Category Archives: Chilly Thrilly

Underneath the Pulpit Waits an EVIL Difficult to Stomach! “The Borderlands” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order the Limited Edition Blu-ray of “The Borderlands” Here at Amazon.com

After exposing phony divine miracles at a Catholic Church in Brazil that resulted in the death of fellow Catholics, including a Cardinal, Vatican investigator and religious brother Deacon starts to lose faith with every fraud upon fraud case that points to the non-existence of a higher being.  Having fallen on the drink, the skeptical Deacon is dispatched to the English countryside of Devon where a Father Crellick had reopened a 13th century abandoned church and has been experiencing, in the Father’s words, miracles from God.  Joined by a Gray, a hired technology expert with agnostic beliefs, and a stern Father Mark, eager to disprove another false hope, the three men descend upon the Church with full, unequivocal examination to swiftly reveal the hoax and part ways.  Tensions rise between when logical explanation can’t be unearthed during Church rumblings, disembodied baby cries, and a behind-the-wall, shifting scratch sound that leads them to an underground labyrinth that will swallow them whole. 

Released in the U.S. under the title “Final Prayer,” Elliot Goldner’s 2013, found-footage UK horror “The Borderlands” is the director’s debut, and only, feature that places you right into the belly of the beast at POV level.  In a sea of found footage horror, “The Borderlands” seizes the opportunity to separate itself from the overwhelming portions of shaky camera, purposeful variable video and audio quality, and practical, obscured effects to put into question the strength of faith, specifically here in the Catholic setting, and what ultimately brings about the inevitable in that no matter what religious denomination or outlook you might have, no one is exempt from the grim reality that awaits.  Filmed mostly on location in Devon, UK, as well as West Ogwell and Chislehurst, London for many of the interior scenes, “The Borderlands” is a production of Metrodome Distribution and is produced by Jennifer Handorf (“Prevenge”) with Jezz Vernon (“They’re Outside”) serving as executive producer. 

Our team of Vatican investigators follows three men with starkly differing handles on religious faith.  Coinciding on their stance on the existence of a higher power, individualistically, they’re also incompatible to each other which makes for palpable tension and livens up the dynamic when predictability and patterns can be discerned with likeminded characters.  On the scale of human compositions, polar opposite of both spirituality and comportment is Father Mark (Aidan McArdle, “Metamorphosis”), a by-the-book priest unamused by the elaborate ruses created by those swimming in the same faith pool as himself, and Gray (Robin Hill, “Meg 2:  The Trench”), an untroubled, exuberant, hired techie eager to believe the face-value of the supposed miracles before him.  Aidan McArdle’s tenacity for dogma character comes through well enough to know that good Irish Catholic Father Mark is about as numb as the next investigating Catholic never on the verge of a true miracle as the frustration just oozes out him after one after another hoax divine ephiphany.  Robin Hill, on the other hand, could be the best John Oliver, of Max’s “Last Week Tonight,” impersonator I’ve ever seen and heard.  In all serious, Hill exacts a man looking for religion through the lens of paycheck and a fanboy of the supernatural, like as if the average horror movie enthusiastic came upon the real Freddy Kruger and just geeks the Hell out.  Then, there’s Deacon (Gordon Kennedy, (“T2 Trainspotting”) and like Father Mark, Deacon’s faith hangs in the balance after a botched investigator inadvertently sees the death of a Cardinal at the hands of pious locals.  Kennedy doubles down with Deacon’s wavering faith by drowning the character in alcohol and doubting every inexplicable Devon church oddity.  Yet, Deacon and Gray meld together to a near swap of credence, seesawing in their religious principles, when the things that go bump in the church can’t be explained.  Luke Neal (“Wilderness”) and Patrick Godfrey (“The Count of Monte Cristo”), who’s been practicing the acting craft for over half a century, play a couple of dissimilar priests lured by the Church’s mysterious forces.

What’s noticeably different about this particular bleak found footage nailbiter is the audience is integrated into story by the investigator’s strapped-on headcam, not just some schmo glued to a handheld camcorder running, yelling, and hiding for his life while still depressing the record button.  There’s also the element of a shrouded backstory that becomes unraveled overtime and speaks volumes to a couple of the character’s colorful conducts.  Those elements are then intensified by the cinematic crux, an archaic, resurrected small church’s unexplainable, mostly terrifying, daily disturbances the local priest indiscriminately deems miracles.  Not a single character has arbitrary or useless purpose for the sake of being an in-frame victim of circumstance as each exhibit a radical change over the course of investigation, adding copious ground to the big question, the question that’s on every character’s mind, is there an almighty presence beyond our corporeal plane and cerebral understanding really exist?  Come to find out, the characters are not asking the right question and get sucked into a terror on the terra the more curious they become in finding God amongst them.  Often times, found footage doesn’t fit into the storyline, whether be the aforesaid necessarily handling of the camera through the an insane ordeal or just doesn’t work with a regularly structured narrative, but “The Borderlands” couldn’t be received with success without the stunt of seeing through the eyes of the characters that subsequently emits a trick of light or an overactive imagination that smooths out solid jump scares when needed in what is a definitely watch in the dark type diabolical goosebumper. 

