Doesn't it just annoy you when an at first promising film slowly slips in the wrong direction? This one starts out with a swordsman dressed up heavily in some waterproof clothes taking on an onslaught of vampires whom are wearing old fashioned Japanese attire. We then skip to Japan where we meet a group of friends. It's witty, well shot, the acting is great and there are a lot of unanswered questions; it breaks out like a good action horror movie. It also wouldn't be a stretch to say it carried shades of another well known J-horror, Battle Royale. It has that same camaraderie and wit, with subtle moments of horror, but at the same time being very down to earth. It slowly begins to slip though. The brother of the swordsman is amongst this group that we met, and they all go to find and help him. After much melodrama and annoyingly overacted teen angst, after meeting some strange women whom tells them of a situation involving vampires on her home island, it all begins to get a bit grating as we are hammered with ridiculously over the top nonsense.
It was still promising though. It was still fun. Then we get to the island. Every bit of wit and good dark horror seemed to have been swapped in favour of pure overkill in the melodrama and overkill in trying to build the characters in particular of the main vampire. It's what I call too much talk not enough action; anyone who has seen some of the modern shounen anime such as Bleach will understand. Big bad guy is insurmountable. Big bad guy has 300 attempts to wipe out our protagonists. Big bad guy spends those 300 spots fitting in his little quips, going on about something to do with why he's so special, and how he's unbeatable. Put that together with the fact that the main vampire is the most androgynous and strangely attired bad guy I've ever seen, and put together all of these overkilled overly melodramatic moments, and its momentum slowly dripped away. Still good mindless fun, but it could, and should have been more.
