Highly Overrated But Still Good

Best movie of this year hands down!

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"Judas Kiss" writer & director Sebastian Gutierrez provided Lucy Lui with one of her more unusual roles as a vampire with principles out for vengeance in "Rise: Blood Hunter." Vampire purists may take issue with some of the bloodsucking details, but this isn't a pedestrian fangster yarn. Gutierrez's film is gritty and realistic compared to other supernatural vampire movies. Primarily, the chief setback here is length. The 'Unrated Undead' version wears out its welcome at an indulgent 2 hours and two minutes. Since I haven't ogled the theatrical cut which clocks in at a trimmer 98 minutes, I cannot vouch for the shorter saga. Pacing is the problem. Gutierrez could have retained everything for the longer cut but pared down some of the action that drags things out. Another shortcoming is the lack of exposition on various characters such as the Alchemist or as he calls him 'her godfather' and Poe. Meanwhile, some of Gutierrez's dialogue is catchy and quotable. "Fear is where we go to learn," says one vampire. The cast is good but some actors like Mako are wasted in lackluster roles. Carla Gugino doesn't have more than a couple of scenes but she still manages to make an impression. Comen VFX handled the special make-up effects with finesse. Special Make-Up Effects Technician Christopher Nelson makes an interesting comment in a featurette that vampire blood differs from human blood. Indeed, this makes sense, but it is something you don't really think about in these movies.Inquisitive "L.A. Weekly" tabloid reporter Sadie Blake (Lucy Lui of "Charlie's Angels") writes a story about vampires and then finds herself at their lack of mercy. Bishop (James D'Arcy of Hitchcock") and Eve (Carla Gugino of "The One") rape and drain our heroine of blood, but Sadie clings stubbornly to life. Eve can sense the stubborn desire of our heroine to live. Nevertheless, the authorities discover her body in a dumpster. Sadie awakens in the city morgue after her grieving mom has identified her but later manages to escape to track down the devilish dastards that turned her into a vampire. At one point, a Hispanic pair find her and nurse Sadie back to health. Arturo (Julio Oscar Mechoso of "Planet Terror") creates a cool-looking little cross-bow that our heroine can fire with one hand. Near the end of the action, we hear Arturo referred to as the alchemist, but Gutierrez doesn't dwell on details in this department. Eventually, Sadie runs into alcoholic cop Clyde Rawlins (Michael Chiklis of "The Fantastic Four") who is searching for his daughter Tricia. Actually, Rawlins saw her after Bishop and Eve left her body in a dumpster. Anyway, they team up after Sadie convinces him that she is not human. Rawlins shoots her twice in the back and then extracts the slugs and marvels at her recovery. Once they strike a deal—Rawlins promises to kill Sadie after she eliminates Bishop--they head off for a rendezvous at a remote stable in the middle of nowhere to confront the evil Bishop. Rawlins gets the surprise of his life when he confronts her own undead daughter."Rise: Blood Hunter" qualifies as an above-average vampire flick with Lui registering a strong performance as a sympathetic vampire. Interestingly, Gutierrez has fractured the story chronology so certain things appear in reverse to both heighten the suspense as well as accelerate the action. Essentially, what he achieves is a marginally quicker pace because he doesn't supply the exposition in some parts which would definitely had drawn out the action. Meaning, you get some straight-forward storytelling and then Gutierrez backtracks to fill in the gaps. For example, after Sadie leaves the morgue in her birthday suit, she borrows scrubs so she can venture out into the open. As she saunters down the sidewalk, she shoplifts a set of sunglasses. Most of the action takes place predictably after dark as our hero searches for the vampires. For the record, these vampires don't flash fangs. They rely on cool looking pendants with sharp edges. They aren't shape-shifters. They are strong, but they aren't super strong like Christopher Lee in the Hammer "Dracula" franchise. They can neither mesmerize their victims nor compel them perform deeds merely by controlling their minds like Dracula commanded the maid in the Todd Browning original. The ending suggests that our heroine doesn't stay in the city morgue any longer than she did at the beginning of this creepy opus. Vampires are not depicted as romantic but rather doomed and driven. Further, these vampires appear strictly predatory. The victims in some instances are marked by either the subversive things that they do or are hopeless. The first victim that our reluctant vampire heroine quenches her blood lust for is an elderly man in a homeless shelter. Her second victim is a pot-smoking hitchhiker. Tragically, our heroine had no desire to become a bloodsucker. She was victim. Once she completes her mission, she accepts that she must die because she is an abomination. "Rise: Blood Hunter" could have been better but it is still worth watching once.

Without a doubt this is one of those Hollywood studio-influenced movies with lots of pathetic clichés and predictable beyond words.Probably the only thing that will attract you in this film is the appearance of Lucy Liu. She is hot at times in this picture, but the acting is obviously mediocre at best. And the rest of the cast gives out an even MORE uncompressing performance. When I saw them act out their roles, it was as if they did not put any effort within the whole process. The acting, the emotions, the dialogs, EVERYTHING seemed absolutely fake. I can not understand how the director did not try to re-shoot some of the most dull scenes in the movie. It is a vampire movie, and statistically speaking, there are few good vampire movies. Unfortunetelly this one is not one of them. The plot only gets sort of interesting, because it is put together not in a chronological order. At the beginning you immediately see the middle of the story, then they jump back to the start, explaining how it all happened, and so on back and forth. This part is only SORT OF entertaining, because it definitely does NOT stand out as something very original. I mean nobody would be impressed by this who has already seen movies like ''Memento'' by Christopher Nolan, which is based on this idea of this reverse chronological order. And apart from that there are literally hundreds of other movies using this element. Other than that, for me there was absolutely nothing else appealing in this film. The story is beyond predictable. I actually knew what was going to happen next now and then. And the very ending was just over the top PATHETIC! At the last minutes the story supposedly ends, but then ,just before the screen goes black, you get this stupid two-second scene showing that 'IT'S NOT OVER YET'. Pathetic! Why did they have to completely ruin everything with this stupid Hollywood cliché, giving a sort of an idea for a sequel, when it is obvious that there will be no sequel?!If you like unimportant, predictable, Hollywood studio influenced movies, full of clichés, maybe you'll even enjoy this movie. Otherwise... Do not watch this useless movie. A waste of time.