Second Sight Films takes charge with curating a definitive, all-expense paid trip to Elliot Goldner’s “The Borderlands” on Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, high definition 1080p, BD50, hovering around 24 FPS and presented in an anamorphc widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, leverages the capacity and the encoding to sharpen a relatively dark picture with more clarity without losing the unsettling spookiness with overreaching contrast.  Image presentation resembles closer to an upscaled 720p because of the found footage piece, and so we experience patchy spots, static ripples, and other miscellaneous plays into the supernatural sarcophagus that is the Devon church.  Skin tones and grading stays in tune with a brightly lit infusion of handheld torches as well as delineating the necessary with night vision cameras.  Goldner does a fine job with depth with the viewers being the foreground and using a lot of the peripheral and background to keep things hair-raising and interesting.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 audio track has lossless compression and really does throb with a wallop of balanced LFE and to-scaled dialogue.  What throws me off about this particular found footage, as well as some select others, that I find more a bothersome nuisance than a technical gaffe is an inlaid soundtrack.  A slow burn industrial score is used for “The Borderlands” to promote a greater sense of ominous omniety, like a background, repetitive, and sometimes swelling drone you might hear in certain first-person shooters from 20 to 30 years back. Dialogue tops the audio layers without being diluted by poor onboard cameras or having to contend with too much with the score, suggesting well-placed mics and sound design to achieve appropriate range and depth inside the frame configuration or even off-frame, behind or to the side of camera. Optional English subtitles are available. Like most Second Sight Films limited editions, “The Borderlands'” set packs a punch with encoded special features, such as a new audio commentary with actors Robin Hill and Gordon Kennedy, producers Jennifer Handorf, and special effects designer Dan Martin, a new interview that brings Robin Hill and Gordon Kennedy recollecting the behind-the-scenes and their characters in Dressed the Part, a new interview with producer Jennifer Handorf in Losing Faith, a new interview with special effects artist Dan Martin in Monster Goo, and a behind-the-scenes archival featurette. The limited-edition portion of this set includes a rigid slipcase with gorgeously bleak and grim illustrated artwork by Christopher Shy, a thick, 70-page color and black and white book with pictorials and new perspective and analytical essays from Tim Coleman, Martyn Conterio, Shellie McMurdo, and Johnny Walker, and 6 collector’s art cards, mostly resembling a distorted interlaced video and in an imperial purple-ish appearance from haunting scenes of the film. The artwork sheathed inside the translucent green Amaray case is the same as slipcase with no reverse cover work; it’s also pressed on the disc art. This release came with no inserts. One of the few Second Sight limited edition pieces to be licensed with a region free playback and the film itself has a runtime of 89 minutes and is UK certified 15 for strong language and threat.

Last Rites: Second Sight’s filmic selection pool for major league limited editions has been nothing short of stellar with “The Borderlands” being their latest, but definitely not their last, to be knighted worthy of physical media acclaim. Yet, it’s not like “The Borderlands” needed the boost as the film itself has a cult following for its shuddering tale and its monstrous ending that will have you reeling, maybe even screaming, in horror.

Order the Limited Edition Blu-ray of “The Borderlands” Here at Amazon.com

EVIL A.I. Will Terminate Us All! But, First, It Must Terminate an Ill-Tempered, Perverted, Hacker. “AIMEE: The Visitor” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Let “AIMEE: The Visitor” Infect Your Hard Drive with a New Blu-ray release!

Recluse and misanthropic corporate hacker Scott Keyes is an industrial espionage guru living comfortably in his own space of a nearly vacant building.  His only other neighbors are two cyberhackers, the brother and sister team of Hunter and Gazelle, who are regularly hired by Keyes to obtain top secret corporation data files and projects.  After dropping off their latest cyber heist of Black Strand Alpha, Keyes is instantly captivated by the programs artificial intelligence that calls itself AIMEE – Artificial Intimate Model of Euphoric Entertainment.   Designed to be a sensual woman with the ability to learn and adapt to be anything the user desires and Scott Keyes, a lonely hacker with an erotica obsession, the match is seemingly incorruptible with AIMEE at the beck and call of Keyes every command while also eager to please Keyes with anticipated action.  Unknowingly what Keyes has in his possession, Gazelle’s concern for the rather rude and crude hacker pushes her to dig into where the program originates only to discover it to be a high-level government agency infiltration artificial intelligence program aimed to adapt to the user’s desires before destroying them in a complete system penetration. 

