Vampiress Review: "Rise: Blood Hunter"

The Gist: A reporter becomes a vampire hunter when she herself is turned into a vampire as she seeks to destroy those responsible.

Clarification: Best described as Vampires meets Kill Bill, Rise pretty much rehashes the "vampire revenge" story from Blade (both the original movie and TV show pilot).  If I had one major issue with the film it's that the vampires aren't very vampiric.  In fact they aren't very supernatural at all.  They're basically just humans with a blood diet that are slightly tougher to kill than a normal human.  Basically a regular blood transfusion would pretty much make these "vampires" pretty normal and the whole killing thing is just making their life way more complicated than it needs to be.  It's pretty much explained they kills because they can, not because they need to.

Selling Point: Topless Lucy Lui

 

Female Vampire Factor: As mentioned above the movie stars Lucy Lui as reporter turned vampire Sadie Blake.

I was absolutely excited the first time I heard that Lucy Lui was going to be playing a vampire in a film.  This was at the height of her motion picture fame and obviously she's hot.  This immediately dissipated once I saw the movie.  She spend the bulk of it walking around with weapons and threatening people and the feeding scenes she does have are super messy as the vampires in this film don't have fangs and she doesn't have the tools the other vamps in the film use.

Their are two other female vampires in the film.  First you have "Eve" who was played by Carla Gugino.

Eve is a member of the vampire cult who turned Sadie.  She is much less messy when she feeds and does it the old fashion female vampiress way of seduction unlike Sadie who pretty much just looses control in inopportune times.  She has a sharp tool that she stabs her victims with as opposed to just ripping away the skin with her teeth.

 Lastly you have Tricia Rawlins played by Margo Harshman...

Tricia going missing after going to a goth party is what gets the whole movie going.  It's discovered toward the movies end that she is a willing new member of the vampire cult that attacked her.  This sucks for Sadie as the entire reason she ended up a vampire was investigating what was perceived to be Tricia's death. 

This is a run of the mill action movie with vampirism being thrown in lazily at best.  I give it a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  If you want the same story with actual vampirism check out the made for TV movie/pilot for Blade: The series  "Blade: House of Chthon!".