Rise: Blood Hunter
Written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, James D’Arcy
Rated R

A couple of errant adaptations of Dracula aside, I think it’s safe to say that most vampire movies suck ass instead of blood. But in this warmed over and terminally bad subgenre, there are three towering classics. There’s FW Murnau’s silent German masterpiece Nosferatu, which seems less a film nowadays and more an intangible relic of old and superstitious times. Then there’s Kathryn Bigelow’s cult film Near Dark, which defied every vampire cliché and showed us what happens when bloodsuckers mated with white trash. And even after that, there’s Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade II, which depicted vampires as little more than animals and made them OBSCENELY hard to kill.

But mostly they’re decked out in the silk and leather that Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee started off and Anne Rice turned into a marketing ploy. They’re the Barry Manilow of the movie monster pantheon. They’re copies of copies of copies and now we have Rise: Blood Hunter, a movie that is the cinematic equivalent of Vioxx and Sominex. It will put you to sleep, but it will also induce diarrhea, rickets, and projectile leprosy. But something became prevalent during the viewing. Not only have they made a bad movie, but they’ve made the WRONG bad movie.

Lucy Liu, the patron saint of stony faces and marginal talent, plays Sadie, a reporter who does a piece on underground Goth Ravers. When it turns out that the Ravers have a “feeding party,” she goes to investigate, with predictable results for a vampire movie. She wakes up in the morgue with her special vampire powers and goes on the warpath against the greasy Eurotrash Vamp (James D’Arcy) that turned her.

In a twin storyline, there is Clyde (Michael Chiklis), a cop who lost his daughter at said feeding party. Chiklis, however, is given the short end of the stick because director Sebastian Gutierrez seems more interested in getting Lucy Liu’s body double naked than telling a decent story.

I’ve long held a theory about vampire movies that there is such a thing called a “Vampire Starter Kit.” When one becomes a vampire in a movie, I believe one is given access to designer clothes, big houses, expensive renaissance art, fast cars, and as much exfoliating cleanser and haircare products that one could shake a stick at. This is my main bone to pick with vampire films. I don’t see how blood-drenched episodes of The Fabulous Life Of … on VH-1 could possibly be scary (or at least scary in the way these movies intend them to be).

I don’t want to review Rise: Blood Hunter, I want to scrawl a big fat “F” on the DVD. No wonder this movie came out in only a couple of theaters for just two weeks. This movie doesn’t even have a second act. Sadie goes from nice-girl reporter to scourge of the undead in the space of a jump-cut. Certainly Bloodrayne isn’t a better movie than this one, but at least it made more sense. Now pause and think of what this means. Now I’ve never been a fan of “The Training Montage,” but I’m not gonna knock it if it helps. Of course this IS a Sebastian Gutierrez movie. He wrote Gothika which is a shitty Halle Berry movie (but I repeat myself). He also wrote The Big Bounce, and remains one of the few people who could willingly and consciously fuck up Elmore Leonard’s dialogue.

So in addition to committing the mortal sins of being sloppily paced, derivative, uneventful, and boring, Rise: Blood Hunter also commits a whole bunch of venial sins. Good actors like Robert Forster, Mako (in his final role), and the underrated Samaire Armstrong are neglected, only being shown in one or two scenes. But Nick Lachey is given more face time in his acting debut than he really deserves and Marilyn Manson shows up (sans makeup). And the bland and murky cinematography would be bad enough were it not by John Toll (an Academy Award-winning DP who did Legends of the Fall and The Thin Red Line), who should know better.

And could someone please explain to me what the hell Lucy Liu’s talent is? Aside from a monologue in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, she has been so wooden and stern and unpleasant in every single role that I am baffled as to why she would be cast, given a position of power, or even be given a rose on a dating show. Can we kick up her death march back to obscurity by a few paces, please?

Near the end of the movie, there is a scene with Chiklis and his daughter that made me sit up and take notice. And I realized that I would willingly pay to watch THAT GUY’S movie. It’s one acting moment that you might miss if you blink, but Chiklis pulls it off as he always seems to do. And that’s the RIGHT bad movie as opposed to the wrong one that followed Lucy Liu around all this time.

Rise: Blood Hunter clocks in at 98 minutes, and that is the worst, most bald-faced lie I’ve ever encountered in all my years of watching movies. I’m thoroughly convinced this movie actually lasted a good eight or nine months. If someone could please tell me if Boston won the World Series and whether or not No Country For Old Men was any good, I’d be most appreciative.

*1/2 out of 4