EVIL Needs a Living, Breathing Vessel to be Destroyed! “The Mortuary Assistant” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Recovering drug addict Rebecca Owens finishes her training as a mortuary assistant with praise from her tutor, the owner of the River Fields Mortuary.  On her first solo assignment, a late-night double embalming, Rebecca finds it unusual she must embalm as well as incinerate the corpses.  The bizarre aspects of the night don’t stop there as the corpses seemingly move in what seems to be very real and frightening hallucinations after she wakes up in her apartment bed.  Her employer, Raymond, owner of the River Fields Mortuary, ensures her what she’s experienced and the visions are very real as a demon possesses the mortuary, easily inhabiting the lifeless bodies but trying to permanently attach itself to one of the livings.  Having been targeted himself, Raymond’s been able to avoid possession by way of ritual but can’t fully banish the demon without Rebecca’s assistant with a reagent formula he must obtain from living people caught in the middle.  As Rebecca returns to the mortuary to try to unlatch herself from the demon’s grasp, she must attempt to capture the demon in a corpse by using her own ritualized-infused blood and then incinerate the corpse to ashes, but the demon won’t go down without a fight. 

Based on the 2022 popular horror role-playing game of the same title that was developed by Brian Clarke of DarkStone Digital and published by DreadXP, the video game department of the horror network and news outlet Dread Central, “The Mortuary Assistant” 2026 film adaptation brings virtual mortician madness to the big screen with all its demonic appurtenances with Clark penning the script alongside co-writer Tracee Beeb and “Slapface” director, Jeremiah Kipp, calling the shots.  The Dread presented movie is released under Dread’s parent company, Epic Pictures Group, since they already own the rights to the video game and attempt to bring the creepy mortuary atmospherics and terrifying twitching corpses from the first-person perspective game to a third person perspective film narrative.  Creative Capital and regular Dread co-production collaborator, Traverse Media, serve as production studios with Patrick Ewald, Jake Heineke, and Cole Payne in the producer role.

The video game characters, Rebecca and Raymond, and you can also through in the demon too, transition to the film with Willa Holland (“Straw Dogs,” “Legion”) as the green Rebecca Owens alone on her first shift, getting her hands dirty with the insides of corpses and dodging demonic aggressions with half-baked rituals and spells by her mortician employer/demon fighter Raymond, played by Paul Sparks (“Headspace”).  Sparks carries himself plainly through what should be a more interesting, puzzling peculiar as a deadpan mortician business owner with a rich background in demonology and a two-bit exorcist.  Instead, rooting for spark in Sparks’ performance can extinguishable hope for Willa Holland who has to carry much of the fanaticism and strength, as well as fear, as a woman battling demons metaphorically and literally, or perhaps literally battling her demons in an off-the-wagon experience that it becomes metaphorical in her own warped mind.  Either way, the game and it’s characters translate to screen one way or another, supported by pawn characters the demon exploits to gain advantage over Rebecca, such as her grandmother (Shelly Gibson) and her drug addict anonymous sponsor (Keena Ferguson Fraiser), to take powerful, matriarchal and influential people in her life, ones who guide a vulnerable woman, and distort them into traps and hellish visions to break down the young mortician’s self-assurance and ability to tell what’s real or not.   “The Mortuary Assistant” rounds out the cast with John Adams, Emily Bennett, Elisa Marti, Mark Steger, Sydney Haner, Brian Clarke, Gabrielle Mathews, Adam Woolley, and Michael W. Crowley.

Having never played the video game, which is widely available on multiple consoles and platforms, such as PlayStation 4 and 5, XBOX One and Series X/S, Windows PC, and Nintendo Switch, the movie has all the hallmarks of what makes people’s fears tick: that innate fear of mortality of your corpse lying motionless on a cold, sterile table, environmental atmospherics of a stormy, dark night, demonic mischief that puppeteers and malevolently toys, paganistic folklore and ritual, the lack of hope, religion, and God, dark shadows and slithers of steely lighting, and an overall sense of cynical dread.  Yet, somehow, “The Mortuary Assistant,” the movie, feels terribly clunky after a satisfying disturbing creepy setup that includes the ghastliness of mortician embalming process.  The story’s second half, and more definitively in its third act, loses traction and falls to pieces in it’s trying to explain too much with too little information of the game’s evolving plotline.  The game works well because of it’s lingering through the narrative, letting fear settle in before unleashing bit-by-bit it’s unearthing of secrets.  The film adaptation rushes through climatic guts to make possible the many several hours’ worth of game endings to be comprehendible in under an hour and half.   Aside from the cliff fall finale, the atmospherics are palpable and the blood and gore, mostly perforating of corpses with a cannula and some of their exposed viscera, has sticky-icky and fleshy texture. 

