Centuries
ago, Osiris and his wife-sister Isis were murdered by their power-mad brother
Set. The thing is, you can never kill a black arts practitioner like Isis dead
enough. All she needs is a half dozen college kids who frankly look too old to
be undergraduates trying to get stoned off some resurrection incense and she’s
back in business. As luck would have it, Professor Shields’ star pupil Amy and
five of her dumbest classmates have volunteered for an all-night research
session in the local natural history museum.
Evidently,
some strange collector has donated a trove of hitherto unseen antiquities to
the museum, including said incense, as well as Isis’s Book of the Undead and her mummified corpse. It is so spectacular, internationally
renowned Egyptologist Dr. Nasir has joined the party, hoping to uncover
evidence to support his theories (which basically boil down to if Isis were
still here, she’d be really hacked off). So yes, you could probably say he’s in
for a case of good news-bad news.
If
you are wondering why Isis looks more appropriately dressed for the Luxor Hotel
in Vegas than Luxor, Egypt, it might help to know she is played by adult
entertainment star Priya Rai in her mainstream breakout debut. However, her
established fanbase is likely to be disappointed with Rising, since it really only delivers the obvious cleavage and one carefully
cropped sex scene featuring other cast members.
It
is hard to fairly judge Rai’s performance because her screen time is relatively
limited and what little dialogue she has is electronically distorted. Still, it
is easy to see how she found success in her chosen field (feel free to insert
your own joke about orbs here). Evidently, co-producer James Bartholet also
works in “the business,” but you can’t really see why from his supporting turn
as Henry the goofball security guard, which is probably a blessing.
As
you would expect from a B-movie, the supporting ensemble varies widely in terms
of professionalism. Without question, Jing Song and Seth Gandrud score the
highest marks as Amy the A-student and Dr. Nasir respectively. You really have
to give the latter credit for all the cheesy exposition he duly establishes with a
straight face. As for the other classmates, including writer-director Palenica’s
Felicia, they just can’t get killed soon enough.
The
special effects throughout Rising are
uniformly bad—even by the production standards of mid 1980’s straight-to-video
sci-fi-horror knock-offs. However, they found a small but legit natural history
museum to shoot in, so the mummy-less contemporary scenes looks surprisingly
good. In fact, it is sort of bizarrely entertaining to watch them madly dash
about the dinosaur exhibits, like having a museum sleepover as a kid with half
a dozen of your nuttiest friends.
