Category Archives: Chilly Thrilly

Digging Up the EVIL Disentombs the Past! “Exhuma” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today!

A shaman and her assistant recruit a geomancer and a mortician to investigate the case of an American newborn boy’s distressing grave calling that has also haunted every patriarch member of the family for generations.  The large paying job sends them to remote forest where the unmarked grave of the boy’s great, great grandfather lies beneath the dirt.  For the geomancer, all signs point to not disturbing the grave but the father’s eagerness to cure his son’s troubles and the shaman’s persistence for a big payday goes against the wise geomancer’s better judgement.  All is seemingly well after exhuming and transferring the ancestral coffin to be cremated at a nearby hospital the next day until a greedy, hospital official pries open the sealed casket, releasing a long-awaited evil, and digging up out of the same burial ground another malevolent and mysterious ancient force that reaches far beyond the borders of Korea. 

Here as of late, ItsBlogginEvil.com’s last three reviews have taken readers on a genre-diverse tour of Asia, from Japan with Yu Nakamoto’s meta-slashers in “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man,” to Hong Kong with David Chung’s affrayed police actioner “Royal Warriors,” to conclude in South Korea with the supernatural horror in the realm of cultural superstitions of P’ungsu, or geomancy, in Jang Jae-hyun’s latest written-and-directed thriller “Exhuma.”  The 2024 film follows a string of religious related, supernatural themes Jae-hyun has put out in his prior two directed projects with “The Priests” and “Svaha:  The Sixth Finger,” and like “Ikenie Man,” “Harawata Man,” and “Royal Warriors,” a portion of Jae-hyun’s films are touched by Japanese culture.  “Exhuma” amounts to the same standard of crisscrossing the two cultures with dangerous results with “Exhuma” digging up a past better left alone.  Park Hyeong Jin and Kwon Ji Yong (“Ghost Mansion”) produce the spiritually turbulent story under Showbox Entertaiment and Pinetown Productions. 

“Exhuma” encircles four culturally inclined characters that entrench themselves into an unorthodox means of exhuming a disturbed essence for what is essentially an exorcism variant to alleviate living perturbation beyond the grave.  The superstition here revolves around the land temperament.  Geomancers find good sites to lay people to rest, ones that exert extrasensory, or grave call, troubles onto family members that place upon them a grief, anxious, and other mentally uneasy state, and it’s the “Exhuma’s” Geomancer who has story predominance, shared only with the young and beautiful shaman woman with tagalongs who resemble more of assistants than coequals.  In an age-old and cautionary tale of wisdom and inexperience, Choi Min-sik (“Oldboy”) and Kim Go-eun (“Monster”) play the respective roles of the reluctant and experienced Geomancer Kim Sang-deok and the naïve eager yet gifted shaman Lee Hwa-rim.  Receiving character voice over monologue introductions and becoming the ultimate deciding factors of this new job is worth the pay, they completely overshadow the Shaman apprentice (Lee Do-hyun,) and the mortician (Yoo Hae-jin) who works with the Geomancer.  Pivotal as these support characters are to the story, not only buffers for the evil that beleaguers them but also as latched on friends and family of the isolating weird and strange subculture to most but normalized in Korea, the shaman apprentice and mortician definitely take a back seat to the more prominent players to the point where they almost seem contributorily worthless to the task.  As a whole, the dynamic works because the shaman and geomancer alone would not be sufficient for diabolical misadventures of an exhumation gone wrong and supplement only when necessary to aid the fight against an ancient evil twice over.  The cast fills out with Hong Seo-jun, Jeon Jin-ki, Kim Jae-Cheol, and Lee Jong-goo.

