As a team of vampire hunters tries to find the hideout of a deadly clan, a member joins forces with a kidnapped victim's brother to rescue him from their clutches before he's turned into one of them in order to lead them to a sacred talisman their leader desires.Frankly, this one should've been far better than it was, but instead is reduced to a humongous pile of plot confusion and far too much time spent on story lines that have either nothing to do with the main plot or are featured for no reason other than to build up the cast of genre veterans. That seems to be the main problem here, as far too often we have to sit through something that makes no sense as to it's inclusion only because of who's playing the character that finally clues you in to it's inclusion. There's some good gore in here, though, with the deaths being inflicted coming off as pretty gruesome and the action scenes are far more entertaining than they should be, with stand-outs including a frenetic shootout through the main lair as well as the ambush on the hunter's hideout that results in the trapping of one of the main vampires and the subsequent torture for information that's far more brutal than it should be in such an effort, but it's a little confusing and far too much built-for-star-power than it should be.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

The horror genre's extreme boost in popularity since the year 2000 has resulted in quite a couple of annoying trends. There's the numerous amount of pointless remakes, naturally, but also a nearly immeasurable increase in straight-to-video and intolerably cheap & cheesy B-movies released by brand new and supposedly specialized production companies. These days literally everyone thinks they can put together a horror movie, regardless of how inexperienced or untalented they are, and that's the reason why nowadays the lowest shelves in video stores are full of crap nobody ever heard of. "Brotherhood of Blood" seemed to fit into this description perfectly well and at first I wasn't even planning on ever checking it out. The writers/directors duo Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer previously just did some random jobs on films directed by Uwe Boll - not the best reference to mention on your curriculum vitae to begin with - and then promptly came up with their own scenario. Also, vampire movies have been a dried out source for years. But since the first reviews I encountered were hugely positive and since I'm still a big fan of former horror icons Sid Haig and Ken Foree, I decided to give the rental copy a chance anyway. "Brotherhood of Blood" is definitely better than first anticipated but, in the end, nonetheless remains a disappointing and unmemorable film. The script is definitely better written and more original than most nowadays B-movies, but the main problem actually becomes that it is too ambitious (on the verge of pretentious, actually) and wannabe convoluted for its own good.There are certainly some ingenious elements to find here. Carrie Rieger works for a professional agency of vampire hunters and, at the moment, she's occupied with the protection of a wealthy businessman named Thomas, whose brother is likely to become the reincarnation of the most feared vampire of all times; Vlad Kossei. Even the local vampire syndicate – led by Sid Haig – is after Thomas, as Vlad Kossei is feared by the other vampires as well as by humans. For whatever reason, the duo of directors opted for a rather confusing narrative structure. The action continuously jumps back and forth between the events that happened three weeks earlier, last night and today. Three weeks ago, Thomas' brother got infected with Vlad's blood in Romania, last night Carrie and her team were torturing a random vampire (Ken Foree) in order to obtain information and today they're all trapped and imprisoned in the vampires' underground lair. The muddled narration adds very little value to the film and actually raises incoherence and a pretentious atmosphere. A lot more surprising, especially considering the bloody stills on the back of the DVD, is the relatively large amount of boring parts and pointless moments. Multiple scenes just show Victoria Pratt prowling through dark catacombs or trying to get out of chains. Then when you finally expect the film to really break loose, it ends with the biggest cliffhanger I've seen in years. They better make a sequel now, or else … The acting performances are above average, but still I feel those acclaimed names could do better. I wonder if father Sean watches all that junk his son Jason Connery appears in.

While most mysteries try to shock you too often with twists and even more twists, it turns out to be overkill. This film encompassed such ideas with flair, originality an an intelligent script.That being said, there were parts of it that were pleasantly surprising. I was happy to see Victoria Pratt in this movie, because I think the is a good, if not merely decent, actress with actual emotion behind her lines, which is lacking in a lot of horror. Also, I felt that there was a decent amount of chemistry between her and the young vampire. Maybe not enough for an Emmy, but for a horror movie it was pleasantly surprising.

Subtlety is a very important thing in any good horror movie. Not only does subtlety reduce the ridiculous amount of "in-your-face-quality" that today's horror movies seem to love, which effectively makes then just plain old action movies, subtlety shows that a film has respect for its audience. It doesn't feel like it has to explain everything at every step of the way since it knows that an interested audience will be on the lookout for hints as to what is going on. That's what makes films like this enjoyable. In fact, that what makes any film enjoyable. It isn't just a barrage of images, but rather an engaging sequence of them. This sequence can be unchronologically organized or in any number of ways obscured to create suspense, but as long as it is engaging, the audience will be happy. There are numerous hints as to what is really going on and the final climatic twist is really a good one.