Category Archives: abduction

An EVIL Taxi That Requires Your Baby for Payment! “Black Cab” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Anne has lingering reservations about getting back together with cheating boyfriend Patrick but half-heartedly agrees to take him back and even merry him.  The announcement comes as a surprise to dinner friends, including Anne’s best friend Jessica, but before talking out the situation that clearly has the two women upset, Anne is eager to leave and return to her home.  The embattled couple jump into a cab driven by Ian, a gabby cabby prying into the couple’s heated discussions.  When Ian drives down a dark alley and stops to retrieve a map from the trunk, Anne and Patrick realize they’re locked inside the cab.  A returning Ian reveals his true intentions with a purpose still ambiguous why the couple has been abducted but a desperate Ian will do anything, even kill, to get what he loves back from a wistful countryside spirit, and he needs disordered Anne for a trade. 

Should have taken an Uber.  “Black Cab” is the 2024 British abduction and supernatural horror-thriller from serial television and made for TV movie director Bruce Goodison, with a career credits that specializes mostly in tales of international military conflict and British murder mystery, and a screenplay by “Reawakening” writer-director Virginia Gilbert, incorporating into the relationship couple’s discordant flame a sliver of kidnapping, electrical prodding torture, and a desperate act inside the context of an old ghost tale as well as inside the English’s famous hackney carriage of black taxis, using the popular public mode of transportation as a device to market the film’s story for the sordid cab driver.  Filmed in the city of Manchester and the surrounding greater area, the Shudder exclusive presented film is produced by Jan Roldanus of Stolen Pictures and executively produced by Sony International Pictures’s former strategic producer Lucy Robison and current producer Michaela Fereday.

When a moviegoer familiar with actor Nick Frost runs through a mental checklist of the actor’s filmography, comedies like “Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Monster Family,” and “Paul” come to mind with the often lighthearted, sometimes heart wrenching or darkly humorous, storylines in the presence of physicality and fun, done nearly most of the time alongside Frost’s usually entourage and friends, actor Simon Pegg (“Star Trek,” “Run Fatboy Run”) and director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Last Night in Soho”), but Frost has been frequently rooted at the base in horror, science fiction, and, well frankly, genre films in general, with the perfect examples being the aforementioned with shoot’em up polizias, zombies, classic monsters, and an Earthbound alien features.  Frost’s comedic genius is all about timing and the way he carries himself jovially and nonchalantly through tough situations, but Frost can also use those same qualities and twist them to enact a man of deeply troubled anguish behind a masked funny face and viperous wit.  That’s his role in Ian, a cab driver with the gift of gab but turns on a dime with forced aggressive intent to take what he needs from Anne, emoting her character’s already internalized troubles with now a threatening abduction conflict from actress Synnove Karlsen (“Last Night in Soho”).  While Anne is poised as can be in the situation, her disagreeing fiancé Patrick has little-to-no merit as a character being a bit of a bully, cheat, and coward.  Luke Norris (Poldark) gives his best unpleasant rendition of a dirtbag white male with misogynistic issues, but the poorly written aspects of Patrick never fully amount to anything but a weighted towline and an extra body to do what what Ian thinks best with.  Tessa Parr and Tilly Woodward make up the rest of the cast. 

“Black Taxi” subsidizes good suspense over the supernatural calling cards that slowly, yet continuously, shows Anne through an emotional struggling, involving a rather vocally rambunctious boyfriend in Patrick, as well as building the tension inside the cab by hinting at its unusual state of tinted windows, child locked doors, and a more than nosy driver, mostly gone unnoticed by Anne and Patrick due to their bickering and heated love life, or lack thereof.  The first two acts slowly feel out where this story is aiming to drive the audience as Ian’s true intentions are well covered and contained and not fully delineated by the baby clues Ian hints at along the way.  There’s an elemental theme of family and protection, loss and heartache, and how that torment is divergently depicted by both the lead principals Ian and Anne, with the latter being more at a crossroads of choices whereas Ian has already made his choice and it’s one he won’t or can’t come back from.  The third act is mostly where the supernatural factors come into play with the infamous haunting of Mabel Hill, a fiction road supposedly paranormal charged with the ghost of a woman who lost her baby fleeing an abusive relationship and continues to search for the child through bypassing passenger vehicles.  The third act is also where things get murky under the black and white essence of Ian’s motivations as the Ian, Anne, and the ghost are nebulously intertwining on Mabel Hill in some sort of supernatural netherworld dimension that plays mind tricks and is foggy with phantom, falling apart at the seams to support a porous ending.

