The worst movie to date to emerge from Ghost House Pictures (who barely released it in theatres), this ponderously paced, distressingly overlong misfire looks vaguely promising in the first few minutes. Playing a high class call girl, the hot chick from POINT PLEASANT and ADRIFT (Cameron Richardson) gets her boobs out, kisses Lucy Liu and is strung upside down in a cage. Alas, it’s all downhill from there.
Released in two versions on DVD in the U.S. and re-titled merely RISE in the U.K., in any form, the movie is bizarrely edited. An awkward non-linear plot structure mistakes all-over-the-place narrative confusion for cleverness. Potentially interesting new characters (played by a wastefully good cast) are introduced every few minutes and subsequently either ignored or under-developed. Worse still, the film takes over an hour to achieve its apparent raison d’etre : that of a vengeful Lucy Liu, wielding a tiny crossbow, as a kind of distaff BLADE – an immortal, partly vampiric avenger.
Near the start of the flick, Liu wakes up naked in a morgue with a nasty throat wound. She’s a reporter whose job often entails the study of weird sub-cultures in the city. Discovering a vampire clan in Korea Town, she becomes a victim of their practices and then hits the road, no longer either human or technically alive, to avenge those who made her what she is now.
Writer director Sebastian Gutierrez, who wrote GOTHIKA and SNAKES ON A PLANE (plus the upcoming THE EYE remake) is boringly solemn about his own mediocre spin on vampire mythology. The stellar cast similarly play the wordy script so straight that there’s no fun to be had anywhere. Robert Forster shows up so briefly that he must have owed a favor somewhere, Samaire Armstrong has a short-lived role, Carla Gugino turns up to flash some cleavage and Michael Chiklis underplays the clichéd role of a dogged, alcoholic cop whose daughter was “turned”.
Despite boasting FX by the estimable KNB, there’s not even any stand-out gore to wake you up, just a bunch of mildly gruesome feeding moments. There’s also a dearth of action and particularly lame use of the endlessly recycled old dream-within-a-dream fake scare.
For those that stay the course, the climax sees Liu hung upside down naked a la HOSTEL PART II, but interest has waned so severely by this point, you will be merely lamenting the waste of so much talent. Aside from the actors, the movie was (badly) shot by Oscar winning cinematographer John Toll (!), has a drab score by the usually reliable Nathan Barr and features a cameo by Marilyn Manson as a bartender for no readily apparent reason.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