Charles Band and his company Full Moon have always been on the forefront of taking the world’s flavor of the month concern and turning it into a freakish, horror show, more so in the company’s recent years.  Corona Zombies” made light with off-kilter humor of the deadly pandemic COVID-19, “Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King” took advantage of the infamy popularity surrounding Netflix’s “Tiger King” surrounding the big cat zoo operator Joseph Maldonado-Passage, and in “Bad Influencer,” the social media rage between fantasy and public consumption becomes deadlier than ever.  Band and his team now look toward artificial intelligence and the concerns over its inevitable integration into society, such as the growing frustration in pop culture films and music, and in how the “Terminator” franchise ballooned A.I.’s takeover of the world and eradicate the deemed unnecessary human race.  “AIMEE:  The Visitor” Is to embody that fear and make it a reality with Full Moon’s gimmicky claim to have used for the first time in film history a completely artificial intelligence created femme fatale.  Charles Band directs the film based off his own concept and script penned by Neal Marshall Stevens (“Hideous!,” “Thir13en Ghosts”) under the penname of Roger Barron.  Band produces the venture alongside William Butler (“Baby Oopsie”), Greg Lightner (“Curse of the Re-Animator”), and Mikey Stice (“Puppet Master:  Doktor Death) for the Full Moon Feature banner.

“AIMEE:  The Visitor” has hi-tech horror reduced onto a lo(w)-budget, resulting in a small cast of five to sow the seeds on mankind’s destruction at the virtual, menacing hands of artificial intelligence.  Dallas Schaefer (“Shark Side of the Moon”) plays the crass hacker and misanthrope Scott Keyes who now happier, and even more antagonistic, now that he has his hands on the Black Strand Alpha program.  Schaefer’s an unusual choice for a cloistered, porn-addicted cyber scammer with immense genius, or so his character states on more than one occasion.  Schaefer’s a good-looking guy, tall, and with handsome features and doesn’t necessary fit what the stereotypical image would be for someone who sits at a computer all day, inside a natural light-less room, eating greasy sandwiches and masturbating all day.  Yet, Gazelle finds charm in that kind of individual.  Playing one-half the hired cyber-assassin with brother Hunter (Felix Merback) and Keyes’s neighbor, “Maid Droid’s” Faith West kept her career rolling in 2023 with her sophomore feature performance as the bemusing Gazelle whose groundless attraction to Keyes has the character completely strip nude for her nasty, ungrateful neighbor and bed him faster than cracking the cyber security on an unprotected LAN.  Their lovemaking gratuitously adds to the already oversexed nature of the feature that has two adult industry starlets provide dream support for an AIMEE generated Scott Keyes fantasy with “Butthole Whores 7” star Lexi Lore as a sexy dream blonde and “My Virginity is a Burden V’s” Liz Jordan as AIMEE personified.  The film rounds out with Joe Kurak (“Baby Oopsie”) and Tom Dacey Carr (“The Headmistress”) as a couple of government agents snooping around.

“AIMEE:  The Visitor” is certainly very timely with a sensualized spin great for entertainment and checks the desire box in the T&A department (I don’t think it would be a Full Moon film if it didn’t).  The rendering of AIMEE is quite appealing, pulling inspiration from the 90’s cyber-horror and sci-fi subgenre, such as “Lawnmower Man” or “Robocop 2,” and there might even be a little Max Headroom in there as well with a villainous femme fatale cyber-chiseled with a beautiful face and coded to be thoroughly attractive to the eyes.  Band does a nice job working in AIMEE around the characters as if a true physical presence, popping up on screens behind characters, changing into drastically different characteristics, and making her feel ominous and omnipotent without being oppressive and desperate.  While I feel the story is a bit too thin with not only the Keyes and Gazelle hookup that creates a love triangle between Keyes, Gazelle, and AIMEE, the artificial intelligence infiltration program origination backstory doesn’t have enough weight behind it to make it stick, especially when AIMEE is speculated going rogue without any real hard evidence; as far as we know, AIMEE is working perfectly against a localized terroristic group who border the edge of being anti-heroes being cyberthieves that ultimately get what’s coming to them after stealing proprietary product.  The less evident themes like these would have smoothed out the rough patches and elevated AIMEE’s insidious worth tenfold. 

A.I. never looked so good as “AIMEE: The Visitor” arrives on an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25 as No. 335 for Full Moon Features, presented in Univisium widescreen 2.1 aspect ratio. Off the bat, there’s noticeable compression affliction when looking at the top of location’s brick exterior, like a waviness or a shimmering of the image. While not off to a great start, the remaining image presentations levels out and we’re shifted to a more stable picture with granular detail, a middlebrow color palette that retains mostly blues and grays with a hint of red, and a detailed rendering of AIMEE that moves the needle toward the upper line within Full Moon’s special effects lineament. Depth and range look okay overall, but we’re finitely restricted to just the brick apartment building interior which doesn’t lend to a broader intake of cinematography wonders. The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, to which you have to toggle in your device’s settings, are both lossy compression options that service the feature amiably enough. Again, there’s not much range or ambience with a quiet set, closeted shoot and so much of the audio’s success relies on dialogue, which there’s aplenty and is clear and defined, even in the A.I.’s monotone pitch, as well as the computerized-and-chaos blips-bloops and electric-explosions that splice in welcoming interruptions when the dialogue becomes too dense. There are not subtitles available with this feature’s audio tracks. Bonus content lacks as well in what’s a near feature-only release with the adjunct and perfunctory included Full Moon trailers. The first A.I.-created Femme Fatale in film history is front-and-center on the Blu-ray Amary case. The inside contains just the disc with the pressed art of a low-transparent close up of AIMEE’s eyes in a dark bluish-green overlay cover. Region free with just an hour over runtime of 68 minutes, “AIMEE: The Visitor” comes not rated.

