Review of Blood Ransom

Anyone who has followed the prolific career of famous Filipina actress Anne Curtis knows that she has a lot of talent. She has been nominated for more than a dozen of acting awards and has won a few. From small scale dramas and comedies to larger budget action movies and thrillers, from her days as a child actress to her most adult roles, in countless films and series, Curtis has showed off an impressive range and star presence, almost always a charismatic performer. Which makes her performance here all the more disappointing, because she isn't given many lines and isn't called on to do much besides look pretty and intense.

Director Francis dela Torre began his career in the film industry as a cinematographer and camera operator, but he is much less experienced as a writer. This becomes apparent right away. Visually, while not exactly beautiful, it is filled with interesting shot choices and color usage. Dela Torre was a co-director of photography here and the results are decent. The script, on the other hand, also by dela Torre, is a complete mess and not much better than a typical direct-to-video flick. Mediocre pacing, uninteresting and messy plot development, boring characters. The performances are also uniformly mediocre. I'm not really a fan of vampire stories so they have to be especially strong for me to appreciate them. And this is pretty silly even for a vampire movie.