(In this comment I try to focus on the movie as a work. When you judge my comments please sent me a message to tell me what and why as I can then work to improve the comments)Rise is not an ordinary vampire movie. I expected it to be one as the text on the DVD hinted at this. But the word vampire is never used and the persons afflicted by the condition never show fangs or fall to pieces in the sunlight. Yet on the other hand some vampire signs are on evidence: the dependency on blood, the fact that they don't cast a reflection in the mirror and that the afflicted are uncommon strong and resilient. What is different is that the movie spends time on how Liu feels when she finds out that she has become a thing of the night, forever barred from normal live. At heart rise is a revenge movie. Lucy Liu is a reporter who is killed when her investigation set her on the trail of a weird sect. These people turn out to be a sort of vampires and Liu becomes one of their victims. Liu however rises from the dead(hence the title)as one of the creatures and hunts them down one by one.Woven into the revenge story is the story of Chiklis who plays a police cop whose daughter got the same treatment as Liu. He is hot on the trail of both Liu and the top bad guy, either in the hope to find his daughter or find out what happened to her.At the end both stories interconnect as Chiklis catches up with Liu and face each other and finally the top bad guy.The choice of having both stories into the movie makes the revenge story more intricate as Chiklis as 'normal' human can as well help Liu as sabotage her desires. In this way also him being a cop is at odds with him being a concerned father. The story itself plays at night, in dark and usually uncomfortable places(I use this word as this is what all these places are meant to be). This is also interesting as it illustrates how Liu's world has suddenly become estranged. The story is mostly made up out of one-on-one confrontations that exist mostly out of conversations. The camera is close to the person and shots are medium and close up mostly. The fight scenes are short and unspectacular: most are more like executions.The story itself is easy to follow, yet at some turns one wonders about the choices made. Liu comes in contact with someone called the alchemist who has been usurped by the leader of the weird vampiric sect. He gives her a small crossbow with which she kills all the others, yet seen doesn't turn on him. Also the choice of the crossbow feels odd as it's such an unhandy weapon to use in a fight. The killings of their victims by the vampiric sect are strangely bloody, with bodies and surrounding furniture covered by blood and blood splashing and spraying everywhere. It somehow doesn't fit in with the mood of the movie, certainly as compared to the subdued fighting scenes. It seems as if at regular intervals the movie needed to interrupted by a horror scene.It is a common thing that 'vampire' movies are associated with seduction. In Rise this is downplayed. Liu herself seduces one(well she actually more or less jumps her victim). In all the other cases seduction seems more or less a side story then a pivotal event.Acting is reasonable but it loses at the point where the script seems to bare the actors from playing out their role. Liu seems to be shocked at first time and there are some tears when she realizes what she has become. But you would expect someone to show more emotions after she has been brutally murdered and risen from the grave: just some sign of mental stress beyond the anger Liu displays. Also Liu is somewhat too certain she needs to kill herself. Liu lacks things like doubt, uncertainty and fear. She show mostly anger. Chiklis also does not a really great job when he moment of truth comes as he is confronted by his daughter turned-vampire. She pulls a gun out and shouts abuses at him and he is quite emotionless. Nor is he in doubt once Liu has shown him that she can't be seen in the mirror. This latter seems actually a plot device that is needed to convince Chiklis of Liu's condition. I found it so unfitting as everything else vampiric is merely hinted at and then suddenly this inescapable proof is offered.Rise makes me think of The Brave One. Both involve women who undergo a traumatic experience that changes their world forever and exact revenge on perpetrators that are the cause of the change. But where Jodie Foster convinces in the role of a woman that suffers a lot and who's action are in tune with her person and experiences, Liu fails to convince as she mostly displays anger. Her change from an reporter into a determined one-woman-murder-squad leaves enough to desire. The movie seems neither fish nor foul: for those people who expect another underworld there is not enough fighting, beauty and sensuality. For those who like movies like the brave one, there is just not enough reality in the movie. The gory bloody scenes are in either case misplaced.Rise is a reasonable movie that I think could have been better if the creators had decided either to infuse more of the fantastic or if they had introduce more of the realistic. They could probably have played out the break between her normal life and her undead life better. Nevertheless a interesting vampire movie.

After she's murdered and partially devoured by members of a cannibalistic death cult, investigative reporter Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) returns to earth as a flesh-consuming, bow-and-arrow-wielding member of the undead bent on exacting revenge on those who killed her.If you can swallow this premise, you might just possibly enjoy this ludicrous, frequently laughable, two-hour-long foray into sadism, cannibalism, vampirism, necrophilia and supremely bad acting. Sadie is at least a ghoul with a bit of a conscience - she feels really really bad when she has to eat someone - so we'll give her points for that, but the movie dedicated to telling her story rates a big fat zero on every other conceivable count.