The Shudder Original presentation comes to UK Blu-ray from Acorn Media International.  The AVC encoded, 1080p hi-def resolution, BD25 is on the smaller side of disc capacity for decoding and with an array of textures – from clammy skin of a corpse to the burnt amber of blood – “The Mortuary Assistant” Blu-ray teeters the meticulous detai line as if it wants to show you all the glossy and gooey innards but can’t quite flesh them out.  No issues with decoding albeit some negative spaces do seem lightly washed and not fully inky to create the possibility of the unknown within the blackness.  The Blu-ray has a 2.35:1 aspect ratio presentation to take the smaller confines of a quaint mortuary and have them seem more imposing and closeups a made to be like the surface of alien planets when covering cold corpses, really blowing up the image in greater, better detail.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio provides crystal clear composition of layers with unobstructed and robust dialogue that can reproduce the resonating monotone of Paul Sparks, an eclectic layering of sounds between the storming elements of non-diegetic weather to the transfixing squishiness and cannula friction of the embalming process that can get under your skin, pun intended.  The soundtrack by Jeffrey Alan Jones, who did ADR mixing on “Obsession” as well as compose scores for many indie horrors over the last two decades, is a bit lackluster and doesn’t become its own distinctive character within its pedestrian horror tones.  English SDH and French subtitles are available for selection.  Special features only include a behind-the-scenes featurette on the static menu that goes briefly into the game and the making of the film.  The physical Blu-ray Amaray comes standard with monochrome sleeve art that’s blue and black and barely definable.  There are no other tangible elements in the exterior and interior of the release.  The UK certified 18 release has strong injury detail and has a runtime of 91 minutes in its region B playback only.

Last Rites: “The Mortuary Assistant” is one of those videogame adaptations that probably should have stayed as a videogame. Plenty of atmospheric tropes to make it haunting and spooky, but too many core story elements and not enough cohesive tape to make “The Mortuary Assistant” work.

It’s in Human Nature to be EVIL! “Cradle of Fear” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / 2-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cradle of Fear” Available on a 2-Disc Unearthed Films Release!

Occultist and hypnotician Kemper has been locked away in a criminal asylum for years for a gruesome series of murders, involving not only men and women but also some children.  Kemper seethes against the arresting and prosecuting team who = put him away.  Able to sneak out a list of targets and their addresses, Kemper uses his black magic lineage to carry out revenge on his behalf, a violent revenge on the loved ones of who incarcerated him to a life in imprisonment.  Four gruesome assassins through Kemper’s supernatural means leaves a body trail for eccentric Inspector Neilson whose unusual investigative methods has him highly sensitive to the case and his temper has him in the crosshairs of his commanding supervisor.  With no leads on how Kemper is committing a new string of gruesome crimes, Neilson pieces together that all the victims are related to the case that put Kemper away and when his son becomes the last target, Neilson goes to extreme lengths to see the serial killer is put down for good. 

A gory and cynical narrative of indelicate irony, “Cradle of Fear” is the British, anthological horror that speaks to the insidiously widespread evil that courses through the inevitable fallible and immoral side of human nature, leaving no good deed unpunished in its circumference of supernatural punitive karma.  The early 2000s anthology is written and directed by Alex Chandon, director behind the 1980s sex comedies “The Perv Parlor” and “Pervirella” as well as directing select music videos for the UK extreme black metal band Cradle of Filth, whose Goth-cladded lead signer Dani Filth stars in the film and is the poster boy for film art, hence the title’s similarity to the band’s name.  Eddie Kane, Ciska Faulkner, and Nico Rilla produced the film with Paul Luke and Andy Skivington serving as executive producers for the Pragmatic Pictures production. 