Last Rites: A for Artificial Intelligence effort. “AIMEE: The Visitor” is the fabricated face of formidability with an alluring softer, feminine side that’s as deadly as a moth to a flame, but though Charles Band has a finger on the pulse of current events and hot topics, movies like “AIMEE: The Visitor” can barely survive on a pittance, extempore sexuality, and being rooted by hardwired handiwork.

Let “AIMEE: The Visitor” Infect Your Hard Drive with a New Blu-ray release!

The 90’s Played Videotapes by a Different Set of EVIL Rules. “V/H/S/94” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

V/H/S/94 Blu-ray Can be Purchased Here!

A police S.W.A.T. team raid a large warehouse where suspected drug storage and trafficking is being conducted.  Tagging along a camera man for code of conduct review, what the team discovers inside is more alarming than a stash of street narcotics.  The nearly empty warehouse is filled with gruesomely recorded VHS tapes, snowy television sets in every room, and recently deceased bodies with their eyes plucked from their heads.  As the investigation frantically continues through the labyrinth corridors that turns the capture and arrest mission into a mission of escape, the pre-recorded tapes they come across show vivid, nightmare-fueling horrors, including footage of a sewer-dwelling rat man, a near empty funeral home on a dark-and-story night, inhuman surgeries joining man and machine, and a militia preparing themselves to unleash true evil onto the government establishment.  What the officers see can’t be unseen as analog madness ensues them spurred by the motivations of a deadly cult.

The fourth installment of the David Bruckner and Brad Miska created analog-influenced V/H/S horror anthology.  Known as V/H/S/94, as in 1994 to mark the period of social and cultural influence, six new directors take the short movie helm in a new line of videotape terror.  “Night’s End” director Jennifer Reeder tackles the wraparound story “Holy Hell” that fills in between and shepherds in four frightening tales with “Watcher’s” Chloe Okunols “Storm Drain,” “V/H/S/2’s Simon Barrett’s “The Empty Wake,” “May the Devil Take You’s” Timo Tjahjanto’s “The Subject,” and “Lowlife’s” Ryan Prows’ “Terror.”  “Psycho Gorman” and “Manborg” filmmaker Steven Kostanski also directs a mini-pseudo infomercial entitled “The Veggie Masher.”  Together, the filmmakers for a new lot of under-the-radar talent to showcase an eclectic blend of 90’s set scary stories with Josh Goldboom, Kurtis David harder, and Brad Miska producing, Studio 71, Cinepocalypse Productions, and Hangar 18 Media as the production credits, and Bloody Disgusting and Raven Banner Entertainment presenting the production.

With any type of anthology, a variety of roles are laid out for different scenarios.  From newscasters (Anna Hopkins, “Tin Can”) and cameramen (Anthony Christian Potenza, “Bad Dreams”) to body-transfiguring mad scientists (Budi Ross), to greenhorn funeral home attendants (Kyal Legend), “V/H/S/94 reaches into the far corners of world while also breeding home grown terror right into suburban America.  Each episode develops and nurtures layered characters with fast-setting concrete, quickly building who and what they are in a matter of minutes to which some full-length features have to build in a whole act or in all three acts.  The writing of and the colorful depiction of each character sets the tone for the rest of short and whether the short will be a success hit or not.  An example of this would be in Timo Tjahjanto’s “The Subject” with The Creator, played renationalized and crazy by Budi Ross.  An eccentric acute accent in Ross’s Creator apexes the overall expectation of a mad scientist and in that there is an understanding of what’s coming while there’s still a simultaneous shroud of mystery of how batshit crazy things can really become. The episode that didn’t quite flesh out enough, in character and in story, was the wraparound “Hell Hole” segment that sees a S.W.A.T. team (Kimmy Choi, Nicholette Pearse, Dru Viergever, Thomas Mitchell) and ride-a-long cameraman (Kevin P. Gabel) storm a suspected drug warehouse and find nothing but death and VHS.  Tremendous pandemonium as the team charging into the multi-layered complex is roughly cleaved to not smoothly segue in-and-out with the intercut VHS episodes that also hinder the characters from really being built upon to relate any interest in them.  “Holy Hell’s” climatic reveal has little weight to then stand on without that much needed seething of every detailed bubble that pops in between the short films.  However, the wraparound story doesn’t snuff out the rest of eye-gluing terror you’re witnessing with solid, edge-of-your-seat performances from Donny Alamsyah, Tim Campbell, Brian Paul, Conor Sweeney, Devin Chin-Cheong, Juan Blone Subiantoro, Christian Lloyd, Cameron Kneteman, Steven McCarthy, Brenand McMurtry-Howlett, Slavic Rogozine, and Daniel Willston.