“Black Cab’s” fare is prenatally pricy in this new release from Acorn Media International and presented as a Shudder exclusive. The UK release is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 that renders a softer image quality that, in all fairness, was already foggy and murky being set in the darkness of the English countryside, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Lots of shadows and silhouetted surroundings drowns out the delineated city structures that blend to the spooky forest as the focus is significantly on the interiors, the cab and the abandoned hotel, and not even those highlighted inmost sets solidified specifics. There’s quite a bit of banding from compression and that’s not to be surprising given the format size and the profound amount of tenebrous tone. Textures along Frost’s dressed-in-black casuals or in contrast to Karlsen’s cocktail outfit that’s more nightgown than ritzy, they’re just not there to extensively define Ian and Anne other than being the epitome of differing the dark and light of loss. “Black Cab” has more of a cityscape than a landscape though the story heavily hits upon Mabel Hill as ghost central and yet lacks the elucidation as well as the finer points to flesh out the haunted area. The ghost too is more a cheap visual effects trick than the implementation of palpable practical patience with an overlaid layer of overexposed blues and whites over top the actress to be then augmented into the scene for ethereal effect. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix is a better outfit, more so in the clean and clear dialogue exchanges between the trio of Nick Frost, Synnove Karlsen, and Luck Norris but does whittle down to the Nick Frost exposition hour when his vague maligned venture is made with more understanding through his broken man diatribes and Anne just sitting and listening as any good abductee would do to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing. Light atmosphere hubbub caters to just that with the night, likely late, shoots inside the city and rural settings but the localized car actions, taser zaps, and character efforts are effective enough to entice a palpable action. English subtitles are optionally available. Acorn’s releases are not chockfull of special features, and “Black Cab” harbors the same slimmed down supplements with a behind-the-scenes gallery. The UK release has a slightly thicker than normal Blu-ray Amaray with an encompassing composition of a rearview mirror peering Frost and a shadowed Karlsen in the fear of the mirrored frame while a ghost hovers above the presumed Mabel Hill Road. UK certified 15 for strong threat, horror violence, domestic abuse, and very strong language, “Black Cab” is hard encoded for region B playback only and has a runtime of 87-minute runtime.

Last Rites: “Black Cab” starts off as an unpredictable ride of mystery and suspense that quickly loses gas to keep up with the swerving supernatural vehicle.

This Serial Killer Clown is Nothing More than an EVIL Romantic. “100 Tears” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“100 Tears” Extended Director’s Cut Available Here!

Mark Webb and Jennifer Stevenson are two tabloid journalists looking to cover something more substantial than chasing cheap thrill information for quick cash.  When Jennifer raises the topic of covering serial killers and their cases, she focuses onto the Teardrop killer, a local serial killer who savaging murders and leaves behind a blood-stained mark in the shape of a teardrop as a calling card.  The deeper they dig into older and new cases, some of the incidents cross reference with a circus act was in town, believing the killer to be somehow involved with the travelling carnival but their investigation leads them to Gurdy, a deranged maniac dressed as a clown, fueled by a wrongfully accused of crimes past that resulted in the separation of him and the woman he loved.  Decades of slaughter culminate to the journalists’ confrontation with not only the killer clown but also his estranged, equally demented, daughter. 

A reconfigured inspiration of John Wayne Gacy, “100 Tears” is the extreme blood-soaked and vehemently violent killer clown picture from ultraviolent special effects artist and filmmaker Marcus Koch.  The 2007 feature is directed by Koch from a script penned by writer-actor Joe Davison (“Experiment 7,” “The Bell Keeper”) and more-or-les solidified Koch and Davison as independent artists in their own right, launching Koch orchestrating behind the camera instead of hands deep in practical gloop and glop of special effects as well as giving Davison a voice as a writer and a chance as an actor to which continues onto this day.  “100 Tears’ is a coproduction between Manic Entertainment, Pop Gun Pictures, and Starving Kappa Pictures initially released under the now defunct Anthem Pictures, but a legal issue with Unearthed Films eventually landed the extreme horror boutique label the rights for at-home release and would be not the only Marcus Koch film to be distributed by Unearthed Films under founder Stephen Biro as the two entities would reteam for the American Guinea Pig series with Koch directing “Bloodshock” and supervising special effects on the Biro-directed “The Song of Solomon.”  Davison would produce the film with Melissa K. Webb.

