Rise: Blood Hunter, a supernatural thriller about flesh-eating vampires, simply lacks bite.

Following publication of a newspaper column about goth lifestyle in Los Angeles, reporter Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) learns that Trisha Rawlins (Margo Harshman), a source for her article, was brutally murdered. Adding more horror to this tragedy, the killer consumed most of her flesh.

A computer hacker informs Sadie he found a strange website message giving members directions to a flesh-eating party intended for vampires. The festivities were supposed to take place on the night of Trisha’s murder. Sadie sets off for the address listed on the site and finds it to be a dilapidated bungalow. Once inside, she is horrified to find several walls covered in blood. We soon learn  Trisha was indeed murdered at this location.

Poor Sadie! She’s taken hostage by Eve (Carla Cugino) and Bishop (James D’Arcy), both members of the gothic cult in question. These two will stop at nothing, including torture, to get the reporter to divulge any details she’s learned about Trisha or the circumstances surrounding her grisly murder.

Several months later, Sadie wakes up in a morgue not knowing how she got there. She quickly discovers she’s become a vampire. Determined to hunt down those responsible for turning her into one of the undead, she finds an unlikely ally in Detective Rawlins (Michael Chiklis), Trisha’s father, a man dedicated to finding his daughter’s killer and exacting revenge for her murder. 

Writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez, best known for writing Samuel L. Jackson’s infamous one-liner from Snakes on a Plane, apparently couldn’t decide whether he wanted to frighten viewers or make them chuckle. He clutters the screenplay with silly one-liners which dilute the suspense and make it difficult for viewers to take the characters and their situations seriously.

Chiklis, who appears to be extremely uncomfortable here, delivers a wooden performance. His character has little to do other than appear as a tough vigilante conflicted about his role as a detective and his all-consuming desire to kill his daughter’s murderer. The detective Chiklis plays seems nothing more than a plot device to keep the main storyline moving along.

However, Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll deserves kudos for his uncanny ability to create an ominous, swampy, uninviting, mysterious and grainy atmosphere. Still, neither his considerable talents behind the camera nor those of Liu and the rest of the cast can save Rise: Blood Hunter from a bad screenplay, awful dialogue and heavy-handed direction. In the end, viewers are left chuckling at painful one-liners rather than being chilled as the director originally intended.

(Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films and rated “R” for strong horror violence and gore, sexuality, nudity, language, and brief drug use.)