Aforementioned, Dani Filth stars as the ghoul with the ultimate evil of transforming his human form into a demonic creature that can rip to shreds those unlucky to be in his path, the opening gives us a glimpse into his power by viciously terminating two would-be, back-alley muggers.   From there, the story goes into the gruesome crime scene of two young women (Emily Bouffante, “Evil Aliens,” and Melissa Forti) laid strewn with their innards outwards and inspector Neilson (Edmund Dehn, “The Containment”) copping a feel as his way of rain-manning the scene.  Their end first storyline begins the moment the two goth club women were fated for untimely demise when they spotted Filth’s more-goth-then-they-are The Man.  Eventually, Inspector Neilson figures out the victims are connected by their last names and those related to trial participants with the next tales of sharing ill-fated death in the ghastliest and most gruesome ways, anthological style.  Another two women (Rebecca Eden, “Pervirella,” and Emma Rice) try to nick an old-timer of his bed stashed savings but find there is no honor between the combination of friends and thieves, an amputee (Louie Brownsell) murders an acquaintance to use his leg for longshot transplant only to have his leg reject in the most horrifying way, and a officer man (Stuart Laing, “Lie Still”) risks everything in life to get his rocks off gawking at online snuff films only to find himself in one!  There’s also the wrap around story that peppers transition scenes in between to bridge gaps and bring the short stories together into one long feature.  Kemper is the story’s chief antagonist but isn’t the only bad guy in the narrative but is our resemblance of a hero Inspector Neilson’s force to stop as the inspector doesn’t really just how purely symbolizing the embodied of pure evil Kemper really is perhaps even the Devil himself, as the orchestrator is the marionette pulling the strings that leaves Neilson chasing his tale.  Performances all around are gritty, apathetic, cynical, and mean that leaves no ounce of hope or feel-good intentions.

The early short films are not set up with Kemper as the man behind the curtain and this can put some confusion into the mix with seemingly rough transitions from one story to the next.  Plus, the non-linear first film isn’t mirrored into the other three, leaving the first third of the movie wandering, or grasping, to cling to something whole.  By the end of the second short, “Cradle of Fear” levels and becomes clear that an anthology is playing out with each tale containing a formula narrative:  a setup, the rising action or transgression, a brief, jovial high, and then it all comes crashing with gory horror.  The gore is a blend between practical and composite VFX that gets away with a range of simple stab wounds to more complicated head popping deaths while the visual effects has obvious green screen incongruity but dishes some devilish effects from deformed spider-like legs sprawled out from a half-severed head to some shoddy-level effects like a European car flying through and crashing through traffic.  What’s ingrained in the gore and horror is the sex, an element that’s immensely weighed in “Cradle of Fear’s” content that showcases scenes of sensual romance, to gratuitous nudity, to tasteful moments but keep the skin touched upon at least once in every episode.  “Cradle of Fear’s” circulated theme speaks toward the persistence and ever-present evil that’s within us all and from within it can’t be contained as human nature is ultimately fallible and every soul can be conditioned to expel the verhy worst in us all. 