Not a direct replica of John Wayne Gacy, who’s modus operandi was to lure men and boys to his home to force unspeakable acts on them before eventually killing them, the Teardrop Killer, Luther Gurdy, shares with Gacy a large and portly frame, a full clown getup with makeup, and an indeterminable coldness when whacking and slicing into victims with an oversized cleaver.  Whether or not actor Jack Amos (“Unearthed,” “Experiment 7”) channels Gacy’s black heart spree is not exactly clear, but Amos does fashion Gurdy’s black-and-white patchwork bag of tricks when it comes to molding a formidable facade and approach to an unstoppable killing machine of malaise, hence the teardrop calling card soaked in blood.  Gurdy’s a sad, angry, and vengeful clown, the very antithesis of what the usually zany circus performance is supposed to be, and the gothically stitched macabre of an empty shell man is ultimately what Amos can strive to make of it as Gurdy is completely mute and exacts very little-to-no emotion other than an occasional smile when interacting with estranged daughter Christine (Raine Brown, “Nightmare in Shallow Point”) as they merrily slaughter, catching up for lost time after two decades.  Gurdy and Christine’s bond doesn’t quite reach a level understanding or development to quench ties of nature over nurture when it comes to their sociopathic tendencies in what is a more happenstance run that’s not fleshed out fully by the script.  A better, more robust duo, but still lacks the finer details is journalist colleagues, best friends, sexually pressurized roommates, or however they define their living arraignment and relationship status, Mark Webb (Joe Davison) and Jennifer Stevenson (Georgia Chris, “Vampire Biker Babes”), the tabloid founders chasing the Teardrop Killer story for more substantial, worthwhile content.  Their motivation is clear after a minor conflict of what to investigate and publish next and as they hit the streets, cross-reference facts, and interview persons of interest, Mark and Jennifer effectively become well-oiled investigators under the table of an ongoing police case that has seemingly hit dead-end after dead-end by clueless detectives Spaulding (Kibwe Dorsey, “Dead End”) and Dunkin (Rod Grant, “Noxious”).  “100 Tears” fills out with mostly with a kill fodder cast of adults playing troubled teens or rave party revelers but there’s Norberto Santiago as the carny connection to Gurdy’s baleful past that made him who he is now and the tabloid investigators looking to score substance.

Rooted by its sought after extreme gore, “100 Tears” is not just a simpleton story gorged with guts and blood.  Davison does his due diligence building character backgrounds, especially around Gurdy, despite his clown’s marginal motivations for going maniacally murderous the last 20 years in what was essentially unsubstantiated gossip that got out of hand with retaliation real quick under the circus tent in a black-and-white filtered backstory of carny love and loss.  Marcus Koch, however, didn’t want to make a drama about hurt feelings and harsh reactions of a melancholic clown but rather a melancholic clown that hurts people in a show of extreme prejudice and in an arbitrary, randomized course of mass murder for the sole purpose of our viewing pleasure, and when I say “our,” I mean viewers with visceral responses to decapitations, dismemberments, and spewing blood splatter.  The opportunity for Koch to show off his special effects talents are then delivered tenfold as a charcuterie of cuts, literal slice and dice cuts of Gurdy’s cleaver and the editorial process of cut and taping footage, not only excel Koch into the world of underground practical gore effects but also certifies him as a filmmaker-director that can be cohesive, coherent, and a challenger against censorship and convention, as we see later in his career with the American Guinea Pig films amongst others.

As far as killer clown movies go, “100 Tears” is pleasingly brutal in a stoic maniac manner in its less than spirited, disjointed story.  In a continuing effort of updating their DVD catalogue to high-definition, Unearthed Films release “100 Tears” onto AVC encoded, 1080p, 50 gigabyte Blu-ray.  Barebones information regarding the transferring process on the back cover doesn’t shed any light on the upgrade but the film, the extended director’s cut presented 1.77:1 widescreen aspect ratio and dropping the NC=17 rating, retains a lot of the grittiness inside a lack of color saturation, likely a Koch stylistic choice rather than a print concern, but this also retains a darker, indefinable image that becomes murky around low-lit scenes.  Even the lit scenes have a paleness about them, almost twinning the black and white clownish trappings and makeup of Gurdy’s jester attire.  There are miniscule posterization issues in the deeper negative spaces that makes me think the BD50 is not enough space to handle the feature plus all its bonus content, which includes the original NC-17 cut of the film.  The English language LPCM 2.0 track has lossless fidelity culminating through the front two channels.  Dialogue is clean and clear, but commercial grade equipment and unfiltered sound design does product a consistent buzz or hush of electro-interference.  Not a ton of range or depth to note in shots that are limited to closeups and mediums but a great amount of dominating squishy hacks when the big cleaver is brought down on limbs and heads with a blunt force hit that sounds, well, blunt.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Aforementioned, extras include the NC-17 original cut  as well as a feature length audio commentary with director Marcus Koch and Unearthed Films founder Stephen Biro, a lengthy online video interview with Koch, the making-of “100 Tears” in Blood, Guts & Greasepaint, the original and raw behind-the-scenes footage, bonus behind-the-scenes footage 16-deleted scenes, outtakes or goofed takes, Marcus Koch’s childhood short films, and a pair of “100 Tear” trailers.  Physical package is not much different from the DVD with a standard Amary with the same front cover image of Jack Amos in full Gurdy attire, holding a giant clever, and a tied-down body at his feet.  Disc is pressed with a similar image of Gurdy, and no other bonus material included.  The extended director’s cut Blu-ray has runtime of 95 minutes and is region A locked for playback.

