Tons of flashy effects, cool clothes, lovely old buildings… but surprisingly little in the way of story or character development. The basic premise is really good but the end result is an overly glossy actioner rather than a true monster flick. I’m loathe to say it but even Van Helsing was better. Van bloody bastard Helsing.

Maybe I’m expecting too much of my dim-witted entertainment lately. Maybe I really crave vampire horror but instead feed my brain vampire action.

(I feel the same way about most zombie flicks lately — far too little brains in them. Literally and figuratively. Hell, most horror genre stuff is becoming mindless action gorefests now. Where are the days of Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street… I’ll even take Event Horizon. I’m that desperate.)

But I digress.

Of course, I still intend to watch the sequel. Might as well kill another couple of hours hoping for one very cool sequence (which, disappointingly, this movie barely had. People, seriously — the slow-motion “ooh, ooh, this shot is soooooo kewl” overabundance only makes your undercompetent filmmaking more apparent. Hell, even as pure eye-candy this was sorely lacking.)

OK, I’m not a fan of vampires, so I didn’t watch this willingly. However, I found the film to be very rewarding. The characterization kept you off balance so you were unsure of who the “good” guys were. It seemed like a good example of why wars happen too. You go with the information you have at the time, and everyone thinks his/her side is the right one.