Unearthed Films “Credle of Fear” arrives onto Blu-ray home video with a new 2-Disc, limited-edition collector’s set release encoded with AVC onto a BD25 and presented in an European widescreen of 1.66:1 aspect ratio with 1080p, high-definition resolution.  The 2-Disc set has for a long time seemingly vanished out of Unearthed Films’ newly released lineup, aside from the dual-format releases but it’s nice to see a comeback that’s more special features driven rather than playback format.  The dark grading leads to plenty of finer detail loss but the film has clear delineation and when it is key lit, textures flourish.  With a color scheme of mostly darker shades, keeping in line with its bleak noir tone and the gothic model, this early 2000’s horror fashions a polished veneer as one of the earlier pioneers of digital capturing.  The CGI is not at its finest being that it’s early early 2000’s VFX tech and on a budget too nonetheless and you can the shift in reality whenever the effect is composited into a scene.  Depth is mostly retained for closeups and medium closeup shots as Chandon’s does stylize quite a bit with fade in and outs, negative images, lighting, slow-motion, and various edits to make a swirl of designer continuity.  The British English audio is encoded with an uncompressed PCM 2.0 stereo.  Strong dialogue track doesn’t clash with the imposed, arterial soundtrack comprised of industrial goth and rock bands including Cradle of Filth, for obvious reasons, and The Dark Poets, Jezebel, Slacker, Lungworm, Intense, Quicksilver, and Crotchet.  Often, the ambience and Foley has chaotic aversion to one another that disrupt the audiological flow of the film, except for a few excellently crafted scenes such as Mel’s walk Emily Bouffante’s walk through the downtown area and see demon faces is harmonized very well.  The Foley can be slapstick at times with hits to the body being overexaggerated with cartoonish tones.  English subtitles are available on the feature disc. Disc one contains some ride-along aspecial features, including a brief making-of, a second behind-the-scenes Important Words that has direct Alex Chandon and cast members rambling about other topics rather than being topically relevant to the film, the German DVD making-of the feature, a behind-the-scenes gallery, and three original trailers for the film.  Disc two is mainlhy comprised off Alex Chandon’s short films – “Chainsaw Scumfuck,” “Bad Manor,” “Bad Karma,” “Drillbit,” “Night Pastor,” “Bullshit News,” and “Borderline.”  Also included is a promo for Film Extremes 3, outtakes for the shorts, a behind-the-scenes gallery for the shorts, and their trailers.  Packaging includes a traditional Blu-ray Amaray with new composition cover art on a one-sided sleeve.  The limited-edition O-ring slipcover contains the same primary image.  The discs are held in place on the inner layer of the Ameray with snaplocks and pressed with controversial and provocative imagery including a bloodied baby head and an illustrated eviscerated naked woman.  The region A locked film has a runtime of 120 minutes and is unrated. 

Last Rites: “Cradle of Fear” rocks the anthological horror subgenre not to sleep but to give rise to the killer instinct from within and to show the self-inflicted suffering from the innate debasement in the dark recesses of our soul.

“Cradle of Fear” Available on a 2-Disc Unearthed Films Release!

As Videogame Adaptations Go, This Ones the EVILEST! “Exit 8” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Visions Home Video)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Keeping to himself and listening to music on a subway car, just like everyone else, a man exits the train car at his stop and learns his ex-girlfriend is pregnant with their child when she unexpectedly calls him.  Undecided how to feel about the news of being a father, he walks up a flight of stairs to exit the subway station only to find himself trapped in a zigzag hallway that loops the same series of advertisement images, directional signs, and a businessman walking intently down the seemingly sterile and ordinary, tiled corridor.  After reading the hallway’s information sign, noting specifically to not ignore any anomalies and providing the direction to take when an anomaly is discovered, the lost man realizes he’s trapped inside some sort of twisted game and must determine if 8 hallways are either anomalous or not to be free and exit.  If he misses an irregularity, he must start from zero again and not every anomaly is as harmless as a sign out of place.  The anomalies can psychological, monstrous, terrifying, and deadly.

Based off the Japanese horror and psychological video game of the same title, “Exit 8,” the film, also originates out of Japan.  Kotake Create is the indie video game developer behind the “Exit 8” concept and its sequel “The Platform” from 2023 and 2024.  The 2026 film is the sophomore directed film by Genki Kawamura who co-wrote the filmic adaptation “Sai:  Juchang ban” co-writer and director Kentaro Hirase.  Both the video game and movie indulge into the theme of the Noble Eightfold Path, a teaching core of Buddhism that serves a guide from suffering to enlightenment through eight corrected attitudes, such as mindfulness, intention, and effort.  A conglomeration of producers, including Yoshihiro Furusawa, Minami Ichikawa, Taichi Itō, Yuto Sakata, Taichi Ueda, Kenji Yamada, Akito Yamaoto, and director Kawarmura, bring the film to fruition under the Toho Film Corporation and AOI Pro. Inc. and in association with Story Inc. 

