Tagline: Victim. Vampire. Assassin.
“Rise: Blood Hunter” is a supernatural thriller in which a reporter (Liu) wakes up in a morgue to discover she is no longer among the living. She vows revenge against the cult responsible for putting her there and hunts them down one by one. Chiklis plays ‘Rawlins,’ a haunted police detective whose daughter is killed by the same cult and seeks answers for her gruesome death.
Sadie (Lucy Liu) is an investigative reporter who has stumbled upon an underground cult that is attracting the young hipsters of Los Angeles. When these kids start disappearing then turning up dead, she wants to understand why. In the midst of her investigation, she herself falls prey to the mastermind behind all the murders and nothing is the same again.
When Sadie awakes in the dark, pushing her way out into the light, she discovers she’s not alive, but she’s not dead either. As she traipses through the seedy underbelly of downtown Los Angeles, her senses are reeling– she must feed to quench her thirst and blood is the nourishment she needs. How can she kill people to satisfy her craving? Why is she alive when she should be dead?
Rise: Blood Hunter is a 2007 American neo-noir action horror film written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez. The film, starring Lucy Liu and Michael Chiklis, is a supernatural thriller about a reporter (Liu) who wakes up in a morgue to discover she is now a vampire. She vows revenge against the vampire cult responsible for her situation and hunts them down one by one. Chiklis plays a haunted police detective whose daughter is victimized by the same group and seeks answers for her gruesome death.
“Rise” Comes to Life
Writer / Director Sebastian Gutierrez steps behind the camera for a third time with “Rise.” His previous films were “Judas Kiss” and HBO’s “She Creature.” A respected Hollywood screenwriter, with such movies as “Gothika,” “The Big Bounce” and the upcoming remake of “The Eye” to his credit, he yearned to direct again, so when the opportunity presented itself, he jumped at it.
“This movie came to me because I like vampire movies; I just couldn’t remember the last vampire movie that I really liked,” offers Gutierrez. “I love the myth of the vampires which exists in every culture, but for me, the moment that there are fangs or garlic, it becomes really campy and no longer scary,” he continues.
“So the idea was really to do something sort of film noir-like with a female protagonist and introduce the concept of vampires into that. As a result, we have a movie that is basically a thriller about a cult—it happens to be a cult of vampires,” Writer/Director Sebastian Gutierrez explains.
Lucy Liu immediately agreed to play the lead character of ‘Sadie.’ She admits, “I first read the script at 3:00am in the morning and so I understood the project from that perspective, what it needed and what the character was about. It wasn’t strictly horror—it has an incredible emotional undercurrent, that and it had a thriller, noir quality about it.”
She continues, “I met Sebastian a couple of days later and we hit it off. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes you just connect with things; this script and Sebastian were things that I connected with.”
Her co-star Michael Chiklis remembers, “I really responded to the script, but meeting Sebastian was sort of the nail in the coffin as it were. He struck me as a guy who really loves the cinema and is knowledgeable about it. He really made me feel like he was going to make a very good picture.”
Chiklis, who has never appeared in a horror film, continues, “What really appealed to me is that the word ‘vampire’ is never used in the film. Sebastian made it clear that there was never going to be the biting of the neck shot—that conventional vampire movie thing. Instead, it’s going to be something very unique—what we’re going for is a true noir—and that appealed to me greatly.”
Carla Gugino, who starred in Gutierrez’s other two films, admits, “It’s always exciting to be on any project where the director has a really strong vision. And with this movie, we have a phenomenal director of photography, John Toll, and an amazing group of actors, so there is a great level of collaboration.”
When speaking of Academy Award-winning Cinematographer John Toll, ASC, Chiklis agrees, “John Toll is a legend. He’s perhaps one of the best three cinematographers alive right now and certainly one of my favorites. I honestly wanted to work with him, too, so that just finished it for me—I was like ‘I’m in!’”
Chiklis considers, “The appeal of a true noir is that the classic look is from the shadows. This movie isn’t about special effects—this is about actors and cameras. This is about light and dark and creepy things in the shadows. Any artist that’s in the film business loves films that are shot this way.”
James D’Arcy, who plays the villainous leader of the cult, muses, “I think it’s a film noir that lives in this strange heightened reality. I hesitate to say that it’s a horror film or a vampire film because I don’t think it does justice what Sebastian has written. There’s a much stronger undercurrent than those terms would suggest passing through the film. I’m hoping we’re making that is emotional and very real.”
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Rise: Blood Hunter (2007)
Directed by: Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, Carla Gugino, Cameron Richardson, James D’Arcy, Mako, Samantha Shelton, Margo Harshman, Kevin Wheatley, Robert Forster, Allan Rich
Screenplay by: Sebastian Gutierrez
Production Design by: Jerry Fleming
Cinematography by: John Toll
Film Editing by: Lisa Bromwell, Robb Sullivan
Music by: Nathan Barr
MPAA Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, sexuality, nudity, language, and brief drug use.
Distributed by: Destination Films
Release Date: June 1, 2007
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