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Truly Dreadful Film

Strong and Moving!

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Detective Hoshino investigates a 14 year old case of a brutally murdered maid. His investigation leads him to the mysterious Ukyo. He witnesses him killing and then drinking another young woman's blood. Ukyo is a Samurai who has continued as a vampire. His men take Hoshino to be killed at the docks where he is rescued by vampire Miyako. She shares her blood with him to save him and thereby turning him.This is trying to be a stylish Gothic vampire movie. The film moves way too slowly. The action style is lacking. It would have been cool back in the 80s or 90s. It doesn't look nearly as cool for action of today. The acting is mostly wooden. It's a low budget action wannabe but it fails to live up to its ambitions. The film is generous with its blood flow. However, it is so slow that the tension never gets that high.

This movie is written by Shigenoro Takechi who also wrote IZO, and directed by Ten Shimoyama who directed Shinobi - Heart Under Blade. Aya Sugimoto used to be photographic idol in the '80s. She shows that she still has what it takes in this 21st century movie.A detective who's been demoted to cold case files decides to investigate the homicide of a maid that statute of limitation is about to run out. He goes to see the ex-employer of the maid Miyako Rosenberg (Aya Sugimoto), but find out that she's a vampire.There's no campiness in this movie like they have with vampire movies from Hong Kong. It's rather serious and gruesome. The movie basically boils down to two things. One is view of detective Hoshino as he discovers what it is like to live as a vampire, and the other is the erotic exploits between Hoshino, and Miyako. If these are not interesting topic for you, then this movie is not for you.In Japan, I believe the attraction of this movie was Aya Sugimoto's beauty. Sugimoto has equally large women fan base as do men, so the movie might have been written to satisfy both male, and female audiences.If there's one complaint about this movie, it's that the sound effects are not well controlled. Voices are too low or difficult to hear if the sound level is adjusted to the sound effects.

Vampires, fight scenes inspired by the Underworld films and a leading actress who shows her boobs a lot. That's about all you're going to get out of BLOOD, a low budget and derivative little movie that doesn't know what it wants to be. There are gun fights, repetitive sex scenes that seem tacked on to market this as an erotic thriller, a little detective work and, of course, some vampires. These vampires are of the overly familiar and utterly predictable type, although they seem happy to wander around in the daylight to no ill effect.BLOOD is a low budget movie and it shows. The action scenes incorporate some disappointing CGI effects which make you laugh rather than gasp at the on-screen antics. The worst thing, though, is the script, which fails to make any sense of the disparate story elements. It seems that the scriptwriter is content to emulate throughout, but there's no world-building here, no conviction in the depiction of centuries-old vampires. The romantic scenes are laughable and the cast bad, and all of these detractions end up making this one a bit of a bomb, a Japanese film that copies Hollywood way too much without working out a style of its own.

I was expecting something along the veins of "Snake and Flower" in which Aya Sugimoto starred. I was disappointed. I am not exactly sure what the director is trying to do. The same dialogue lines (Darkness, eternal life, I-am-so-depressed) keeps getting repeated over and over again. There were a couple of sex scenes but except for one of them, the others seems to be rehashes (I mean, same bed, same posture, same lighting, same angle - only thing that differs is the male partner).Not seeing much of emotion/passion either. Everyone is in a state of ennui (except for the male lead, to a certain extent). Not much happens (the pace is unexpectedly slow) and even when there is action sequence the low-budget-looking special effects are quite distracting. No good swordplay or fighting techniques either, they are all pretty basic stuff.So where does it leave us? Maybe it was intended as a "deep"/"thinking" film about love and eternal life? I'm not really getting it. Admittedly, the camera work is pretty good at times, but other than that, there is little for the mind or for the senses.