“Exit 8” has a limited cast of key characters, mostly trapped inside the sterile, tiled subway walls, playing real and unreal characters depending on the perspective in turn.  Mostly, the center focus is around a male character only known as The Lost Man, a young man who shrugs off responsibility to his fellow man as well as being undecisive when it comes down to important decisions; we see examples of this on the subway train of a businessman yellow at a mother who’s infant is crying and when his girlfriend phones him to inform him of her pregnancy in which she poises a pivotal question he can’t either fathom, process, or ultimate just decide upon.  “Letters from Iwo Jima” actor Kazunari Ninomiya plays the nameless Lost Man to character arc his way from skirting responsibility to fill him with purpose and round the character out as a person of great attention, detail, and decision.  The only downside to the Lost Man is with how he’s written on the initial experiences of the hallway loop in what’s an obvious disturbance in reality he quietly absorbs without freaking out, even to the point he’s able to quickly red and process the rules of the scenario and understand their purpose.  This, in itself, is an anomaly of human processing and rationality as the average person would be overwhelmed by surreal receptiveness and break down before they could build themselves up.  Ninomiya performance lifts the Lost Man with a more positive performance that sets the emotional rollercoaster back on track and when the audiences to get that break of the character’s mental state, its crippling effect translates and is greatly empathetic.  In the loop, the Lost Man meets the Walking Man (Yamato Kochi) who cycles passes through the anomalous-or-not corridor at an expressionless pace, but we also get his backstory too as he was once real and trapped just like our protagonist.  Another character the Lost Man meets is The Boy (Naru Asanuma), another victim playing the game, and has an eye for detail despite his quiet demeanor.  The Boy also represents the Lost Man’s future being the protector and parent to the boy as they try to escape together through the harsher anomalies.  “Exit 8” rounds out the cast with more minor parts from Kotone Hanase, Hirota Ôtsuka, Tara Nakashima, and Nana Komatsu. 

An uncanny and ambiguous horror, providing no explanation for why the man is trapped inside a loop, “Exit 8” serves to be a metaphor for life’s hard decisions, ones that affect fate in the futre.  Paying attention to the small things have the same direct result as paying attention to the much larger, obvious ones despite the being blatant and the threatening anomalies, no matter big or small, can have disastrous consequences.   Kentaro Hirase is an obvious fan of the game by rendering a faithful adaptation of Kotake Create’s creation that walks, talks, and acts just like the mystery horror and existential crises symbolizer.  There’s even a first-person perspective at the beginning of the film that provides more homage to Create’s first-person game.  After that, the switch to omnipresent third person has its own distinct brand of tension and it also achieves grabbing the fearfully fret expressions on the actors faces, that’s if they’re human or otherwise it’s creepier and menacing in the surround sterile environment that can be subtle or flooded with odd occurrences only to go back to normal in a matter of a few steps and one left turn away  Aside from vague purpose of the 8 level loop, there are more creepypasta anomalies that don’t make a lot of sense on its face but share an underlying connection to those cut off from the rest of normalcy in what’s can be considered a subconscious ensnarement of personal strife that has put them in a precarious position with unexplainable and terrifying results.  The acting carries with a repetitiveness about that that is not tired or mundane as the Walking Man walks the same corridor, at the same time, and in the same manner at least ten times in the duration, an exemplary one-note performance by Yamato Kochi to never break the automaton gait and persona no matter how involved the Lost Man gestures or speaks to him.

Visions Home Video’s “Exit 8” Blu-ray is a great addition to anyone’s collection of Japanese modern cinema or overall film library.  With a 1080p high-definition resolution, the AVC encoded BD50, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, has natural, run through digital brilliance meaning the walls are sterile white, the color saturation has an innate organic measure through primary grading, and skin tones render like they would off camera but all with the clean look of digital.  There is some noticeable aliasing on the tile that lose some of the definition and blurs as objects move through the scene, effecting in at least a couple of scenes the texturing.  The Japanese DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio has a kick with a sound design that plays with the perspective of the Lost Man’s environment, providing excellent directional and immersive audio space from the diegetic and non-diegetic muffled and non-muffled sounds from first person perspective with earbuds in to the intensity depth of walking from background to foreground.  Dialogue has strong presence and is clear.  Subtitles are well paced and contain no noticeable grammatical mistakes in the UK English translation.  There may be some key vocabulary differences as anomalies is perhaps more British than the word used in Japan. The English subs come in two options:  SDH and audio descriptive.  The special features include a behind-the-scenes of “Exit 8,” an On the Carpet at Cannes Film Festival featurette, an On the Carpet Busan Film Festival featurette, the UK trailer and the Japanese trailer..  The stark physical presence of “Exit 8” is eye-catching with a mostly golden O-ring, cardboard slipcover with an illustrated figure eight, tiled like the subway corridor with illustrated story characters standing on it.  Sheathed is the clear Scanova case with the same primary image from the slipcover on the sleeve but drops the sheeny gold coloring for more canary yellow.  The reverse side of the sleeve has a creepy image of the Walking Man.    A double-sided, folded mini-poster and art cards of the corridor wall signs are inside the clear case with more yellow themed display pressed on the disc.  The UK 15 certified film lists two different explanations between the slipcover and the clear snaplock case.  The slipcover has strong horror while the clear case has infrequent strong language.  The region B locked region has a runtime of 95 minutes. 

