Movies & TV

Movie Review: Rise: Blood Hunter


Rise: Blood Hunter
Shoot me in the head, please.

Spoiler Alert…significant plot overview starts now:

Sadie Blake, played by Lucy Liu, is a reporter for a column who gets embroiled in a controversy over a dead girl, Tricia, she once interviewed. While visiting the house of the girl, Sadie gets drugged and caught by the leader of an underground cult, Bishop, who killed Tricia. Bishop rapes Sadie, tries to kill her and she wakes up in a morgue as an immortal. She vows to find Bishop, seek revenge on him and put an end to all his killings.

Rise: Blood Hunter is a supernatural thriller that successfully makes your stomach churn with nausea and disgust. The movie begins with a scene in a bar where a young blonde attractive prostitute tries to seduce an older man. Just when the man is willing to settle on a price, Lucy Liu (Sadie Blake) offers to pay more to sleep with her. The blonde woman is then taken home, hung from above the ceiling naked, handcuffed and blood-laden. It appears that Lucy Liu is the villain and that she is working in liaison with the old man. However, she then shoots the old man and images of bloody sheets and mass murders audience prepares to become immersed in the unusual life of Sadie Blake.

Or not. The incidents for the most part remain predictable and contorted, and one who sees this movie should not expect good acting, a good plot, or anything new. To give credit to the writer of Gothika and Snakes on a Plane though, the movie is fast paced and jam-packed with a lot of action, violence and gore, leaving little to the imagination. this movie is not for the faint or light-hearted, as it is rated R with a lot of graphic violent imagery. However, if you are the kind of person who loves to get chills down your spine, then you will surely enjoy Rise: Bloodhunter.

Rise: Blood Hunter

The scene shortly after the beginning is perverse and horrifying. We see the girl enter cautiously into a party and runs into Bishop and Eve feasting on a dead body. This scene does justice to all horror-movie lovers. “She told me she going to a feeding party, but I thought she was kidding.” Sadie says when she finds out about the murder. The sporadic corny jokes are interjected from time to time coming off as corny and forced.

The acting is mediocre, and Lucy Liu is particularly wooden. The only sign of emotion she evokes is when she kills a college student so that she can eat him to survive. The screams out of sheer frustration, and for the first time in the movie her tears seem genuine. Nick Lachey’s guest appearance hinders the movie by commercializing it and making it less terrorizing. The cinematography, especially during the flashback scenes, is impressive, but nothing we haven’t seen before in Hannibal or any other vampire movie. The repeated imagery of her trapped inside the coffin, her eyes blinking and trying to kick her way out is shot particularly well. Lucy Liu’s gaunt frame fits the role of a food-depraved woman who has just escaped from the morgue and needs to feed off blood. Scenes of blood and nudity are prolific, living up to Bishop’s line in the movie “Sex and murder are the only pleasures left to man.”

The last couple of scenes are clichéd and formulaic. Just when she is a about to kill Bishop, her last bullet has been used. She gets killed several times throughout the movie and again by Bishop, failing to die completely. The end is predictable because she asks the detective to kill her once and for all. But if she hasn’t died all the past few times, why does she think she is going to die now? Sure enough, the last scene shows her in a morgue, apparently dead, when her foot kicks the door open. The open ending has been recycled countless times in supernatural thrillers, making this movie just like any other horror flick. On the whole, if you’re looking for a way to spend a little time, feel a sickening pit in the bottom of your stomach, or watch Lucy Liu half naked, then go ahead and waste ten dollars and two hours of your time.

 

Review by Faze contributor Amy Chu


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