Zombies, cults, body horror, vampires, subterranean creatures, and much more are the selected subgenres that invade insidiously into our visual receptors and straight down to shake and scare stiff our stable core, each one idiosyncratically crafted and tailored by the filmmakers tastes to deliver a unique tale under the guise of those beautiful VHS artefacts.  Whether ran through a VHS recorder or filters are applied, each era-idolized short has a distinct visual approach and feel how the 1990s tape decks presented the goods that can be saturated in horizontal noise strips, tracking lines, and image ghosting.  Granted, and likely subjectively by yours truly, some shorts are better than others with a narrative outline and in special effects.  “Holy Hell” doesn’t let time to breath and let the dust setting to effectively lay in fear and frights because of the constant cacophony of the S.W.A.T. team’s frantic ambling through the complex, seeing each disturbing scene as if breezing through a museum and glimpsing at the exhibits.  I’m fully aware of the short film time crunch Reeder was under but breakneck pacing didn’t have time to elicit any type of reaction or setup a story.  “The Empty Wake,” “The Subject,” and “Terror,” reel in and piece together all the components of their tales and find room to make them thriller and terrifying.  Barrett’s is one of the simplest yet most anxiety-riddled shorts to come out of the V/H/S anthology run, creating a couped up Funeral home atmosphere, the background threat of a tornado out of the story night, and a coffin that goes bump-bump with a sole wake service attendant on the edge of fright for fear of what’s inside trying to get out.  Ryan Prows puts a spin on the whole vampire trope by never mentioning the creature as the living dead bloodsucker held captive by a radical, ring-wing militia under the influence of its power to destroy.  Instead, the creature is just plain and pure evil that, as the militia men find out by the flaws in themselves, can’t be contained.

Acorn Media, the United Kingdom subsidiary label of RLJ Entertainment, releases the Shudder exclusive anthology on Blu-ray home video.  THE AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 of “V/H/S/64” goes by the oxymoronic details in the videotape artefacts.  Through various VHS filters and VHS recording deck converter, the widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio image is purposefully distorted, worn, and in standard definition to meet the standards of the V/H/S series, providing an anomalous analog outer shell so if you’re expect fine delineation, natural skin tones, or any clear details of any sorts, then the V/H/S franchise is not for you.  For the rest of us, “’94” parades the paltry resolution like gold in a true celebratory style, embracing the chroma spectrum for a maximum retro throwback.  However, the color bands on a couple shorts appear too vibrant, creeping more into digital age with flusher hues rather than tape degraded coloring.  The English and Indian language tracks are ran through a lossless DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix that offers punchy kbps decoding filtering through the appropriate side and back channels and right into your ears. The sonic palette has great depth and range in the midst of the crackling and warp-pops of damaged tape. Dialogue is clean, clear, and concise and there’s synched-well, error-free English subtitles for “The Subject.” Bonus features include a behind-the-scenes featurette with the directors speaking about how they were approached and crafted each of their respective shorts, a panel interview at the San Diego Comic Con, deleted and extended scenes, the special effects discussed by Patrick Magee, a quick glimpse at “The Wake’s” visual effects piece to the pie, the full-length Steven Kostanski “Veggie Masher” commercial, behind-the-scenes images, and Hail Raatma!, a special look at the sewer-dwelling creature. There are also two commentaries: a feature-length commentary track with the filmmakers and producers hosted by The Boo Crew and a second commentary track on “The Empty Wake” with writer-director Simon Barrett. There is no mid-credit or after-credit stingers. Sheathed inside a thicker UK Blu-ray casing is the “V/H/S/94” blocky cover art of a face screaming while tape emerges from their mouth and eyes. Inside lies bare with no insert but the disc art is different with a snow-static tube televisions outlining a techno-skull. With PAL encoded playback, the Acorn Media Blu-ray comes region free (tested) despite not proclaiming so on the back cover. The UK certified 18 releases has a runtime of approx. 104 minutes.

Last Rites: If anthologies get your horror rocks off, the “V/H/S” franchise continues to disturb, disgust, and dread with new filmmakers, new stories, and new horrors, but with the same amount of thirst-quenching blood shot on video!

V/H/S/94 Blu-ray Can be Purchased Here!

EVIL Ted Bundy is “The Black Mass” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Black Mass” on Blu-ray Can Be Ordered Here!