The wafting back and forth between Korean and Japanese culture, the fraternization of beliefs and superstitions, tells “Exhuma” differently than most hilltop haunts and horrors.  Themes of a haunted past and inexplicable guilt riddle holes through family lineage, resulting rancorous ripples in the form of mental illness, and devised as a story vehicle device of supernatural subverting trauma from the sins of the father.  In America, Shamanism and Geomancy don’t exist, especially in the history, but for Korea and its people, the country is rich in transcendent ritual and mythology that shapes society, even in their cinematic culture as regularly do we see period films of feudal Korea.  History also dictates “Exhuma’s” need to be a representation of purging the long Japanese occupation of Korea for nearly three and half decades from 1910 to 1945.  The occupation was a disruption in Korean way of life with oppression and war machinations stitched into Korean’s fabric, hence the Korean plot of land being very spoiled with vileness in “Exhuma’s” tale of one historically troubled family’s course to remove that uneasiness that has plagued and followed them to America.  Yet, the past is rooted deep and Jang Jae-hyun’s understands the difficulty of eradicating a sullied ancestry by dichotomizing his darkly toned, folklore valued, and occult twisted story into two parts with sublayers as deep as the dirt surrounding the coffin, or rather, coffins with a formidable presence created and conjured by malicious Japanese Yōkai and represented in one of the most iconic Japanese figures as remnants of an Imperial Japan occupation.

Lying in wait underneath the high-definition terra firma is Well Go USA Entertainment’s “Exhuma” on an AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Accompanied by no information on the video vehicle, IMDB.com lists Jang Jae-hyun and cinematographer Lee Mo-gae shoot with an Arri Alexa Mini which offers the ease of use of multiple lenses, and that shows here with a vast stretch to encompass the Korean mountains into the frame as well as keeping tight on characters while keeping in focus the immediate surroundings. Details are sharp under a flinty tone of saturated grays and blacks with spot pops and glows of in-scene lighting and under the capacity’s umbrella, finer textural elements suffuse through the darkness and into the fold. Audio options include the original Korean language DTS-HD 5.1 and an English dub DTS-HD 5.1. Crystal clear dialogue runs through parallel with the visual counterpart and is well timed and potent, touching the side and back channels with the eerie callings of the grave and its inhabited spirits running rampant free while harnessing focus on the character on scene to create a ranging discarnate of deep, ominous sounds that stalk and haunt the principals. English translation paces well and appears to be translated grammatically and is error free. Well Go USA Entertainment releases are feature focused and this one too containing only a making of featurette in the bonus content along with the trailer. The interior of the traditional Blu-ray Amaray comes with a disc pressing of the four principal characters peering into a dug grave. The exterior has a two-tone, subsoil profile forming a face out of a grave with the four principals on the topsoil and the same image also graces the cardboard O-slip that has a pseudo-lenticular sheen. Authored to have a region A playback, “Exhuma” runs just over two hours long at 135 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The addition of learning authentic, practiced rituals benefits “Exhuma’s” folklore frights tenfold and with neat, grounded performances and a superb blend of visual and practical effects, this original, supernatural thriller raises the Korean movie industry up a notch on the global scale.

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today!

Sacrifice and Intestines Make Great EVIL Slashers! “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ikenie Man” Available on DVD Home Video!

“Ikenie Man”

Four university friends involved in a movie making club trek deep into the remote, phone service-snuffing forest eager to make their esteemed stamp on the slasher genre, or rather just the director does, as frustrations build between them, exploding furiously into an inability to find cohesive creativity, and their lead actress quits and walks off location in a fit of distaste for horror and their Prima donna director.  Idea and idea between the rest of crew of how to recoup their film from being a total failure and loss has been rejected by the nitpicking auteur looking for that novel concept to make him famous until he and the crew stumble upon a group of eight campers who all conveniently fit into conventional tropes of horror characters.  A plan quickly arranges to use their masked and knife-wielding movie villain to scare the unsuspecting campers with guerilla filmmaking tactics but there’s more to these seemingly innocent young campers than what meets the eye. 

A meta horror self-aware to all the necessary components that make a great horror movie becomes upended in a topsy-turvy tumbling machine of all the aligning mechanisms you thought you knew about a horror story.  Yu Nakamoto (“Phone of the Dead,” “Teacher! It’s a Slit-mouthed Woman!”) writes and directs the meta, self-deprecating, indie Japanese horror-comedy “Ikenie Man.”  Ikenie, translated literally to the word Sacrifice, is used to describe the in-story director’s deranged masked killer the direct himself portrays and finds himself at the sharp end of a knife, barbed wired baseball, razor edges of a chainsaw, and etc.  The 2019 released film is an open-faced hotdog of an absurd horror comedy, slathered with gory ketchup, and self-produced by the then 28-year-old, Hiroshima-born Yu Nakamoto as his sophomore short feature length film under his indie credited production company of Nakamoto Films. 