Last Rites: “100 Tears” is all special effects, moderately dialogued, and feeble in story and this upgrade dominates more so with encoded special features with an A/V staying the course in the jump between formats.

“100 Tears” Extended Director’s Cut Available Here!

Gimme an E. Gimme a V. Gimme an I. Gimme a L. What’s that Spell? EVIL! “Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend” reviewed! (MVD Rewind Collection / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cheerleader’s Wild Weekend” Now Back Available on Blu-ray!

Three rival school’s cheerleader squads board a school bus heading to Sacramento to face off in an annual cheer competition.  Detoured to an isolated, less-traveled road late at night, the bus is hijacked by members of the National American Army of Freedom, a group of ex-football players given the shaft for their individualized reasons.  The play caller leading the group is Wayne Mathews, former star quarterback cut loose from his team because of a bum arm, kidnaps the bus full of teenage girls to extort a handsome ransom to get him and four of his terroristic teammates back into the game of life.  Not looking to harm one hair on girls’ heads, Wayne attempts to keep his colleagues from exploiting their bargaining chips while also keeping to the well-designed plan to evade capture and still obtain the cash prize, but when Wayne’s away, it’s up to the cheerleaders to put their differences aside, come together with their own plan, and give the kidnapper a school spirited taste of their own devious medicine.

An odd hybrid of a sexualized teen comedy, blackmail crime thriller, and sleazy exploitation, “Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend,” also known as “The Great American Girl Robbery,” hails as a full out filching and fleshy feature from Jeff Werner as his debut feature before helming the dark comedy surrounding the atomic bomb formula-carrying monkey of “Die Laughing,” starring Charles Durning and Peter Coyote, and his subsequent move from fictional film to documentary for the remainder of his career.  The 1979 film is cowritten between D.W. Gilbert and costar and cult actor Jason Williams, “Flesh Gordon” himself.   Adult film executive producer Bill Osco (“Tijuana Blue,” “The Incredible Body Snatchers”) finances the lesser explicit skin flick after the success of “Flesh Gordon” and intense crime spree thriller “Cop Killers,” both films of which have Jason Williams in significant roles in their long time collaboration, and is produced by an onset Chuck Russell who would later go on to write and direct “The Blob” remake and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3:  Dream Warriors.”

On the cusp adult film actor Jason Williams who didn’t mind showing some skin for “Flesh Gordon” or the parodical tune of the Lewis Carroll kid’s story with “Alice in Wonderland:  An X-Rated Musical Fantasy,” but “Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend” was different for Williams who not only kept his clothes on for most of the picture but also tried to keep others from taking their clothes off as well.  As quarterback gone quintessential eyes-on-the-prize kidnapper Wayne Mathews, Williams co-drives the narrative from the perspective of the heist in a focused attention on staying one step ahead of the bumbling and birdbrain detectives (Marc Isaacs and Hugh Brennenman).  Kristine DeBell, who co-starred with Williams as the titular character Alice in “Alice in Wonderland:  An X-Rated Musical Fantasy, copiloted as Debbie Williams who became the representative portion of the defenseless, scared, and quite cheeky cheerleaders held captive in a rural cabin as Matthews hones in on the $2 million in ransom money.  While the black and white plan for Mathews is just that, crime comes in many shades of color, and sexuality, and in intelligence within his accomplice network of failed football teammates, a sexually pent-up buxom chaperone, and even the fleeting desires of his younger brother, Billy (Robert Houston, 77’s “The Hills Have Eyes”).  Mathews right hand man George Henderson (Anthony Lewis), Big John Hunsacker (John Albert), and Frankie (Courtney Sands) become the ultimate problem that buries the original crux of the kidnapping with sordid inclinations for physical abuse toward the girls than what Mathews has in mind and becomes the spur for the cheerleaders, including LaSalle (Tracy King, “Mansion of the Doomed”), Wally Ann Wharton (“Up In Smoke”), Deslyn Bernet, and others, to fight back against their deviant, hornier captors. 

