Rise: Blood Hunter Review

Bottom-Line: This one never should have been made, let alone gone straight to DVD.

I like Lucy Liu and Carla Gugino; both actresses are gifted practitioners of their craft, so I was surprised that each would star in 2007's direct-to-video's Rise: Blood Hunter, written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez (Snakes on a Plane).        

The Story-Line

Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) is a reporter for a Los Angeles newspaper who wakes up one night to find herself in a steel box in the county morgue.  Blake has been the victim of a Vampire attack; she has been bled, raped, and left to die in a dumpster by baddie vampire leader Bishop (James D'Arcy) and his sidekick Eve (Carla Gugino).

Sadie wakes up bloody, scared, naked, and unable to see her reflection in the mirror.  With memories of her old life fully intact Sadie seeks room and board at a homeless shelter, and has her first human meal.  But of course it disgusts her and she throws herself off an overpass and wakes up under the care and feeding of Arturo (Julio Oscar Mechoso), a man who know all about Sadie's attackers.  Arturo teaches Sadie the ways of the undead world, given her the 411 on Bishop and Eve, and outfits her small crossbow with (silver?) arrows so she can take out the Bishop's clan. 

My Viewpoint

Rise: Blood Hunter is such a mess I hardly know where to dive in and take critical stock. First and foremost, the story is in a word, and with full pun intended, sucks!  Blade it isn't; that movie was at least fun to watch and Mr. Snipes fit well in the title role and into the skin of the comic book hero.   Not so Lucy Liu; her lithe form and polished façade left me unconvinced that she would have the iron will to pull off the transformation of Sadie the reporter to Sadie the (haunted) Vampire Killer. 

Rise: Blood Hunter is not only a terrible film, it is a largely predictable one, despite the attempt to revise, or retell the vampire mythos.  It has all been done before and done much better.  Even the ending was ala Friday the 13th; I knew it was coming, bad form!