The movie: A sexy half-vampire fights vampires, Ben Kingsley and Meat Loaf in medieval Europe.
The worst scene: We could give this to one of Kingsley’s phoned-in scenes, Michael Madsen’s uncomfortable takes or any scene in which Michelle Rodriguez tries to fake an accent. We could even give it to one of Billy Zane’s scenes, which don’t seem to have any real connection with the rest of the movie.
Above: ‘Seriously, why am I even here?’
But there’s one brief moment of laughable awfulness that out-tarnishes every incompetent performance that precedes it. Yes, even this one:
Above: This man has won Oscars
For whatever reason (we’re guessing it’s to pad out the film with unused footage), the final moments of the movie are devoted to a condensed, slow-motion flashback of everything we’ve just watched, as Rayne ponders the events that led her to victory. Not too far into that is a “shocking” montage of some of the cheesiest, least convincing gore effects we’ve ever seen, which as a special highlight feature some exceptionally bored-looking bad guys giving a dead monk some bonus sword-clobbering:
Above: The job satisfaction’s just not there anymore, you know?
All that, plus severed limbs, heads being caved in and a really weird scene in which Rayne drinks what’s probably supposed to be blood, but looks like undisguised chocolate syrup. And as Boll repeatedly cuts away to a jeering audience of toothless yokels, he reminds us that we, the viewers, are complicit in the slaughter.
We’re sure this was meant to be horrifying or somehow meaningful. But even in context, it just makes us laugh. Does that mean it’s still the worst scene in the movie? Yes.