Also, Follow Up With “Harawata Man” on DVD Home Video!

“Harawata Man”

One year after the terrifying ordeal in the woods, the university movie club has evolved with the departure of the director and lead actress after graduation.  The two remaining members are joined by newcomers with an actor, actress, sound engineer, and camera operator to work on another masked slasher, titled “Harawata Man.”  When directed to meet up and shoot inside an abandoned manufacturing plant, the crew praises the location’s creepy atmospherics, but they run into another film crew shooting simultaneously on a project of their own.  Mistaken as the hired assistant crew members, they jump at the opportunity to work on a bigger-scale film until an actress is brought into the scene, sat in the middle of the room, and is bludgeoned to her actual death by the story’s plastic apron killer.  The opportunity of a lifetime just became a snuff film nightmare they can’t escape.

“Harawata Man” sequentially follows on the heels of “Ikenie Man” by taking place one year after the events of the first film and moving the setting from one genre-staple setting of the thick woods to the next best location of an abandoned factory.  Released the same year as “Ikenie Man,” one could deduce that both “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” were shot essentially back-to-back with some down time in between productions and that might explain the mark of no return of some principal characters that didn’t, or couldn’t, appropriately fit into the new story, which would align with the absence of the titular “Ikenie Man.”  Harawata translates to the ever-delicate word Intestines describes the story’s small indie film crew’s killer who rips out the victim’s guts.  “Harawata Man” is a less meta than its predecessor film by relying more on its comedic context as another Yu Nakamoto Film production. 

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So, because I do not know the Japanese alphabetical language of hiragana, katakana, and kanj and there’s limited information on IMDB.com, as well as other referential sources, the cross reference of cast to characters is not obviously clear.  Instead, going through the character carousal to understand motivations and journeys has become a forced prudence.  “Ikenie Man’s” setup is an expositional setup from the indie filmmaking foursome to run through what us genre aficionados already know:  character tropes, emblematic motifs, and traditional character arcs, such as the rise of the final girl.  “Scream” had highlighted and called out the trade ingredients of recipe elements to make Grandma’s stew that much more appetizing to a new, inexperienced market of up-and-coming fans.  The franchise’s sequels to follow leaned into the rules of subsequential follow ups with each tweaking just a little to make them worthwhile.  Nakamoto flips the script for more campy devices into an un-genre-like routine that sees the virgin killed right away, the nerd is secretly a jock under his four eyes wear, and the only masked “killer” in the story turns out to be the unwilling hero.  “Harawata Man” takes a step back toward more familiar plot grounds of an independent film crew winding up into unfortunate chanceful circumstances and having to defend themselves against sociopathic snuff filmmakers.  However, it’s the way the misfortunate film crew becomes fortunately favored is how they use slasher rudiments to defends themselves that dips the toes of this sequel into the meta pool, taking on the role of maniacs and omnipresent killers who slice and dice with authority and the snuff filmmakers run, yell, and scream for their live becoming the hapless kill fodder.  Yûta Chatani, Maki Hamada (“Tokyo Gore Police”), Tomoaki Saitô (“Phone of the Dead”), Yasunari Ujiie, Yûko Gotô, Marie Kai, Tanabe Nanami, Tsugumi Sakurai, Sumre Ueno (“Ghost Squad”), Yû Yasuda (“Rise of the Machine Girls’), and Shigeo Ôsako (“Grotesque”) are the cast listed.

As far as Japanese gore films go, Nakamoto films are lite when looking at the niche genre as a whole, paling in comparison to such films as “Toyko Gore Police” or “Audition,” but that doesn’t stop “Ikenie Man” or “Harawata Man” from decapitation, severing, eviscerating, and perforating at will with fountainous blood splatter, one of the better absurd keynotes seen in gory J-horror that goes back to Japan’s samurai films of yore.  Gore certainly dangles the carrot of catching these films on either the preferrable home video or, dare I say it, Tubi, but Nakamoto refuses to make it the focal backbone of his films; instead, the story’s meta comedy goes hard with assurances toward every genuine horror fan out there will recognize Nakamoto’s admiration for the genre.  “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” not only spoof horror but also adapt into a new breed of that line of thinking that reminiscent of how “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” brought upon role reversals through character perception.  Plot paths switch to an unrecognizable gear, much like the films’ official synopses try to mislead with a generic framework, but these new directions still sate that blood thirst to keep interest, tone the black humor to be less wincingly slapdash, and keep the pacing fair, drive practical-effects with intent, and the intense horror-comedy upright in a saturated genre market.

