Halloween sounds like a perfect time for a movie dealing with vampires and blood … but when you have a combo with dystopian science fiction, martial arts, AI and film noir, things can go pretty wrong.
That’s the case with Voltaic Blood, an original title indeed for a series written, produced, and directed by Jaime Gonzalez. You can see the big effort from everyone in front of and behind the cameras — a catchy synth soundtrack and striking visuals. But there’s a big void in its story, as the pilot episode ends before you can even begin to care about Michael Rakóczi (Aaron Groben), a kind of Blade Runner-style tech-noir detective who faces the demons mentioned in the prologue, along with a slew of characters that include angels and vampires. You hardly have time to care at all.
Without giving away more than the IMDB synopsis, you can tell the big problem with Voltaic Blood is “ … infecting the ancient spiritual darkness of the vampire with the mind-bending tech-noir cyberpunk” — without having an introduction like the ones in The Terminator or Blade Runner. We jump straight into a blood-sucking scene without knowing the background of these demons, taking for granted that the audience already understands this universe. And maybe we might, but based on what we’re shown, we barely get to know a couple of the protagonists in a world where the 80s are ever-present — from old-fashioned computers to arcade games — yet there are no Near Dark or The Lost Boys-type of characters to actually care about.
In retrospect, even from a quick camera glimpse, we can tell that writer-director Gonzalez is a devourer of monster stories dating back to Roger Corman´s Little Shop of Horrors (1960). We see carnivorous plants that have no real reason to exist alongside all the cyberpunk and vampires, but a story needs a solid foundation if you plan to have at least a miniseries run — much like, staying within the vampire genre, Tobe Hooper’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem´s Lot, or, more recently, Alan Ball´s HBO series True Blood (2008-2014).
Going back again to the 80s — which we have first-hand references to, as mentioned earlier — we meet two women: a kind of priestess and her vampire pupil. They bring to mind Ornella Muti´s femme fatale in Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges, 1980). However, that supposed femme fatale´s importance in the story is diluted just a couple of sequences after her introduction, so we miss the chance to have a Jami Gertz from The Lost Boys (Joel, Schumacher, 1987), or, speaking of tech-noir classics, a Sean Young-style replicant damsel in distress to care about.
Thus, Voltaic Blood is a vintage-cyberpunk concept with a lot of potential but not enough volts to last beyond a pilot — a lot of tricks but no treats, and indeed a bloody massacre in the end … with barely any blood or veins involved in it.
Rating: 4/10