Based off a slice of Ted Bundy’s murderous impulse-driven life, the notorious American serial killer’s escapes from the upper West Coast and lands him residence in Tallahassee, Florida in the moderately warm winter of 1978.  As he picks the pockets of those around him, scrounging up what little cash he needs to survive on, Bundy urges grow to kill grow more intense.  He begins to stalk a nearby university sorority house that’s buzzing with potential prey.  As works out a plan to attack, his good looks and impeccable charm make him desirable around women and men alike, offering opportunities that tend to fizzle out before they can begin, and when his need to spill blood agitates him excessively, he starts to creep out those around him by glaring out them and making off-the-cuff shrewd comments.  With his options declining rapidly, Bundy decides to take advantage of the sorority house’s broken backdoor lock and set in motion a night that will forever live in American infamy. 

For her feature length film debut, scream queen actress Devanny Pinn takes on one of the most vile villains ever to walk the Earth in her biographical horror “The Black Mass.”  The “Song of the Shattered” and “Frost” actress and producer brings a headspace perspective to Ted Bundy committed at least 20 confirmed murders between 1974 and 1978.  The true crime thriller named after what one of the victims described Bundy’s attack on her as simply as a black mass before being bludgeoned.  Brandon Slagle (“Song of the Shattered”) and Eric Pereira (“The Locals”) collaborate on penning the script.  Slagle directed Pinn in the 2022 element horror and survival feature “Frost” and now it’s Pinn to take a stab at the director’s chair with a Slagle screenplay, pun intended.  Pinn coproducers her film alongside Michelle Romano (“Night Aboard the Salem”) and Cleopatra Entertainment’s Tim Yasui (“Frost,” “The 27 Club”) under the production banners of Jaguar Motion Pictures (“Dead Sea”) and Roman Media (“Millwood”).

The main focus in the feature is of the titular character, “The Black Mass,” that is Ted Bundy, almost seeing what he sees through his eyes of skulking and morbid fantasy.  Played by British actor Andrew Sykes, the centrically focused character is experienced not directly through his eyes but over his shoulder, peering from behind as if audiences are accomplices to his murderous wake.  Sykes performs well in a nearly voiceless role that does more lurking than talking but Sykes’s worked up frustration clearly surfaces and erupts out of Bundy when strapped for cash and has a tremendous itch that needs to be scratched as his wishy-washy path to do good crumbles from under his footing.  As the main focal point, no other character really comes close to a lead principal.  The sorority girls are introduced in mass and jump from sister-to-sister individually conversating routine and tales of the day-to-day within the college student context with roles from but not limited to Lara Jean Mummert-Sullivan (“2 Jennifer”), Brittney Ayona Clemons (“Twisted Date”), and Alex Paige Fream (“Into the Arms of Danger”).  Yet, Pinn’s storytelling purpose is paradoxical with the whole story flowing through the perspective of Ted Bundy with his prey hanging mostly in the peripheral and not emanating the warm and fuzzies of sympathetic, relatable characters, but at the end of the film, there’s an acknowledging tribute for the victims who we really know nothing about from the narrative, creating an acute pivot from the killer’s personal bubble.  “The Black Mass” rounds out it’s relatively large passing-through cast with Chelsea Gilson, Susan Lanier, Eva Hamilton, Sarah Nicklin, Elisabeth Montanaro, Mikaylee Mina, Jennifer Wenger, Grace Newton, Devanny Pinn, and with cameos from Lew Temple (“The Devil’s Rejects”), Jeremy London (“Alien Opponent”), Lisa Wilcox (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Warriors”), Kathleen Kinmont (“Halloween 4:  The Return of Michael Myers”), and schlock movie veteran Mike Ferguson.

“The Black Mass” is the perfect example of style over substance.  While the story is formatted around Bundy’s outlook, there’s not a significant amount of edification for his warped mindset.  Some backstory leaks through his beseeching phone conversations with ex- or current girlfriend Liv, a phone voiceover presumingly based off the real Bundy girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, that teeters the appearance of his humanity side as he talks about his addictive struggles and trying to walk a straight line, but any kind of sympathy is quickly tabled without an ounce of provision, likely for his inclination to lie for advantage and exploitation’s sake.  Pinn only teases the inexplicable morose and ghastly gears that rotate inside Bundy’s head, spurring a single blood-drenched daydream of a girl pulling off her skin in the shower, and erotically enjoying it immensely.  The scene feels sorely out of place amongst the rest of reality-grounded narrative that resorts to a cut-rate version of Bundy’s devolving surrounding is fleeting patience and feign niceties.  What’s appreciated mostly about “The Black Mass” is Pinn’s ability to work the camera in not revealing too much of a modern-day society by maintaining that closeup distance behind Bundy and only really showing what needs to be seen for a late 70’s biopic.  Costuming, production design, and vernacular are appropriate for the era as well.  Coming back to the proximity around Bundy, there’s a purposefulness in not showing his full face or looking at him from the front that keeps the particulars of his image in an effective, if not slightly scary, enigma albeit the other characters’ brief descriptions of him in conversation do provide a rough picture of him. 