Now available from Wild Eye Releasing is “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” on DVD, encoded on a MPEG-2 compression DVD-5 with upscaled 1080p resolution. Curious enough, the opening company credits list both films as part of the Raw & Extreme sublabel but the physical cases list no such notation in what appears to be a regular Wild Eye Releasing title. Presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the uncredited same camera and unlisted cinematography process by Yu Nakamoto is used for each production with “Ikenie Man” using gel filters to get a nice wide variety of primary glow splashed along character faces during night and light fog sequences. “Harawata Man” forgoes a colorful visual tone for more key lighting in a darker, basement dwelling. Picture quality and detail from the digital capturing translates fine from original print to reproduction with adequate compression of a short feature film with virtually no extras encoded. A LPCM uncompress Stereo 2.0 lines both audio tracks with fair fidelity in a clean and prominent pitch-accented Japanese language, balanced between two very contrasting scores of an energetic synth and “Halloween”-esque piano tracks of “Ikenie Man” compared to the generic stock of hurried, lower keyed tones that pale against Nakamoto’s first score. Depth is good and the range of sounds, such as the ripping of the chainsaw or the thwacking of kicks and punches, have a mixed realism that plays into the comedy side of the horror-comedy. Between hectic moments, you can recognize the unfiltered growling of a generator in the background in “Ikenie Man” to be able to shoot in the woods, a little indie film audio easter egg to discern. English subtitles are forced on both Japanese tracks and while the pacing is good and there are no misspellings, you can tell the translator is not a native English speaker as the written grammar is more literal and unnatural. Only trailers grace both films’ bonus features, but each individual physical set comes with new original compositional poster art front covers from Japanese artist Kit Nishino, staying the tried-and-true course of Wild Eye Releasing’s outrageous physical media facades, as well as the reversible sleeve contains the original Japanese poster art. Both discs are pressed with their respective primary cover arts and there are no inserts included. The Wild Eye Releases are region free, not rated, and have brief, under 60-minute runtimes of 52-minues for “Ikenie Man” and 46-minutes for “Harawata Man.”

Last Rites: Yu Nakamoto’s small but mighty meta slashers make a good double bill, an on its head combo of a run amok head decapitations for the sake of playing the reverse card to mix things up on a respectable homage, comedy, and horror scale that gives Wild Eye Releasing’s “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man” more than just the self-referential mediocrity treatment.

“Ikenie Man” Available on DVD Home Video!

Also, Follow Up With “Harawata Man” on DVD Home Video!

Sleep Studies Tap into an EVIL Dimension! “Shadowzone” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Shadowzone” Available Now on Blu-ray!

The accidental death of a test subject during a highly immersive REM sleep project deep underground of abandoned nuclear fallout shelter resulted in the dispatch of a NASA investigator, Capt. Hickcock, to determine if the accident was a fluke or project negligence by the scientist staff.  The skeleton crew are eager to assist Capt. Hickcock with whatever he needs to wrap up his investigation and get back to the extreme deep sleep research aimed for NASA deep space pilots, but Hickcock is not so easily persuaded the research adds up, questioning the data that possibly lead to a volunteer’s brain to fatally hemorrhage.  A male and female volunteers rest in deep stasis sleep and while testing the lengths of the project’s capacity on the male subject, to sate Hickcock’s review, they inadvertently open a door to a parallel dimension through the unconscious mind and something has come through.  The facilities radioactive sensory system locks down the entire complex, trapping the captain, scientists, and staff with an unknown, and deadly, creature that will stop at nothing to return home. 