Werner’s debut is literally a wavy rollercoaster of pulled back levity with good-time voluptuousness and a strong browbeating back-and-forth rivalry amongst of a few honkytonk barrels of laughs while, in the same breath, can be deeply troubling with its side dishes of attempted rape, verbal abuse, and sexual grooming of what’s supposed to be high school cheerleaders (or maybe College cheerleaders…it’s not very clear in the narrative).  You don’t know whether to laugh in relief or be tense with the unsettling advances.  Plenty of gratuitous nudity doesn’t help the matter as a handful of select leaders of the school packs are willing to bare skin albeit being held at gunpoint in this twofaced tale.  With lead principals Wayne Mathews and Debbie Williams, a firm position is held, a genuine felt love interest is formed, and their unspoken body language is clear to the end, providing much needed release from the grip of ebb-and-flow emotions.  Another push toward the accolades of comedy are the two detectives and a blatennt archetype of undercover cops who, in football terms, fumble their way through a sting operation to catch the crooks while the crooks, meaning the Mathews brothers, find reward and redemption, such as Wayne’s bum arm comes through tossing a bag full of $2 million through the air and into the getaway car, with their indifferent yet simultaneous compassion for the held cheerleaders.  $2 Million in $20 dollar notes is about 220lbs per my calculations so that’s one heck of a throwing arm! 

Rewind back to 1979 with MVD’s Rewind Collection label and check out “Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend” on their new Blu-ray release.  The 1080p high-definition presentation comes onto an AVC encoded, BD25 with the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1, cropped slightly from the original 1.85:1.  The print used for the transfer looks to be print from the now defunct label, Scorpion Releasing, for the company’s 2009 Blu-ray that’s been out of print for some time now.  Print care helps define a broader color palette with the occasional pop of red or yellow moments of higher contrast moments and details, such as glass speckling, groove shadows and textures of a varietal of hair color and consistencies, and other miniscule points of the milieu that emerge through, or pork through according to Courtney Sands’ large white shirt pokies, but leading into lesser light lends to a crushed blacks that swallow object definition and shape.  However, there is some print damage in the form of dust and dirt, a few instances of vertical scratching, and what looks to be cutting damage during a scene transition.  Unlike the Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray that encoded the DTS-HD MA audio codec, the MVD release uses an uncompressed English LPCM mono that sizes up fidelity of the original track.  Surprising being a 25Gig capacity, the uncompressed files appear to maximize the audio without compromising quality.  The verbose dialogue has elevated appeal without steeping to an imbalance, making every individual voice seem like they’re on the same plane of existence in the clean and clear rendition.  Ambience noise is inlaid with consideration for medium range and depth that’s required of this production, mostly close-range gunfire, tire screeches, engine noise, and chases through the brush, that are within arm’s length or a stone’s throw from the camera.  English subtitles are available for selection.  Special features are from the Scorpion Releasing’s archive with an audio commentary with director Jess Werner, actress Tracey King, and editor Gregory McClatchy, a second audio commentary with principal actress Kristine DeBell, an interview with Debell, an interview with principal actor Jason Williams, an interview with Tracey King aka Marilyn Joi, an interview with Leon Isaac Kennedy, an alternate title card sequence with “The Great American Girl Robbery,” a photo gallery, and the original theatrical trailer.  The primarily white and red colored, O-slip cover art has a retrograde façade of a VHS rental complete with mock peeling stickers and dirty edges overtop the film’s marketing of a half-naked cheerleader covered just in pom-poms.  Blu-ray Amaray case sports same image but cleaner without the faux VHS trappings. Inside is a folded mini poster of said art in the insert field and the disc is labeled pressed with the textured grooves of a VHS cassette.  The region free release comes not rated and has a runtime of 96 minutes.

Last Rites: Jeff Werner’s first feature is full of spirit and shapely misguided youth and frustrated former football players in this light sex comedy concealing darker, predatory behavior beneath the surface. “Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend” will cause snickering and titillating excitement while also tense your gut in what’s an amalgamation of a jest and jostling, bare-chested, good-old-fashion American heist film.

“Cheerleader’s Wild Weekend” Now Back Available on Blu-ray!

No One Can Hear You Scream in EVIL Found Footage Space! “V/H/S/Beyond” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Go Beyond the Limit with “V/H/S/Beyond.” Now on Blu-ray!

Six new tapes push the boundaries of what we know is true and what we know as reality.  Six new tapes confirm that we are not alone on this Earth or even in this universe.  Sex new tapes shows the horrors beyond our plane of existence and into another dimension of fear of the unknown.  A special tasked police force raids a house horded by violent, brainless baby-nappers only to discover the horrible creature lurking in the attic.  A megastar under the pressures to perform breaks from the mortal chains of human greed and power.  Skydiving friends encounter an alien attack miles above the Earth surface.  A doggie-daycare aims to transfigure and train people to sit, rollover, and behave like good, obedient hybrid canine creatures, a woman determined to find proof of extraterrestrial’s in the Mojave desert found curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it also brought it back to life to kill it again and again and again, and a two flea market bought VHS self-tapings quite possibly reveal the horrifying truth of if we are alone in the world.