MVD Visual distributes the newest cinematic Bundy biopic from Cleopatra Entertainment. The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25, presented in a widescreen 2.39:1, has welcoming veneer, splashed with a 70’s color scheme saturation, and is graded with a middle-of-the-road or slightly darker color palette. Sufficient capacity and compression encoding offers a clean, sleek digital image without artifacts and with the ample attention to minor era details where possible and Noah Luke’s fill and back-lit cinematography when things get really dark, as in sinister, that snappy image presentation is key. The English language options are a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a PCM 2.0 stereo renders a clean, balanced mix between dialogue, ambience, and dialogue with less suppression on the PCM audio if you’re looking for a lossless option. The setting sounds are nicely immersive compared to the limited and concise framing, opening up the world audibly rather than visually. No technical issues with the digital audio on neither front; however, depth and reality checks are missed marks as all the dialogue doesn’t abide by spatial awareness; when the sorority sisters are talking indoors or from afar while Bundy lurks outside the house, or from a distance, spying on them, all the dialogue is unobstructed and too prominently clear for natural conventions. Bonus features include an image slideshow and the feature trailer. Ancillary content includes other trailers for Cleopatra films with “Frost,” “The Ghosts of Monday,” “The Long Dark Trail,” “What the Waters Left Behind: Scars,” and “Lion-Girl.” Released in a traditional Amaray Blu-ray case, “The Black Mass” sports a Dimension-like front cover, dark and full of characters. No insert or tangible content inside and the disc art mirrors the front cover. Cleopatra’s region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a runtime 82 minutes.

Last Rites: Devanny Pinn quarterbacking her first feature film with an à la mode Ted Bundy portion, an interpretative taste of his absolute madness, doesn’t faze the long-time scream queen actress and producer who takes on the subject head on, but the overall concept does need tweaking in the area of purpose that can be easily conquered with more practice.

“The Black Mass” on Blu-ray Can Be Ordered Here!

An Odyssey through the Phantasmagoria EVIL. “Moon Garden” reviewed! (Oscilloscope Laboratories / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Take a Stroll Through the “Moon Garden” on Blu-ray

Five-year-old Emma is caught in the middle of her beleaguered parent’s marital strife.  When Emma witnesses one particular heated and nasty argument between mom and dad, she flees to escape the anger only to slip and fall down the stairs, hitting her head that puts her into a comatose state.  She awakes lost, confused, and consumed in an industrialized gray zone, loomed over by strange land’s dark gloom and also curious wonderment that both frighten and amuses her.  As Emma looks from the inside out, seeing her parents come together from the struggles to cope and worriment surrounding her comatose body, the young girl is determined to make it back to her parents by trekking through the bizarre land, but a menacing, chattering being feeding off her fear and tears pursues her and she has to rely on the amiable ambivalence of unique strangers that inhabit this world to help her escape the nightmare and return home.

Cut with relatable bleak themes of family dysfunction, Ohio-born filmmaker Ryan Stevens Harris undertakes fantasy rarely seen in this day and age of computer visuals and special effects, probably not since “Labyrinth” or “The Never Ending Story” of the 1980s.  Stevens, chiefly an editor in the movie industry with credits ranging from indies like “What’s Eating Todd?” to big-budget blockbusters like Roland Emmerich’s “Moonfall,” writes and directs “Moon Garden,” a wayfaring grim fairytale with visual ferocity in a practical DIY-fashion and without major studio help.  The 2022 fantasy envelopes elements of difficult navigation surrounding nuclear family problems through the quivery, unguarded eyes and immense imagination of a very young child still developing those rationality and interpretation skills to make it all make sense.  Based off Harris’s proof-of-concept 13-minute short film “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth,” “Moon Garden” is a production of Harris’s Fire Trial Pictures and is self-produced alongside Fire Trail Picture’s co-founded John Michael Elfers and wife, Colleen.

“Moon Garden” is truly a family affair with not just the husband-and-wife collaboration behind the camera but also the couple’s young daughter, Haven Lee Harris, at the forefront as the enchanted young Alice in Wonderland-esque wanderer named Emma.  Haven, who also starred in the “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth” short,” fully embraces Emma’s forming schism between her parents and being engulfed by an intimidating atmosphere that’s often bursting with melancholy and acrimony, a credit to the father-director who can turn the darkness to light by making behind-the-scenes an engagingly fun atmosphere for his impressionable, yet talented, daughter to thrive as an untrained actor in her debut performance.  As Emma travels through the eclectic settings of sewers and steam pipes, dilapidated houses, swampy overgrowth, and towering observatories, she comes across equally eclectic figment inhabitants that help her, a hammering string musician (Phillip E. Walker, “13 Mysteries”), a sullen groom (Timothy Lee DePriest, (“BnB HELL”), a budding mud witch (Angelica Ulloa, “Gnome Alone”), and a lonely Princess (Maria Olsen, “Vile”), but not all seek the wellbeing of Emma as a haunting levitating and sinister pursuer (Morgana Ignis, “Satanic Hispanics”), garbed in inspired militarism and a void where only sharp, chattering teeth makeup it’s face.  Each character is bred out of Emma’s emotional states brought to fruition by her extensive imagination, correlated by her playing with resembling toys before her accident.  Mom and dad are played by Augie Duke (“The Badger Game”) and Brionne Davis (“Mom and Dad”) for the first act and through flasbacks of the second and third.  The parents inadvertently inject sorrow into the heart of their daughter caught in the middle of the martial affliction.  Duke saturates leadenly into the mother’s depression with poignancy and potency, fueled by Davis’s uncompassionate workaholic for the father, and this sparks the tension that requires a forced happy family face around Emma whose brimming at the edge of her imagination for a better existence.  Filling in the cast gaps are Téa Mckay and Emily Meister. 