One of the few Full Moon productions to go outside their bread and butter of runt creatures and murderers, “Shadowzone” branches out with parallel dimensions and antagonistic alien creatures with molecular modifying capabilities in one hell of a star-studded, claustrophobic creature feature from the turn of the decade in 1990.  J.S. Cardone (“The Forsaken,” “8MM 2”) writes-and-directs cloistered camp of unseen terror that uses scientific research on REM, rapid eye movement, sleep research as the foundational base for breaking through the barrier of our existent and tap into another’s without cause or concern, until whatever comes out bites them.  Shot in and around the Griffith Park of Los Angeles, “Shadowzone” is produced by the master of dolls and everything small, Charles Band, as well as longtime collaborating producer Debra Dion and Cardone’s wife, Carol Kottenbrook, under the Full Moon Entertainment production company.

For a Full Moon production in the 90’s, “Shadowzone” had some unexpected star power between James Hong, the prolific Hong Kong-American actor who was a household name in the cult realm having been villainous black magician Lo Pan in John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” as well as having roles in “Blade Runner,” “Revenge of the Nerds II,” and “Tango & Cash,” and Louise Fletcher, an equally prolific actress and a best actress Academy Award winner for her detestable Nurse Ratchet role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a wicked performance that suited Fletcher very well in her career with natural way to express a sarcastic tone.  Hong and Fletcher are not necessarily portraying bad guys in “Shadowzone” but they’re no heroes either as scientists eager to explore the unknown by ripping a hole in the plane of existence and both veterans of the trade give their best in this low run but highly thrilling Full Moon creature feature.  Hong and Fletcher are joined by an eclectically charged cast that while don’t have the recognizable charisma of established names, they each contribute a valued service in the parts portrayed, especially with David Beecroft (“Creepshow 2”) in the protagonist lead of the outsider Captain Hickock, investigating in toward the unknown.  Beecroft plays a suitable military-esque high ranking officer with a semi-relaxed demeanor that goes against the grain of the stereotypical stern and regimented leader you usually see in low-budget horror and sci-fi.  “Shadowzone” fills out the cast with bodies for the interdimensional meatgrinder with performances from Shawn Weatherly (“Amityville 1992:  It’s About Time”), Lu Leonard (“Circuitry Man”), Frederick Flynn (“The Forsaken”), Robbie Rives, Maureen Flaherty (“Bikini Traffic School”) and the always underscored, underrated, and understated horror supporting actor, Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (“Friday the 13th Part V,” “Return of the Living Dead”).

Where does “Shadowzone” fit into the grand Full Moon scheme?  Before the company solidified itself in the mid-1990s with miniature maniacs invading the majority of projects and their respective fast-tracked sequels, Charles Band took chances on other tales of titillating terror from all sides of the complex cinematic prism.  Sci-fi oddities, like “Trancers” and “Robot Jox,” of the legacy company Empire, took footing on beyond dystopian while more classical horror centric productions, like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “Re-Animator,” provided a wider berth of subgenres under the phantasmagoria.  “Shadowzone” takes a little bit from both the horror and the science fiction tropes, coupling the scientific research of new age technology that rips a hole in the fabric of space and time to introduce an unimaginable, supernatural creature that virtually goes unseen as it morphs into the subconscious fears of the people it hunts down one-by-one.  What audiences will enjoy is the medley of figures this particularly nasty being can warp into when going for the kill.  What audiences will not enjoy is the sorely underutilized creature potential that’s left more to the imagination than to screentime.  All but one kill is off camera and in two of those instances, the creature isn’t even in frame as a burst of blood splatter becomes the demising indicator.  This shortchanging affects “Shadowzone’s” longevity for repeat viewings with no outstanding or satisfying purge of fated characters in an otherwise underground and dark corridor deathtrap of otherworldly proportions.

