Sunrise

This subversive garbage from Northern Ireland, UK is not a vampire horror movie and has little to do with the US Pacific Northwest. It's tedious race-baiting that has very little to do with reality.

The sort of backward small American town depicted here does not exist. At least not that I've ever seen and I've lived all over the US including throughout the Pacific Northwest which has a huge disperse Asian population. This film is also insulting toward small town Northern Irish.

The character played by Alex Pettyfer is empty with no depth, although I'm guessing that's how it was directed and I'm beginning to wonder if Guy Pearce isn't overrated. He's played this type of role before in Brimstone, a better film then this one but not by much.

This is a badly produced film that is terribly written and poorly directed.

I was expecting to see a vampire horror film not a social science project with a political agenda.

For some reason I decided to watch this movie without even looking at the IMDB rating beforehand which I rarely do. Man did I mess up and waste my time.

Guy Pearce was wasted on this film but I hope at least he got a decent paycheck out of it because he did try to carry the movie; but....that was too much weight to carry sorry. The rest of the cast was pretty forgettable and I can tell some of them tried but just weren't convincing.

Now for the plot and the pacing.....yeesh...I would attribute it to taking a M. Night Shyamalan movie with no twist or eeriness and combining it with a shoddy origin antihero story like Morbius or Kraven The Hunter. It felt weird and forced. It was boring at the best of times and wacky writing any of the other times.

Don't even watch this if you are bored; that's all.

Where to begin. Okay, let's start with the fact that the actors are not to blame for this debacle. The acting was fine. Although they must have had doubts at times with where the story was heading.

The real failure here must lie with the Director, or perhaps the producers who turned the work of the talented cast into a woke pile of refuse.

If it deserves an award, it would have to be for "most commercial b-roll footage". And it wasn't even symbolically relevant. I was expecting lead credits to be Getty images. Just to add filler imagery to make this film look artistic. Perhaps this was secretly an experiment to see what an AI directed film would look like. Because that is how I felt watching it. This film has absolutely no soul.

The only thing I found slightly compelling was the sympathetic depiction of "both sides" of an issue that really should be settled by now.

So much of the film didn't make sense, that I'm convinced someone either gave up on it or we just witnessed an experiment in AI generated production/editing/directing.

In the end, I walked away feeling empty, angry, and disappointed. For all the wrong reasons.

"Sunrise" aspires to be a slow-burning suspense thriller, but unfortunately, the meticulously built tension fails to ignite in a satisfying way. While the film boasts ok performances, the pacing and underwhelming climax leave you feeling like you sat through a long build-up with nothing to show for it.

The film takes its sweet time revealing its secrets, and the suspense starts to wane with each passing scene. You find yourself yearning for some payoff, a jolt of horror, or even a significant plot development.

Unfortunately, the payoff never quite arrives. The big reveal, when it finally comes, feels underwhelming and will leave you feeling frustrated and shortchanged.

Let me start off by saying that the only thing this movie has going for it is the acting. That's it. Nothing else about it will be acclaimed, thought of fondly, or even remembered a few months from now. It's one of those movies that you're not sure why it even exists. It says it's a horror movie, but was it really? I am fully convinced that this movie started off as a slow burn drama, some executive read the script and said, "You know what this movie needs? Vampires!". That's the only plausible explanation I can think of for such a thoroughly unremarkable film.

I felt absolutely no fear or even the slightest inkling of it during its entire runtime, and some segments felt like an afterthought, as if the film was finished when someone else came in with their asinine ideas and decided to make this movie something other than what it originally was. As a slow burn, small town drama, this might have worked. The acting was PHENOMENAL, so much so that, had it not been as good, I would have turned the movie off 20 minutes in. But every single actor played their role perfectly, and kept me invested in what little story there was to be invested in.

Whoever decided to turn this movie from a drama to a supernatural horror film really ruined what little this movie had going for it. They decided to include a vampire, but this vampire can walk in the sun, has no super strength or speed, is brooding in an unlikable sort of way, and just doesn't do anything that could be considered vampire-like aside from drinking chicken blood. It's really a shame that this film couldn't decide what it wanted to be from the onset, and picking the more fleshed out genre could have made something out this mess. What we do get, however, is ideas that appear shoe-horned and out of place, to the detriment of the entire picture.

I gave this movie 3 stars for the acting alone, because the talent of the actors in this film is undeniable. But with such a shoddy script, no real horror elements, and some really sophomoric looking special effects, the film has absolutely nothing else going for it. It's truly a shame to see such talent squandered by the bad decisions of a few talking heads. Next time, try to pick a genre that makes sense, without trying to fit a square peg in the round hole of ideas for a movie.

Avoid this film. If you must watch it, do so for the acting. But be warned that nothing else about it will leave even a lasting impression.