Audience Member
Avoid it, don't watch it. I certainly regret that I wasted even one minute on it. I rate this hideous failure as 1/10 because there is no facility to rate 0/10. Some bad movies are so bad that they are funny, amusing. THIS movie is in a whole different category: it is painful to watch. A reviewer on another site said: Any rating above 2/10 is fake. Yes, I agree. How it is possible for two reviewers to award 10/10 and 9/10, I do not know. Cast or crew members, or friends/relatives of them? Just fooling around? Trolls? Here they are: "9/10 Another gem in the long line of the Way Of series" and "10/10 This is very scary". What? HUH? Are you serious? A "gem"? "scary"? NO WAY.
This is truly one of THE worst films I have ever seen, in decades of watching a few thousand flicks. I've reviewed many hundreds, here on Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere. Horror films are one of my favourite genres, vampires in particular. To try to associate this stinking putrid crud with Bram Stoker is criminal imho; undoubtedly the title fooled many people, drew them in to buying this puerile nonsense.
Everything about this "motion picture" is dreadful: nothing is praiseworthy. The acting is abysmal, just unbelievable. Denise Boutte, a grown woman in a lead part, in particular comes across as a little child reading something for the first time. Hard to put into words how awful her acting is; one of the very few times words do indeed fail me. A new low has been reached with the creation of this garbage. The violence is a joke, but not amusing. The ending, though mindless, was a blessed relief. #
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
not very good, MAY entertain vampire film lovers but will also disappoint too
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
Full Review
Audience Member
(As an attempt to keep this blog alive, I've set myself a challenge of 31 horror movies reviewed in 31 days. If I start falling behind and fail to complete the month, you can, um, yell at me or something.)
[i]Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire[/i] has great opening credits. They're all shiny and glowing and professional and backed with an impressive score that says, "Hey, you're about to watch an epic. Get ready!" They honestly look better than a lot of mainstream opening credits these days--grandiose enough to get your attention, yet still have that hint of cheesiness.
I mention this because it's the only nice thing I have to say about [i]Way of the Vampire[/i], and I wanted to get it out of the way so I don't forget about it. I always try to have something nice to say about a movie, no matter how awful, even if it's something as minor as "the lead actress had nice hair" or "I enjoyed the creative spelling of the intertitles." Here it's the credits. They're great.
If only the credits hadn't come after the prologue, so we wouldn't already know what a crapfest we're going to be in for. The prologue takes place sometime in the past where there are castles and cabins and people say things like "I realize he is enamored with your beauty. Josiah assures me he an expert at all things nosferatu" and there are occasional electrical outlets in the background. It's that kind of past.
Anyway, Van Helsing and his merry band of vampire hunters drive a bunch of vampires into hiding, but he loses his wife in the process. Cut to the present, where we find Van Helsing working in a hospital where he's still a sullen jackass. It may have something to do with him having made a bargain wherein he doesn't age until the last of the vampires has been murdered. Or he could just be an asshole. As Rhett Giles plays him, it's hard to tell--he could just be such a stiff actor that he's incapable of displaying any emotion whatsoever.
The vampries, meanwhile, have been driven underground and now subsist on animal blood. That is until one of the vamps, [i]working at the same hospital[/i], steals some blood from a blood bank that re-energizes their leader, Sebastien. Yes, that's spelled correctly, and that should give you an idea of how horribly pretentious this movie is. Not only is the lead vampire's name Sebastien, but it's spelled "Sebastien," because "Sebastian" would just be too normal.
Never mind the fact that these vampires are too dumb to move away from the town that Van Helsing is in. (He's not in disguise or anything, he's just "Dr. Van Helsing") Never mind that they're even too dumb to not steal from a blood bank where Van Helsing works. Never mind that the best crew of vampire hunters Van Helsing can come up with to train for his long final battle is a bunch of mildly puffy gamer types that look like they're playing "Vampire: The Masquerade." I could get pass any of these inanities if the makers of Way of the Vampire had any sort of sense of humor.
They don't. At all. They take everything deadly seriously, with all of the vampires are outfitted in the frilly shirts and leather pants you might expect in an Anne Rice film about pirate goths. All of the actors prance around reciting their lines and staring into space, injecting dramatic pauses randomly in an attempt to sound important but just emphasizing what awful performers they are. The direction doesn't help, either, as everything is shot so woodenly, with the occasional burst of quick editing during an action scene which turns things from dull to incomprehensible.
The sound mix is awful, and the music and sound effects often overrun the dialogue. The dialogue often makes no sense. The training scenes go on forever and offer no insight into the characters anyway. And it has nothing to do with Bram Stoker, other than the fact that is uses his characters, but do does [i]Love at First Bite[/i], and that sure as hell wasn't billed as [i]Bram Stoker's Love at First Bite[/i].
[i]Bram Stoker's Way of the Vampire[/i] is a poorly made film, and it has the gall to be pretentious about it, making it even more horrible than it would have been had it actually bothered to have a sense of humor. It's a bit like 1987's vampire pic [i]Graveyard Shift[/i] (the two share a similar sense of great '80s mood lighting) stripped entirely of style and remade by brooding goth types. But, hey, great credits.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
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