The next grand tour through “V/H/S” horror has entered orbit!  “V/H/S/Beyond” abducts and probes our fear receptors with invasive and terrifying cold instruments of science-fictional horror tales.  “Beyond” marks the 7th entry into the found-footage anthological franchise formed over a decade ago in 2012, created and produced by genre devotee Brad Miska under his founded, longstanding horror website Bloody Disgusting, and this entry’s theme “Beyond” denotes a sci-fi flare from the hellish man-made creations to vicious visitors from the void above.  Miska returns as producer alongside Josh Goldbloom, James Harris, and Michael Schreiber all of whom have been a part of the series since 2022’s “V/H/S/99.”  Cinepocalypse Productions, Studio71, Spooky Pictures, and Shudder serve as coproduction companies for the shorts directed by Jay Cheel “Abduction/Adduction,” Jordan Downey “Stork,” Virat Pal “Dream Girl,” Justin Martinez “Live and Let Dive,” Christian and Justin Long (yes, that Justin long from “Jeepers Creepers” and “Tusk”) “Fur Babies,” and Kate Siegal “Stowaway.”

“Beyond” introduces a variety of situations, mostly flipping between man-made mistakes to alien encounters, with a medley of spirited characters to shepherd the shorts where they need to end in a timely outcome.  Each found footage story is inherently different with no two situations nearly alike, keeping to the same synonymous rhythm that has garnered fandom for the “V/H/S” anthologies.  The wraparound segment has the facsimile of a mystery documentary of two flea market purchased tapes that are believed to be evidence of alternate life beyond this universe with mock interviews given by the actors casted in the film – Brian Baker, Gerry Eng, Sam Gorski, Mitch Horowitz, Wren Weichman, and Trevor Dow discussing the history of tapes and the house they’re filmed in, social alien background and perception, and determining if the tapes are authentic.  Like all the other wraparounds, story progression is interspersed between the five other shorts with the first being “Stork” where the special police task force W.A.R.D.E.N. takes the fight to the paranormal.  Officers Broome (Thom Hallum, “Bull Shark”), Aubert (James C. Burns, “Lake Dead”), Bennet (Jolene Andersen, “Doctor Death”), Ivy (Tyler Andrews), and E.T. (Vas Provatakis, “Children of the Pines”) storm an infested monster house with rookie Segura (Phillip Andrew Botello, “Devil’s Revenge”) to save stolen infants.  From here, paparazzi Arnab (Sayandeep Sengupta) and Sonu (Rohan Joshi) find themselves at the mercy of an all-powerful and vengeful goddess in megastar Tara (Namrata Sheth), birthday boy Zach (Bobby Slaski, “White Terror”) finds himself free-falling into an alien invasion, doggie daycare owner Becky (Libby Letlow) is dead serious about Frankensteining the purrfect fur babies, and UFO researcher Halley (Alanah Pearce) will find that discover the truth will be a painful purgatorial experience.  “Beyond” brings a wide range of talent to the table with ensemble casts, streamers, Bollywood actors, and solo preformists to exact another side of fear for the franchise with a principal supporting cast rounding the anthology with Virat Pal, Rhett Wellington, Hannah McBride, Matthew Layton, Braedyn Bruner, Phillip Lundquist, and Kevin Bohleber.

One would think an anthology series built upon the idea of a found footage would eventually become stale amongst the public who are feeling the fatigue of an overused subgenre, much like the zombie subgenre in the early 2000s to early 2010 where every George Romero wannabe with a handheld camera set out to either homage or hit it big with the next undead head success.  Found footage is currently, or rather vaguely, in the throes of being overworked because of how cost efficient and effective films of its ilk can be to those inspired to create.  However, the “V/H/S” series hits differently.  For one, it’s an anthology series that brings a fan of imagination to its whole and we’re not subjected the one type of found footage narrative as dissimilar styles, tastes, direction, writing, etc., converge by means of short films.  Another element of “V/H/S” staying power is the series created and developed by genre admirers, such as Brad Miska whose veins course with literally nothing else but the blood cells of the horror.  Lastly, “V/H/S” continues to evolve by colliding past and present, nostalgia and current, and myth and fact together with a serrated surrealism that can thrill you with, often times, hell on Earth entertainment as well as scare the living bejesus out of you.  “Beyond” maintains the trend by coming out of the 80’s and 90’s vibe from the last three installments and diving headfirst into beyond the scope of traditional monsters, terrestrial creatures, and iconic monsters for nothing born of his Earth, such as with the wraparound story, “Stork,” “Live and Let Dive,” and “Stowaway,” and nurturing more a mad-science madness in “Dreamgirl” and “Fur Babies.”  A possible detriment to “Beyond’s” ability to connect with fans of fear and frights with the latest entry leaning heavily on the physical side of action-gore that sometimes is a tall order of campiness rather than the instillation of underlaying, psychological terror aside from the Mike Flanagan (“Oculus,” “Doctor Sleep”) penned “Stowaway” that evokes some segregated space isolation and a death-defying situation that still feels the repetitive painful sting.