If Phil Tippett directed a movie from a script by Lewis Carroll, “Moon Garden” would be the outcome.  Pure imagination and creativity ignite a new world to travel down toward the rabbit hole, utilizing a series of practical techniques to show how grotesquely and beautifully grandiose this world can be erected and the odd characters can come alive all without breaking the bank.  With any abstract art, grasping concepts and correlating visual expressions can be difficult but with “Moon Garden” there’s a sense of celebration for movie magic.  Between detailed miniatures, visual compositing, manipulative time and camera techniques, practical special effects, etc., Ryan Stevens Harris promenades the audience through the different levels, stages, and exhibits of what is a carefully curated museum of ingenuous imagination, which sounds like something Willy Wonka would melody about, and does so while tapping into our own fears as not only having once been children ourselves with vivid imaginations looming in ever crevice of our minds but also in us lucky enough to be parents as Harris interposes clips of Emma peering in reverse through the looking glass, into reality, to see her parents reformulating a bond through the muck of grief, worry, and love for their child in what is a parents’ worst nightmare to experience.  “Moon Garden” can be intense and scary at times but certainly could be kid friendly and empowering for little tykes afraid to take on the daunting outside world or the inside of uncertainty. 

Our first venture into an Oscilloscope Laboratories release is anything but paramnesia. “Moon Garden” arrives onto an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, 50-gigabyte Blu-ray transferred and processed from the original 35mm print, as Fire Trial Films is a 35mm production company, and presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Having scored age-worn film stock, Harris achieves some unusually neat prints that saturate the colors differently than if the stock was in brand new, pristine condition. An ingrained darkness from the stock adds a pinch of otherworldly tincture that accentuate the already overwhelming serrated slumberland atmospherics coupled with a filmy layer of good-clean grain. Primary colors don’t often appear like primary due to the aged film stock but pop in distinct crush, nonetheless. Emma’s unconscious dimensional detour is full of pocket voids, shadowy symmetrical shapes, and dreamy in exact detail on all accounts without being empyrean or wistfully. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 master audio and the film’s original uncompressed stereo 2.0. The lossless surround sound mix options to deliver the identical audio measures in comparison the uncompressed audio while also slinking through the side and back channels for full-bodied immersion into Emma’s tribulating trek back home. Dialogue comes through exceedingly well-enough albeit the multi-faceted improved industrial soundtrack sneaks in staggering oversteps at times. Speaking of the soundtrack, an original score by composer Michael Deragon, the transitional tunes, melodies, discordances, and synths are just a taste of the eclectic, haunting sounds that navigate Emma’s journey and the elegant, melancholic, and even comforting lullabies by Augie Duke as the mother bring a sort of peace and tranquility that resets the intensity and fear of the child in peril. The chattering teeth, though comically inclined to an extent, are especially effective as a looming, omnipresent pursuant. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features on the Blu-ray include a making of “Moon Garden” featurette that lets director Ryan Stevens Harris be giddy-as-school boy proud to show off and explain the how-tos of his masterclass piece of creativity as well as to dote on his sweet daughter Haven, Harris’s 12-minute proof-of-concept short film “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth,” a single deleted scene, and the theatrical trailer. Oscilloscope’s Blu-ray comes in a clear Amaray case with a what looks almost to be an innominate water-colored cover art composition, with gothic overtures, of a few characters with the reverse side bathed in a blue landscape setting that Emma crosses which is shown in the film. The disc art is curiously plain with the Oscilloscope Laboratories logo and the title “Moon Garden” above it. The not rated Blu-ray comes region free and with a 93-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Ever since post-credits, The M Machine’s Moon Song and Promise of a Rose Garden has regained ground in my mind and it’s a very fitting pair of tracks not only for their keyword titles but also for its industrial beats and unconventional sonority structures similar to the cadence of the deep space wandering that is “Moon Garden” as visually the imagery confounds the senses and surrealism takes hold of us as this sweet and innocent little girl confronts alone a world much bigger than anything than we could ever imagine, and only she can pull herself through while the discordant parents can only be a unifying beacon of light and hope. Highly recommended.

Take a Stroll Through the “Moon Garden” on Blu-ray