It's a banner year for bad vampire flicks, so Ultraviolet is truly damned by this faint praise: It's not the worst. In the future, humankind has been devastated by an ill-defined virus that transforms its victims into superpowered, airbrushed Eurotrash, feared and hunted by a germophobic government. (Since these 'hemophages' don't actually drink blood, where's the downside?) Writer-director Kurt Wimmer (of the equally unsatisfying Equilibrium) could stand to be a little more writer and a little less director.
Ultraviolet's truncated comic-book script is hard on the brain, while the hyperstylized, superchromatic action sequences are nifty until you start bleeding from the eyes. And while the way Milla Jovovich, as Violet, dispatches a ludicrous number of faceless bad guys may be poetry in motion, her reading of Wimmer's unfortunately clichéd dialogue is anything but. The only real protection against a cinematic assault like this is to stay out of its way, but if you're inexplicably drawn to Ultraviolet, at least bring your shades.