Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Lucy Liu, James D'Arcy, Michael Chiklis,
Tagline: "They didn't leave her alive. They left her UNDEAD."
Random Trivia: Director Gutierrez also wrote the script. Each time Liu's character wakes up in a confined space, she hits her head on something.
Well, I think Rise pretty much killed my streak of entertaining horror movies. Honestly, what was Lucy Liu thinking as the filming of this movie unfolded? She's done some crap before, for reference, see Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. She's done low budget indies - take Cypher, a Canadian production I actually saw at the Toronto International Film festival for its North American Premiere.
But was this a paycheck? A vain attempt at securing a "lead" role? What the hell was she thinking having read this script?
When the evil old man tells Liu's Sadie Blake that "you did good" near the start of the movie, I cringed. I'm not a grammar Nazi. And something along the lines of "You've served us well" would sound b-movie cheese-ish - but this is a B movie! Or it should be!
Rise suffers from taking itself too seriously whilst having a week script backing it up. There's no decent twists, the outcome is predictable, the acting wooden, and Lucy Liu has gone from being the hot young Asian piece to the old Chinese lady. Well, middle-aged, but it's just around the corner.
Even the attempt to do the "vampires are sexy evil hot" thing fails.
I can't really believe I made it through this. I guess we want plot, well - Sadie Blake is a journalist doing a story on vampire clubs/cults whatever. She passes them off as a bunch of teenage Lestats dressing up - until she hits upon a real one. Soon she finds herself amongst the members of the undead after being fed upon by Bishop (James D'Arcy) and his mate - the latter of whom, taken by Blake's refusal to die, decides to turn her.
Sadie then swears to get revenge on those who killed her, and at some point, The Shield's Michael Chiklis turns up as a cop seeking revenge for the murder of his daughter - another victim of the vampire underground. Sadie fights her own nature, the audience fights boredom.
IMDB tells me the word vampire was never spoken during the film; I wasn't really counting. They pull off the vampire's don't reflect gag, and some cool feeding scenes, but honestly, this puppy could not hold my attention. The ending was so anti-climactic that I found myself shocked it was over that easily - but it really was a sigh of relief.
Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)
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