Lucy Liu (best known as Ling from TV's "Ally McBeal") is Sadie Blake, a semi-successful reporter who finds herself in way over her head. The victim of a brutal murder (and then some) at the hands of an urban cult, she awakens in the morgue with the bewildering feeling that she's not exactly herself anymore, an overwhelming thirst having gripped her the moment she came to.

We know what's happened, of course -- she's become a member of the Undead. But she's so pissed about not having been consulted beforehand that she soon takes it upon herself to hunt down the bloodsuckers that did it to her before they can do it to anyone else.

Yes, the premise is nothing we haven't seen a hunnerd-n-one times, but the trailer looked so promising, I couldn't miss it. I usually enjoy Lucy Liu on whatever screen she decides to appear, but this one is well beneath her. The script could have used some major rewrites; some of the dialogue reminds me of that guy who played the young Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels (no, I'm not going to go look up his name), with juvenile, throwaway lines followed by a multi-claused compound sentence you wouldn't expect to see in a doctoral dissertation, let alone a vampire movie. It's difficult to deliver lines you don't believe in, and it comes across on the actors' faces as if to say oh, it's time for that line. Let's get it over with.

The acting was a problem across the board as well, the cast obviously including many first-timers. What's worse, the film didn't really even attempt to lay out the rules of vampirism. We figure out that they avoid sunlight, they're adept at tissue regeneration, they're invisible in mirrors, and they have an abnormally keen sense of smell. But they possess none of the superhuman abilities vampires are usually known for, and as such, the audience gets cheated out of its super-heroine who overcomes one weakness in the end to finally triumph. Instead, we get a girl who's as weak as any human and can't keep it together emotionally long enough to fight off too many bad guys.

Some of the action doesn't suck, and there are a few startling visuals that are worth seeing, but overall, the film is so inconsistent in what it offers that I can't classify it as anything but average.

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