At about three minutes in, a lubricious blonde prostitute is stripped to the waist, and hung, upside down, in a metal cage.
Rise: Blood Hunter is that kind of film.
Although it never transcends its B-Movie origins, the film is a workmanlike little horror from writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez (Gothika) who manipulates the terrors and tropes of the hardy genre for all their bloody worth.
Lucy Liu plays LA Goth scene reporter Sadie Blake. (“Pig blood cocktails and sludge music,” one character describes her job.)
One night, her nocturnal haunts take her just too far off the beaten path and she wakes up in the morgue – giving the film the first of many opportunities to fully display Liu’s considerable physical charms.
With the help of a mysterious mentor, she acquires a lethal cross bow, some silver darts and starts off on her quest – stopping only from time to time to quench her unholy thirst.
In a series of graphic scenes, Sadie sends her tormentors off to whatever level of Hades vampires inhabit with phrases like, “See you in hell.”
Liu is a trooper bringing an agile physicality and strong presence to the role and as much grace as possible to scenes where she vomits up blood and the odd bit of human fleshy parts.
In the final moments of the film she is joined by bald, bullet headed Clyde Rawlins - Michael Chiklis in a carbon copy of his The Shield television character. Clyde is wracked because his daughter has been slaughtered by the creatures. The unlikely duo take on the vampire master (James D'Arcy ) in an old stable complex in a climax that is violent, sexy and bloody.
Because of the continuing and graphic violence the film misses the ineffable sadness of the original vampire classics, where bloodletting happens off camera and the creature suffers the longueurs of centuries of searching for love in all the wrong places. But its makers (Rise:… was produced by The Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi) understand the genre. Gutierrez keeps his camera in close forcing full-on confrontation with his malign images and edits it all with demonic passion.
The film also benefits from a cast that give its all – in fact, it was chosen to open the recent Tribecca Festival. Beside the redoubtable Liu, Carla Gugino appears as a sexy vampire – leading to little hot babe on babe action. (You can’t say the film doesn’t know where its audience lies). Robert Forster is a near victim. The great Japanese actor Mako makes his last screen appearance. Even Marilyn Manson shows up as a bartender.
Opens in NY on June 1 and then limited rollout. MPAA: Rated R
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