Full Moon Features continues to toot their own catalogue with remastered, high-definition releases of their older features with “Shadowzone” being one of the latest and greatest to be remastered onto a new Blu-ray.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, single-layer BD25 offers a soft, metallic palette to a harsh subterranean laboratory where shadows run thick, and lighting is keyed on exact spaces and people for effect. I quite enjoy the softness of stark industrial that does not even relieve primary color as this remastered version sees no color correction, but rather color reduction retainment of a sunless, cavernous crypt.  Healthy grain against the details brings more attention to the textures, especially when we do get the see the true form of the being in a bone-chilling scene of its final war cry moment, a scene that will often haunt me because solely of its A/V compositional construction.  The matted visual effects don’t hold true to original first look during its brilliancy dissimilarity when compared to the rest of the film’s cold tone.  The English language LPCM 5.1 and 2.0 disperses through the multiple channels to convey echo location of the front and back while the 2.0 does the job to channel audio layers through with a balance for differential treatment, especially separating Richard Band’s less than jaunty score that’s replaced with more common composition of intensifier notes.  Nothing overtakes the dialogue layer that runs clear and prominent without any hissing or crackling.  English subtitles are optional available.  Other than the original theatrical trailer, the only other special feature is Full Moon feature trailers.  If it’s not a Jess Franco sexploitation special, these remastered releases of originally Full Moon produced titles receive a touched-up version of the VHS cover art and, fortunately, “Shadowzone” already had an eye-catching art, gorgeously illustrated to the point of what to expect.  Like usual, there are no inserts or other tangible bonus materials included.  The disc is pressed with almost a lenticular look of the toothy creature in a scientist coat.  The 63rd title to be released from Empire has a new Blu-ray that comes rated R, has region free playback, and a runtime of 88 minutes.

Last Rites: “Shadowzone” definitely has the feeling of a little film that could, and for a better part it it did with fantastic casting, an isolating atmospheric tomb, and a transmogrifying creature of our personal stress inducers. The Remastered Blu-ray caps off the success with high definition not from this world.

“Shadowzone” Blu-ray is Here to Stay and Is Coming For You!

An EVIL Cult Summons Back “The Hangman” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Hangman” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Turbulent connecting father and teenage son, Leon and Jesse, retreat to the West Virginia wilderness for a little rekindling before Jesse goes off to college.  Still reeling after his mother’s death five years ago, Jesse blames his father’s inactivity and his rebuff mismanagement of their family’s pain.  The next morning, Jesse has disappeared, the car has been sabotaged, and Leon fears his son might be in the hands of a pair of racist rednecks encountered the day before.  However, what Leon finds himself in the middle of is much worse when a demon summoning cult retrieves The Hangman from the depths of one of Earth’s seven gates of hell and needs a fresh, young, and angst-riddled body to continue his unharnessed hell on Earth.  Jesse becomes the unfortunate soul at stake and it’s up to his father, and a few local God-fearing allies, to try and stop The Hangman’s noose from gripping tighter.

New York City-based director Bruce Wemple has teamed up again with Dread Production to bring another terrifying tale.  The “Monstrous” and “Island Escape” director cowrites the script with frequently collaborator, actor LeJon Woods (“Baby Oopsie:  The Series,” “Island Escape,” to deliver “The Hangman,” a demonic horror thriller that catapults a father and son’s dysfunctionality into the throes of Hell.  Filmed in the rural regions of upstate New York, doubling as the rural Appalachian wilderness of West Virginia, which makes filming having occurred likely around the Adirondack Mountains instead, “The Hangman” carries with it a longstanding racial infamy attached to a father’s supernatural pickle, being the middle of a demon conjuring cult and the lynching-loving demon itself.  Traverse Terror productions, a division of executive producers Cole Payne Traverse Media, in association with Dread Presents sees executive producer Patrick Ewald from the Epic Pictures Group back “The Hangman” feature while Daniel Booker and Vincent Conroy coproduce.

