Brandon at Random Reviews

Every once in a while I have to revisit a movie that begs the question: “Was it really that bad, Brandon?” As I’ve mentioned in my “Killing Me Softly” review, I am a huge fan of the podcast “How Did This Get Made?” and they like to talk about one bad movie per episode. They have covered “Ultraviolet” on their show, and even though I knew I watched the movie to get a deeper appreciation for the show, I couldn’t remember the episode or the movie at all to be perfectly honest. I remembered it wasn’t good at all, but was it that bad? Let’s dig in.

Now, multiple times throughout this movie, especially after the first piece of voice over was uttered, I thought “Is that the take you really went with? Is that really how you wanted that line to sound? Is the acting that bad or is it just the direction?” Aside from that, this flick has one of those undefinably terrible qualities about it. Like the tone, the aesthetic, every essence of every scene is, well, god awful and difficult to sit through. But here I sit watching the movie through a second time like some kind of yutzy glutton for punishment.

Now, I feel compelled to mention that Milla Jovovich is a model-turned-actress and that maybe she’s doing her best here. But this is not her first movie or even her first starring role. It’s gotta be the direction in this movie, I don’t remember her being this bad in the first Resident Evil which was before this. And I mean, she’s obviously good looking, but there’s gotta be more to her to star in a major motion picture, right? Also, they have her changing her outfit every time she blinks it seems like and it’s totally ridiculous. No one else in this movie stands out and when your lead actress is being underwhelming, that’s a big fucking problem.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention something. The way this movie handles CGI, it’s like it just keeps trying to win “shitty movie effects bingo”. Things are out of focus. Things are in slow-motion that shouldn’t be. They use so much blurriness in an effort to hide how shitty everything looks, and not just the CGI. Things that should have used practical effects are computer generated, especially given the state of those kinds of effects in 2006. To be honest, the first Blade movie had better effects in 1998 and that’s saying something.

Now that I’ve coincidentally mentioned Blade, I must ask: what in the actual fuck is this movie supposed to be about? It wants me to believe it’s vampires or something close I guess? I mean it’s got to be some variation on that lore because William Fichtner has very pronounced pointy teeth in multiple scenes so I know some kind of shit is going on. But there are pretty much no vampire rules being followed at all aside from that scene where he mentions being light sensitive. There are also seemingly no other rules being followed either. Milla’s character Violet invokes the wrath of an entire army of gunmen and when they open fire, she just takes a knee in complete view and range of them and all of their shots just miss and she’s unfazed? But it’s about some kind of blood disease and a cure. Or something. Fuck.

Another gripe I have with this film is that it tries to act like it’s a comic book movie, but it is apparently not based on a comic book at all. But for the time, even if it was based on a comic book, it’d be bad by that era’s standard of shitty comic book movies and that’s definitely me saying that this movie is extra shitty. The movie was very poorly written, much of the dialogue feels like a child wrote it, and not even like an overly creative child.

This movie has received widespread acclaim for being as terrible as I’m saying it is. Holy shit I hate it. I’m struggling to find one upside to watching this movie aside from getting to look at Milla Jovovich the whole fucking time and I think that might be it, but you’re better off living without. It’s on HBO Max. Don’t fucking bother.

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