Saturday, September 29, 2007

Rise: Blood Hunter

Sometimes films can still surprise me in a pleasant way. Rise is a revenge flick with vampires and does most things very right and equally well: The pacing is great, most set pieces are well thought out and there's no bad actor to be found. The film even delivers friendly doses of sleaze and the blackest of humor.
The story itself (Lucy Liu is raped and killed by vampires, rises from the dead and hunts down her killers) is obviously not very original, but director Sebastian Gutierrez (who also directed the overlooked She Creature) injects enough twists into the body of the genre (sorry) to keep me satisfied (see also: verve & style).
I was also surprised and happy to see that Gutierrez does his best to show us Liu as not much less monstrous than her killers. The scene in which she picks up some poor hitchhiking sod and feeds on him is especially effective, making clear that our heroine is neither innocent nor nice nor honest to herself.

Darling of the Day:
"We could do this the easy way...But where would be the fun in that."

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