Our Rating: 3.00

After penning two Blade opuses, David S. Goyer helms his own vampire-killer epic and cheerfully goes ADDA berserk. Wesley Snipes’ terse ‘n’ tattooed hero is now supplemented by a group of next-generation vamp hunters (including Jessica Biel’s wowza slayer and Ryan Reynolds’ obscenity-prone nerd/hunk). Those additions allow for much Buffy-style pop-cult quipping amidst the hyper yet neatly mise-en-scned carnage. The plot has a queen-bee vamp (Parker Posey, never more pop-eyed loony) and her crew – which includes an evil undead Pomeranian pup (!) – teaming up with Dracula himself (Dominic Purcell) in another attempt to suck humanity dry. Goyer is casually scornful of current politics – Blade dismisses our president as “an asshole”– and he nearly matches the pop-transgression value director Guillermo del Toro brought to the second installment. Check out this FBI-sanctioned “final solution” for America’s homeless: storage in necro-techno Saran Wrap for use as future vampire-elite meals.

This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2004.