Category Archives: foreign film

Dump Buckets and Buckets of Water Back into this Dry EVIL Well. “Ring Shark” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

For the subscribers of her Youtube show, vlogging social media influence Kanamasa and her co-host search for a stone well rumored to be in a haunted forest surrounded by unfriendly villagers who aggressively ward off unwelcomed visitors.  Upon discovering the well, a shark-like creature emerges suddenly and bites Kanamasa, scaring them off.  A few days later, another pair of Youtube investigators of the Psychic Investigations Big Summer learn of Khana’s disappearance after her last video surfaces of what looks to be a shark fin and then a ghastly body surfaces from within her bathtub, attacking her bikini-garbed body.  Seeking the truth and eager to find Khana, the investigators conduct interviews with “shark” experts and attempt to visit the same well only to be shooed off by the villagers until, finally, they’re able to reach the same spot and experience the same sharp-teethed horror lurking within it.  Unknowingly, that same supernatural terror of the well had follow them home. 

Sharksploitation has admittedly gotten out of hand.  The beloved horror subgenre that began with Steven Spielberg and Bruce the mechanical monstrous shark who terrorized the beaches of Amity Island have since drowned in its own watery subcategory of the ocean’s maneater predators with microbudget ineptitude that takes the shark from its natural ecosystem and rehomes it in a miscellany of nonsense locations, such as on land, in the weather, and even circling in toilets.  Well, today is the day we’ve come across a movie been assimilated into that same fatuous collective with “Ring Shark,” aka “Well Shark,” aka “Ido Shark.”  The Japanese, found-footage comedy-horror is the first of a trio of incongruous shark films released between 2023 and 2024 by Taichiro Natsume with “Love Shark” and “Last Shark” to follow, connected by the Big Summer team of Psychic Investigators.  Natsume also wrote and produced the feature.

Unfamiliar with the Psychic Investigator Big Summer series, which there’s uncertainty if Big Summer is a Japanese comedic troupe, equivalent to the Broken Lizard of America, what “Ring Shark, or “Ido Shark” begins is a series of various haunted case probes by the Big Summer team, which in this film in particular include actors using modifications of or using their actual names as characters in the story, such as director Taichiro Natsume being the single male lead in the group under character name Daiichiro Natsume.  Daiichiro Natsume can be a bumbling, yet persistent fool when it comes to the mysterious case of Kana-san with his steady motif of exclaiming his love for big boobs and determination to resolve the mystery.  He’s joined by colleagues on-and-off screen in Momoka Asahi and Chihiro Nishikawa, the latter not to be confused with Chihiro Nishikawa of JVA.  While Nishikawa and Natsume continue the running gag conversating about big breasts, Momoka Asahi enters the picture much later as the third investigating team member when Natsume goes down with a well shark bite infection that haunts him from the inside out and puts him in the hospital.  From there, Nishikawa and Momoka take the reigns on investigation by not only tending to Natsume’s dwindling health but also interviewing internet paranormal sleuths Hiroshima Freddy, a Japanese horror influence in real life, as well as Black Story Kuro, who I imagine is another influencer but couldn’t confirm it.  Typically, the Japanese language has a ton of fluid inflections and tones that dictates situations and mood, but “Ring Shark” avoids much of the vocal ups-and-downs with a consistently level tone of flat and dry humor peppered with fear, arbitrary bickering, and a pinch of kawaii to sustain a semi-serious documentary style investigation.  Maya Mineo, Issei Kunisawa, Yacch Chara, Daiki Mizuno, Honey Trap, Umeki, and the wrestler known as The Shark fills out the cast.

