Movie Review: The Vampire Effect

If there's any vampire movie I'd say is chock full of hyper action, it's this movie called "The Vampire Effect" which stars Ekin Cheng (as the vampire hunter Reeve), Edison Chen (who is a harmless vampire who can't suck blood, poor fella, named Kazaf), Gillian Chung (as Gypsy, Reeve's new partner after his first one dies as shown in the opening) and Charlene Choi (as Helen the shrill character). I got to admit for a horror film, it wasn't THAT scary as all the martial arts was there and it certainly showed how a remake of Blade can be done. So now I'll talk about how nice this film is and it's nice to have Jacky Chan in a cameo.

So what's the real deal behind this? An evil vampire named Duke Dekotes (played by Swiss martial artist Mickey Hardt, who to my delight trained with Donnie Yen) has been getting the royal blood of the royal vampires, Kazaf being the last he'll never need to open the "Day for Night" which will grant him immunity to sunlight. So Reeve seeks to hunt down vampires while trying to handle the problem that his new partner in killing vampires (and lover) Gypsy can't get along with his sister Helen. What makes it complicated is that Helen also just had a break-up with her boyfriend (who I seriously think looks like a Chinese version of the Filipino reporter Boy Abunda!) and ends up falling for Kazaf which makes it very complicated.

So you have a difficult situation- a vampire falling for a human which is a taboo to both sides. Vampires view human blood as food or potential host victims. Humans naturally dislike vampires for that reason. For Helen and Kazaf it's more than that- Helen's brother Reeve as mentioned awhile ago IS a vampire hunter. But Helen doesn't know yet that her boyfriend is a vampire while she may have thought that he may only have xeroderma pigmentasium, a disease that makes one allergic to sunlight to the point of death. It does get more complicated when Helen discovers the truth her boyfriend is a vampire (which he reveals to her out of love) and she gets some blood from the hospital before he'll die.

Now on the side of Reeve- it does even get tragic to think of HOW the vampire hunter ended up becoming a vampire and had to be destroyed. The reason was that the vampire hunters drank some vampire essence to give them an edge against the vampires and drank the antidote to avoid becoming a vampire. However Helen just ended up using the vampire antidote (because it was labeled as "banana essence") to make muffins which ended up making Reeve lose sanity of himself. In the end, his lover Gypsy had to destroy him before the final battle.

Eventually Duke Dekotes did succeed in getting the blood from Kazaf (who really can speak both English and Mandarin, did this guy go to China to study Mandarin?!). What happened next is where both Gypsy and Helen end up fighting Duke Dekotes. Gypsy swallows a bigger part of the "Day for Night" pill which looks like floating mercury to me turning her part-vampire or should I say 3/4 of a vampire. Eventually they do destroy the film's antagonist with the conclusion that Kazaf has joined them to fight against vampires who attack humans.

My rating? 8.5/10. It's got lots of horror and action minus the gore plus twh twists and turns are very interesting.

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