SUNRISE (2024)

Here is the decision, plainly. Movieguide rates this one star and −4, and both numbers are earned. Even the story's clear condemnation of racism can't rescue it, because the film has no idea what it wants to be and no light for the viewer to root for.

The costs are heavy. At least 54 obscenities, including 35 "f" words. Severe, gory violence — murders by knife, a strangling, a man with his intestines showing, a burning. A vampire who drinks blood because a forest demon made him immortal. And no higher truth ever arrives to redeem the character or the story.

So the practical answer is simple: skip it. There is nothing here worth your time or your conscience.

In a small town in the Pacific Northwest, the only Asian-American family is terrorized by the white men who hold all the power. One day they find a brooding drifter sleeping in their barn and take him in.

He is not what he seems. Something in the surrounding wilderness changed him, and he arrives carrying a grief and a grudge of his own. The men harassing his hosts are about to learn what he is.

One star, and here is what it means. The script is hopelessly disorganized, and the film has little or nothing of artistic or entertainment value. It swings erratically between a horror movie about a vampire who preys on livestock, a drama about immigrant life in the Northwest, and a hard-boiled revenge thriller — and explores none of them with any depth.

The only scenes that hold attention are the antagonist's early monologues. As that antagonist, Guy Pearce delivers perhaps the sole watchable performance. But even he loses the audience, as the constant and frankly absurd depictions of extreme racism become gratuitous rather than poignant. The film never coheres.

This is a film built on an occult and pagan foundation, and it never climbs out. A forest demon grants a drifter immortality as a vampire, and the story then endorses his path of revenge against the men who killed his wife years before. There is no moral compass to guide any of it.

Often a supernatural movie gives its characters a moral or Christian thread — something that calls them to stand for the light against the darkness. Not here. The demonic protagonist commits multiple murders in pursuit of vengeance, and at no point does any higher truth or moral message arrive to redeem the character or the story.

The one thing the film does clearly is condemn racism. Its villains harass Asian-American and African-American neighbors, and the movie plainly rebukes that xenophobia. That is a real moral instinct — but it sits inside a story that answers evil with more bloodshed and calls it justice.

Scripture leaves vengeance where it belongs. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord" (Romans 12:19). A story that hands vengeance to a demon-made killer, with no light to answer him, has nothing to offer the soul.

Even a real condemnation of racism can't save a film with no light in it — only a demon-made killer, buckets of gore, and 54 obscenities in search of a story. Our answer is the same one we opened with: skip it. For an evening worth your time instead, try our latest family-friendly picks.