Last Rites: Personal growth is hard. It’s even more difficult when a subway tunnel becomes the ultimate mind-messing and deadly trap to steer you in the right direction. “Exit 8” is a guileful guide of molding moral behavior done with a twisted circumference. This video game adaptation is one of the better ones in a long time!

This Movie is So EVIL, It’s Real! “The Paranormal” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Paranormal” is a 3-D Experience Without the Glasses!

Kyle Jennings is a struggling pro-paranormal scientist unable to convince the department head for more research funding without repetitive, physical evidence.  Jennings’ paranormal hypothesis is put the test when an old movie theater in Englewood, Ohio spikes to the cycles the eager researcher has previously recorded.  Accompanying his fact-finding examination of theater is the department head with her own theories to explain the phenomenon.  With the assistance of two theater employees, they experience unexplainable occurrences of movie reels coming alive and playing themselves, unlockable doors mysteriously locked, and a ghostly apparition lurking in the attic, all surrounding an old nitrite film reel with immense paranormal energy.  The foursome find themselves trapped inside a theater with the film reel causing rifts into another dimension through every reel change and splice of a cheap zombie movie.  Before movie zombies step into their reality from off the screen, Kyle must journey to the other side and stop them simply by locking an unlocked door but that’s easier said than done when every act Kyle does in film changes the narrative significant and not in their favor.   

Every once and awhile you’ll come across an obscure, independent made film that just knocks your socks off in all categories.  Todd Norris’s “The Paranormal” is one of those very films.  Norris writes-and-directs the 1998 film alongside cowriter C. Wayne Owens, marking their first and only collaboration together.  Norris went on to do be an accomplished short film editor and cinematographer, working on select cheeky horror full-length features such as “Cadavella” and “Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula.”   “The Paranormal” is the debut film of Todd Norris, filmed in the America Midwest, Kansas City, Mirssouri to be specific.  Riding the device of being a mise en abyme, or more loosely described as a meta-film, “The Paranormal” has a novel concept that makes this film something special. 

Norris not only writes and directs, the then late 20s filmmaker also starred as the lead character, a pro-paranormal scientist named Kyle Jennings who, from the opening, introductory scenes, struggles with validating his department and research that is seen as nothing more than a joke, or is even suggested to be a pseudoscience amongst cross-departmental peers at an undisclosed shared university.  As an actor, Norris never flinches from his nerdy-confident persona, dressed down to seem like a normal man with an equally dressed down obsession toward his research.  The approach and reaction of rejection is a very real-world view and response to being denied opportunity, but he’s given the chance once an unexplained occurrence in Englewood has a striking coincidence to his theorized research on paranormal activity.  Jennings is challenged by theoretical physics and science department chair head Cass Charbonneau (Lisa Winegar) who has this underlying want to believe, in a stoic, scientist indifference type way but can’t swallow the truth that something might more unexplainable out there.  We don’t really get a satisfying character arc with her character as she never really displays the change of heart or update from her rigid persona to welcome Jennings into the university scientific community.  Does he finally get accepted?  We don’t know.  Audry Crabtree and Gina Tarantino respectively play theater owner as well as Jennings’s love interest Lynne Meredith and projectionist Johnnie, providing additional strong female roles unafraid to face the supernatural front alongside Winegar.  The cast rounds out with Jennings’s colleagues and zombie movie characters with C. Wayne Owens, Carol Koehler, Brain Stubler, Jeffrey Sisson, and Davide Baldin who either support a broad pro-paranormal acceptance as we see with C. Wayne Owens moving persuasive speech to convince a reluctant Jennings to investigate Englewood and to support parts in a narrative that changes with every decisive action to keep movie zombies from entering reality. 