LeJon Woods not only cowrites the script but the actor for Cleveland, Ohio essentially customizes the role of the father, Leon.  What starts as a man looking to just escape into the great outdoors quickly closes in around him as he feels the pressures of latent hostility when son Jesse (Mar Cellus, making his feature film debut) accuses him of running from his past after the death of his mother, Leon’s wife.  What exactly happens to her is not yet apparent other than an offscreen gunshot but the palpable tension between Woods and Cellus is worth noting in a handwringing moment of enmity around the first night’s campfire; a good tall tale sign that this camping trip is going to be doomed from the start.  This tension sets the stage for what’s to come, a missing son, aggressive bigots, murderous cultists, and a Netherworld lyncher, showcased with an awfully underutilized purpose and screentime appeal, especially being the titular villain.  “An Angry Boy’s” Scott Callenberg gets his chance to shine as an inhuman character, prosthetically made-up with burn scars, greasy strands of hair, and cladded darkly in country chic, but doesn’t have the room to spread havoc or really build the character who’s mostly reduced to lurking the background and letting the telekinesis-driven rope to asphyxiate those not in the know of cult activity.  There’s also a slew of throwaway characters that either are too short-lived to really flesh out their role, such as the eye-gouged, bedridden clairvoyant and the tied-up local Leon saves and becomes a flirtatious love interest/gun-toting assassin (see what I mean by not really understanding the character?) in Lindsay Dresbach (“Pitchfork”).  Except for LeJon Woods, the rest of the cast is comprised of mostly short film or background actors and actresses given the opportunity for an expanded principal performance, including Kaitlyn Lunardi, Rob Cardazone, Jefferson Cox, Daniel Martin Berkley, William Shuman, Ameerah Briggs, Jessy Holtermann, and Richard Lounello.

Riding parallel to “The Hangman’s” resurrected demon on Earth, a father and son’s struggle to grow in postmortem of the only woman in their lives, and the fact that there is one of the gates of Hell located in the West Virginia’s Appalachians premise, the story entails a rather barefaced, as well as slightly overtone, racism theme coursing through its veins.  The Confederate flag sporting rednecks and the all-white, Southern accent contingent of white people against a black man and his son shout bigotry as louds as possible through your personal media setup.  Yet, the Hangman himself is the very representation of lynching, a heinously taboo act that has become a stain on America history, typically executed by racially prejudice Southerners on black people when that simmering, seething hate turns red and vigilante justice rears its ugly head.   Though the villain doesn’t don a white hood and gown or perform any gesture of white power, to say Leon, a black man, who must stop the evilly monikered hangman from taking his son’s soul to Hell, is too big a coincidence to not call a spade a spade.  Wemple and Woods make it clear that Leon’s calling is to be a savior, the chosen heroic that can destroy the Hangman, but while the first two acts climb the ladder of an naïve hero, all the indicating signs point to arbitrary means met with arbitrary characters for Leon with no concrete reasoning why his being deceived into the gateway to Hell area is more than just serendipitous destiny, turning the last act of “The Hangman” into just a one man wrecking ball of hillbilly hell spawn that loses that fate-driven connotation.

“The Hangman” nooses a high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray from Epic Picture Group, the at-home distribution label of Dread Presents.  The AVC encoded, single-layered, BD25 has good curb appeal with negligible compression issues in the feature’s 2.00:1 widescreen aspect ratio, so we get a deeper, broader picture with less resolution flaws.  While the certain background or tree-top scenes present a good visual intake of a bird’s eye views, the grading resides to just above a flat overlay, likely within the 10th percentile of grading possibilities, resulting in a more natural tone.  Details are generally fine when in focus or out of the shadows, which is where the Hangman lurks most of his screentime.  The presented audio options are a lossy English Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Stereo 2.0.  Dialogue has clear and prominent staying power throughout the stock soundtrack that slightly chintzy the ambience audio works of self-acting rope and other mystical milestones whenever the hangman comes calling.  There’s not a ton of spatial volume to diffuse the audio with balance, leaving a lot of the milieu and action resonances as lopsided near the foreground.  English and Spanish subtitles are optionally available.  The Blu-rays special features include a Bruce Wemple commentary track, a making of featurette with interview snippets with LeJon Woods, a lengthier interview with writer-star LeJon Woods, and a deleted scene.  Physically, the deep scar recesses of “The Hangman”s” white-eyed face and long, unkempt hair becomes the front cover face of Dread’s conventional Blu-ray with a disc pressed with more fascination of a coiled hangman’s noose working down the center ring.  There are no tangible bonus materials included. The region free release comes not rated and has a runtime of 90 minutes. 

Last Rites: “The Hangman” won’t snap the neck of novelty and wanders off the path of the tangent, but does instill a strength of cause, a father-son bond that’s being challenged and motivated when threatened, backdropped by systemic racism.

“The Hangman” Now Available on Blu-ray!