...and you kill an hour and a half. Despite the low score on IMDb, this movie is not a 4-out-of-10 vampire movie. Anyone who thinks it is does not know the depths to which vampire flicks can sink. This was a (mostly) competently acted movie with good production value and fun martial arts. Rather than lots of bad SFX, we get a few okay SFX (mostly freaky contacts, fangs and dead-vampire-melting) a net gain in my book. It's predictable, but most vampire movies are, and there are no gaping plot holes, or at least not larger than in most movies.
That said, it's not Hamlet, at least not well-acted Hamlet. The main actor isn't particularly charismatic, and seems to have one basic expression throughout the movie, which I read as "fierce determination," but at least he *has* a facial expression (try van Helsing in "Way of the Vampire" for the alternative), and it fits with his mental state for most of the stuff. Stephanie Chao is no great shakes either, but she's pretty, and has a natural sincerity to her voice that makes up for some of her lack of emotion. They should have given Meredith Monroe more to do.
This is, too, only a bastard step-child (yes, that's what I meant) of John Carpenter's Vampires. It has a new origin of vampires that is not really compatible at all with the original. It does keep the winch, but it looks like they put it in just to prove some kind of family resemblance. If the producers actually paid anything to get in on this franchise, it was a waste of money, since they didn't bother to put in any element (other than the winch) from the original.
Overall, It's far from the worst such movie, but not nearly among the best. If you like vampires and kung fu, and movies with a photogenic cast, this is a good way to waste 84 minutes, especially if you've got some kind of unlimited rentals. Just don't go out of your way unless you're a genre fan.