“V/H/S/Beyond” lights up the night sky with blood red intergalactic splatter and takes mad science to a whole new abominable level with a new Blu-ray from the UK label Acorn Media International.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 presents the film in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio with an occasion retro-slip into pillar box 4:3 for that VHS façade.  Image presentation ranges because of the home movie, handheld camera, and body cam found footage trope that’s this series bread-and-butter.  Through the intended static, interlacing and tracking lines, fuzzy darkness, quick movements, and mostly whichever video interference objects one can think of, minus authentic celluloid print damage, to pseudo-sell found footage realism.  The outcome is superbly effective and highly captivating albeit moments that are too agitated to understand and connect objects and sounds in the narrative, another part of the collective that makes it effective yet also makes it wasted runtime space for viewers.  What’s not wasted is the chainsaw point of view in “Stock” where ripping through and decapitating monsters has DOOM inspiration all over it. A majority English with some Hindi DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix is, too, designed to mimic the gimmick of handheld found footage. Distortions and other audio mic cuts and external interference on the audio system are included to sell the illusion and are often done at great detail in time, overlay, and spatial fractions in-between viewer and what the view is experiencing on screen. Depth is mostly front loaded within the context of first-person viewpoints while the surrounding channels take a subtle backseat but whisper through when there’s a sound behind the camera. LFE charges in during more rambunctious moments, which there are a lot of, and are not quelled for the sake of dialogue that’s mostly discernible when necessary. English subtitles are available. The encoded special features on a static menu include the pre-visuals of explosions, disintegrations, and free-falling bodies on the practical skydiving of the cameraman explain how many jumps were needed to put the pieces altogether for that breathtaking scene at 20,000 miles in the sky, actress Libby Letlow’s audition tape for Becky in the “Fur Babies” short, the making of “The Dreamgirl,” a behind the scenes of “Stork” with IGN, and the how the timelapse was created in “Stowaway.” Physical areas of the releases are about the same other Acorn Media Releases with the thicker UK Amaray casing that has the illustrated cover art of the “V/H/S” thematic skull worked into the swirling steller-laden of scary space. Inside is just the disc pressed with the same image art. UK certified 18 for strong violence and injury detail, “V/H/S/Beyond” has a runtime of 114 minutes and is not noted on the back cover in regard to the region playback, usually Acorn Media releases are hard encoded with region B, but this particular release play on a Region A setting and could be very well region free.

Last Rites: The “V/H/S” team continues to maintain a sustainable supply of fresh meat for the grinder in relation to its current theme. Plenty of splatter, mayhem, lunacy, and backbone quivering chills to get lost in “Beyond’s” cosmic Hell. Can’t wait to see what’s next in store for the anthology!

Go Beyond the Limit with “V/H/S/Beyond.” Now on Blu-ray!

Beware of Friendly Strangers, They Just Might Be EVIL! “Speak No Evil” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Speak No Evil” has Speechless Horror! Now Available at Amazon!

A Danish family on holiday in Tuscany meets a family from Holland.  The two families hit it off enjoying each other’s company on the final days at the getaway villa.  Weeks after returning home, a postcard arrives from the Dutch family, inviting the Danish family to stay with them for a weekend at their home.  What starts off as the pleasant beginnings of friendship slowly degrades to an unsettling suspicion something is not right with the Holland family.  Abel, the Dutch couple’s mute son, is held to a higher standard with uncompromising, punitive measure, the husband and wife’s acute uncouth behavior sets an uncomfortable stage, and their attention toward the Danes’ daughter, Agnes, is unconscionably overstepping parental boundaries.  An attempt to call out or even leave the home altogether has been met with disbelief, guilt, and pleads for stay and enjoy under their guise of sincerest apologies soon to be dropped for something far more sinister. 

Before James McAvoy grew a beard, got jacked, and attired himself in buffalo plaid for his manly maniac performance in the 2024, usurpative family thriller, “Speak No Evil,” directed by “Eden Lake’s” James Watkins, the Netherlands and Denmark were the original blunt forces behind the sociopathic caprices of those assumed normal and amiable adults.  Only released two years ago, the 2022 film that spurred the American remake and the feature’s namesake is directed by the Copenhagen-born Christian Tafdrup (“Parents’) and co-written between Christian and brother, Mads Tafdrup, as one of their numerous collaborations since 2017, beginning with a manipulative tale of a viperous female in “A Horrible Woman.”  Profile Pictures (“Holy Spider”), in a co-production association with OAK Motion Pictures, serves as the production companies on the Jacob Jerek, of Profile Pictures, and Trent, of OAK Motion Pictures, produced motion picture shot primarily in the southern portion of Netherlands in the Friesland region.

