and the fact that the movie successfully puts vampires in a contemporary setting is what sets Blade apart. 

Of all the vampire movies that I’ve seen, Blade is the one that nicely situates vamps within contemporary society and what is more, actually decreases (almost eliminates altogether) the sensual eroticism and romance of them as characters. Movies like Twilight or any gothic adaptation of Dracula, have a tendency to romanticize vamps, which is all very good (traditionally they are irresistibly beautiful, sexual, and decadent), but I guess what really stands out in Blade is the fact that many of the vamps are not elegant or erotic, some are downright crass bogan or redneck types and that proves to be a nice change. 

Story-wise, the movie is pretty obvious and at times rather predictable. Whilst the whole one-man war thing against the supernatural is exciting and cool, certain narrative tropes become a little clichéd and easily called out. The cursed hero’s journey towards self-acceptance, the jealous villain, and the whole tying up to vendettas with one length of rope can get pretty ‘ugh’ by the end of the film. 

Then, of course, we have the not-so-hot CGI. Realistically it’s unfair to praise or ridicule ‘90s movies on their CGI alone because, let’s face it the computer wizardry that modern movie watchers can enjoy was not really around. It would have cost a bomb to get that kind of crisp CGI magic and sadly not every movie has a budget of billions. The CGI in Blade does what it can and performs the task that it’s meant to, but it does look pretty cumbersome and sometimes ridiculous. 

Whilst it’s not the most incredible vampire movie out there, Blade certainly has potential and one can totally see why it was followed by two other installments. Filled with action, kick-arse weapons, and drama, I think the most that can be said for it is that it’s a fresh and interesting approach to the vampire subgenre. 

Starring: Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, N’Bushe Wright, Donal Logue, Ubo Kier, Arly Jover, Traci Lords, Kevin Patrick Walls, Tim Guinee, Sanaa Lathan, Eric Edwards, and Kris Kristofferson. 

Rating: MA