Lucy Liu has completed her work for RISE, together with Michael Chiklis, James D'Arcy, Carla Gugino, Robert Forster, Cameron Richardson and Marilyn Manson, who also star in the movie directed by Sebastian Gutierrez and produced by Greg Shapiro (HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE) and Carsten Lorenz (THE GRUDGE).

The new supernatural feature is described as being very close to classic film noir, according to Gutierrez. "The story itself is very simple, but it's told in a non-linear fashion," the director told Fango. "And hopefully, it has a very nightmarish and relentless quality. It's very bleak noir, like John Boorman's Point Blank", he added.
The filmmaker has also cited films like NEAR DARK and THE HUNGER, which have influenced his movie.

"There are some conventions that we keep. I'm not trying to reinvent the vampire movie. (…) I'm just taking out the elements that I find silly. Nobody says, 'I've been around for 300 years' in this movie", Gutierrez explained.

"We're walking around a lot of potential landmines - we don't want to go into an Anne Rice Gothic/romantic terrain, or an UNDERWORLD/Ridley Scott sort of thing," he added. "I'm not knocking those movies, because they've all been done very well, but we're trying to do something that's more like a modern-day noir. It's very stylized, because it's horror - all the colors are very saturated. We're keeping away from the usual look you see in these movies, which is that steely-grey, industrial sort of thing", the director concluded.

Lucy Liu will play reporter Sadie Blake, who discovers she's no longer among the living, as she wakes up in a morgue. Sadie refuses to join the ranks of the undead, seeking revenge against the vampires responsible for putting her there. She decides to hunt them down one by one, with the help of a troubled police detective (Chiklis) who lost a daughter to the same group.

Sebastian Gutierrez (GOTHIKA, HBO's SHE CREATURE , JUDAS KISS ) is also completing scripting work on Hideo Nakata's highly anticipated U.S. remake of THE EYE for Cruise/Wagner , and PACIFIC AIR FLIGHT 121, starring Samuel L. Jackson.