The Danish father and mother, Bjørn and Louise, are played by Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch and before becoming ingrained into the crux of the story, the couple reflect a complicated complexion all on their own, especially and specifically with the focus toward Bjørn who seems unsatisfied or unhappy with his life as he’s shown staring off in the distance or mentally checking out at the dinner table.  The Danish are represented as a couple who are too nice to a fault, unable to say no most of the time, and try to keep to themselves mostly when a problem arises, skirting away without notice in a dust of avoidance.  That’s not so much the case with the Holland father and mother, Patrick and Karin, bordering as an equally amiable couple performance by Fedja van Huêt and Karina Smulders.  That is until the outer appearance of friendly strangers turns into an uncomfortable nightmare of being caught between a rock and a hard place of how other people live and do things, especially from another culture or country.  Patrick and Karin show more passionate displays of anger, sexuality, and bohemianism that wasn’t on display on their shared holiday with the Danes.  Then, there are the children.  Agnes (Liva Forsberg) is a lovely young daughter perhaps too coddled by her parents, especially by Bjørn who can’t resist saying no in going to find Agnes’s beloved stuff animal when she constantly loses it.  Abel (Marius Damslev), on the other hand, is shy and can’ talk due to a tongue malformation, but the overly critical parenting by Patrick and Karin keeps Abel on a silent edge.  The Holland family’s outer haul slowly regresses, facades drop, but still the Danes are reeled back in by their own niceties despite all the red flags.

I can’t help but think those comportment particulars are somehow a reflection of the Denmark peoples’ true nature as a statement to their culture and social relations between themselves and, in this case, their neighboring countries.  The Tafdrup brothers prelude the script with verbal contrast between the two countries, such as their similarities, but the Tafdrup’s firmly stamp that just because you’re similar doesn’t mean you’re the same.  The notion can be applied to anybody of people from groups to individuals living amongst each other in a neighboring fashion and that their differences are being conducted right under your noses.  Of course, the script then embellishes more a distributing sensationalism of a spider leading the innocent moth to it’s sticky web by an attractive, orienting glow of light.  The analogy is right up Bjørn’s alley as a man who is looking to loosen the chains of parental and marital, perhaps even inherent to his nationality, suppression in a misguided notion that his promises have put a limitation on freedom; he finds himself attracted to Patrick’s freewheeling way of life and wants to emulate that in some sort of way.  The psychology behind “Speak No Evil” runs rampant with a paralyzing inability to let wicked do what it wants without confronting it head-on or without fighting it.  “Speak No Evil” is a chilling story of the all too familiar Edward Burke phrase, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

“Speak No Evil” arrives onto UK DVD from Acorn Media International co-presented as a Shudder Exclusive and IFC Midnight production.  The MPEG 2 encoded, upscaled 1080p, DVD9 is presented with an anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1 that encompasses an array of landscapes from vast fields, rocky dunes, and Tuscany vistas.  Contrastingly, director of photography Erik Molberg Hansen goes for an austere, harsh grading with little less light to give everything surface a rough edge from skin to fabric to natural to synthetics.  Colors a held at neutral browns, tans, grays, and blacks to accentuate the severity that continues to increase as the story progresses when moving away from holiday in Italy to the morose, rock-strewn dunes in Holland and while details are generally lost in dense nighttime exteriors, the more brightly lit corners excel in isolated spots.  The Danish-Holland-English audio comes in only one format, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix.  Adequate for this type of interpersonal awkwardness, the score and sound design offers a plentiful mix free from compression issues or physical obstacles on the recording in post.  “Speak No Evil” is person-on-person violence in the most primal form that leaves the possibility of added effects from violence next to nothing in what is more of a less is more design under a suppressive audio format that’s akin to trying silence a low-talker.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and at the bow of all the other layers in the audio boat.  What’s interesting about the encoded English subtitles is that they’re only available for the Danish dialogue and not the Netherlanders’, which adds an additional layer of intrigue and suspension as the non-native Dutch speakers with not understand what Patrick or Karin are communicating between each other.  The static menu offers no special features option and there is no stinger at the end of the credits.  The clear DVD case showcases that austere black and gray look with one of the story’s most engagingly odd scenes involving Abel.  The insides are standard edition bare as well with this disc pressed with the same primary image.  THE PAL disc is hard coded with region 2 playback, has a runtime of 93 minutes, and is certified 18 for strong violence and injury detail.

Last Rites: The original “Speak No Evil” speaks volumes of the dangers of societal pleasantries that turn a blind eye to caution for the sake of not hurting the feelings of others, but those subconscious hints are a part of the innate, primal early warning system in us all. Once we ignore those insinuations, we might as well dig our own grave.

“Speak No Evil” has Speechless Horror! Now Available at Amazon!