For a SOV film, “The Paranormal” is a case study for what to do right during principal and post photography.  Editing and special effects on tape can be cumbersome and clumsy, but Norris makes it look easy with effective sleight of hand tricks and use of multiple video tape recordings to provide overlapping effects that turned out quite well and was quite effective.  Couple that technical success with a fascinating, movie-within-a-movie storyline, there’s little to dislike about this indie feature with a big budget heart.  Horror fantasy becomes reality as supernatural forces bring the movie to life, an idea that germinated before Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1994 action thriller “The Last Action Hero.”  While Schwarnegger’s narrative crossed realities in a bigger, more explosive way, “The Paranormal” teases the threat with brief windows of opportunity that could potentially send fleshing eating zombies into the real world.  Every time I thought the story would falter under its own narrative weight, Norris surprises me with continuous persistence in making the sequences work.  The only downside to “The Paranormal” is the mystical reel that generated the supernatural rift.  The nitrite-filmed reel didn’t receive much of a backstory on how and why it causes the in-movie movie “Z is for Zombie” to be the chosen destructor of the Englewood Theater inhabitants and, potentially, the world.  There’s a flash of a woman apparition that in conjunction with the reel’s unyielding power that, too, isn’t explained.  These inexplicable elements leave plot holes in a what is otherwise a near flawless picture. 

Visual Vengeance continues to drop SOV gold right into our hands.  “The Paranormal” is not only a fantastic meta-horror but now it has sex appeal with profound physical qualities.  The single disc, Blu-ray set comes AVC encoded with 1080p high-definition resolution, encoded on a BD50.  The original tape elements were scanned with director supervision and the quality of the tape retained for its original aesthetic, complete with tracking lines and a distorted, warm coloring amongst the analog anomalies associated with tape.  There’s clearly no hard-edge definition or textural allowance so you can get the feeling that you’re watching magnetic tape just as the media gods intended, exhibited in the full frame 1.33:1 with pillar boxes.  The English LPCM stereo cleanly discerns dialogue, soundtrack, and certain action aspects without the presence of sidetracking distortion, and that’s saying something for an innate original audio recording, but there’s noticeable subtle electrical interference in it’s not so robust reproduction of audio.  The A/V should come at no surprise as Visual Vengeance continues to be upfront with their releases with a precautionary statement before every feature regarding the commercial and inferior equipment used to make these types of films.  Optional English subtitles are available.  Special features are aplenty, as usual with Visual Vengeance, with a Todd Norris feature-length commentary, a second commentary with Norris and composer Paul Roberts, various cast and crew interviews produced by Norris a video interview between Norris and Lisa Winegar and subject interviews with Jeffrey Sisson and Davide Baldin, an interview session between Todd Sheets and Todd Norris as The Two Todds of Kansas City SOV filmmaking, “The Paranormal” channel 5 TV airing, blooper reel, deleted scenes, original script excerpts, a storyboard gallery, short films “The Closed, “I…,” “Night of the Growling,” and “Parallax,” and trailers for other Visual Vengeance at home releases.  The clear Amaray Blu-ray case comes with a limited-edition O-ring for the first pressing with art by graphic artist Uncle Frank.  The original sleeve art is done by The Dude and inside is a mini poster by Giorgio Credaro.  Three graphic artists given the chance to shine on one release is pretty neat.  There’s also the original VHS cover on the reverse side of the sleeve.  Inserts alongside the mini-folded poster include an faux advert for faux movie “Z is for Zombie,” a Ghost Finder for viewing entities (think a slim-downed Viewfinder but can’t see through it), and the usual retro VHS sticker sheet.  The 70-minute feature is unrated and is region free.

Last Rites: Acting, special effects, and the meta concept are all what makes “The Paranormal” a solid film of immersive fantasy becoming an on the verge of a zombie apocalyptic reality.

“The Paranormal” is a 3-D Experience Without the Glasses!