“Ring Shark” is “Blair Witch Project” meets “The Ring.”  The latter having the most prominent appearance as the at home media, that was once titled, or probably is likely titled in Japan, as “Ido Shark,” is marketed for U.S. consumption because every moviegoer is either well versed or knows of Hideo Nakata’s “The Ring” series and its heebie-jeebies Samara spirit.  Instead of a cursed tape that summons Samara out of the depths of her murdered resting spot, a well, to kill anyone after a week of viewing said tape, “Ring Shark” only real connective tissue to “The Ring” is that there is a well in the story and a murdered girl’s body was dumped inside.  That’s it.  From there, the structure is more to the tune of “Blair Witch Project” with a pseudo-found footage of one social media’s disappearance igniting the Psychic Investigator Big Summer team to check it out after the tape is brought to their attention form Kanasama’s co-host.  The docu-style incorporates dry wit of interviewing shark experts, creature academics, urban legend connoisseurs, and thorough analysts and researchers, as well as themselves as angry villagers and a supernatural hand puppet shark head subverts their stratospheric sublayer with soul-chumming results.  Yet, none of everything just said really clicks in a flimsy and slapdashedly put together microbudget story derived for effect for true and absurd exploitation of sharks gone wild. 

“Ring Shark” swims right into SRS Cinema’s well-house with a brand-new DVD from the microbudget cult film distributor.  Upscaled to 1080p, the MPEG2 encoded, single layer DVD5 presents the Big Summer production ion a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Though upscaled to 1080p, the cell phone footage renders stretched limitations under the light of low-budget constraints.  Night vision and poor lighting coupled with closeups-to-extreme closeups, and shaky camera work dematerializes story-important images.  Natural lit and stationary camera work provide cleaner visuals in what is mostly a deluge of exposition and regular camera angles without atmospheric makeup.  The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo provides lean composition with ample inherent surrounding ambience, picking up the natural wildlife chirping in the background, the vocal amplification of someone talking through a microphone, the hustle and bustle of a restaurant, etc. Dialogue isn’t impeded by the commercial phone camera recording that creates a rather good reproduction and diffusion of sound amongst the space.  Added audio effects, such as the shark’s growling or snarling, does feel unnaturally alienated from the rest of the audio but works to the film’s advantage despite the obvious hand puppetry.  English subtitles are burned in but do synch well and appear error free. There’s also what looks to be double English subtitles along with Japanese title cards or subtitles that are a part of the Youtube investigation and often coincide with the main English subtitles in a distracting, screen space absorbing real estate. The Japanese electro-rap graced static menu, which samples Lil Jon’s Yeeeah, contains no bonus feature selection; instead, the bonus content is right on the main menu with short film “Shark of the Dead” (8.26 minutes) and the “Ring Shark” trailer.  I love bad movie cover art and SRS Cinema’s “Ring Shark” is no exception with smokey-eyed, electrically charged, and monstrously toothy shark breaching from a little stone well underneath “The Ring”-font film title.  The disc is pressed with the same image and there are no inserts included.  The barely hour-long film, clocking in at 63-minutes, comes not rated and has a region free playback.

Last Rites: “Ring Shark” is a monumental prosaic mockumentary aimed to swell Sharksploitation into further ill-repute and disrepair with an unfunny and uninteresting undertaking of underwhelming pastiche.

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

Daddy’s EVIL Little Secret. “The Beast Within” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Beast Within” is Calling! Own Your Copy Here!

Infirmed 10-year-old girl Willow witnesses one night a month her mother whisking away her rather distant father into the dense woods deep within the English countryside.  When brought home the next day, her father must be helped carried in, appearing haggard and weak from his strange and mysteriously kept overnight departure far from home.  The secret festers between the parents, as well with her grandfather, to a point where tensions rise to the surface and the family is slowly falling and drifting apart.  One night, Willow decides to sneak onto one of those one-a-month egresses and discovers her father, left chained inside a dilapidated structure in the middle of the wooded nowhere, transforms into a horrible beast.  From that point on, the family secret was no more, and she must come to terms with her parents’ deception and their struggling family cohesion before the next full moon rises above their isolated home compound.

Lycanthrope films are on the rise with the anticipation of two new theatrical releases that have seen positive reactions just by their trailers alone with “The Invisible Man’s” Leigh Whannell staying in the Dark Universe with “Wolf Man,” slated for the silver screen January of 2025, and “Scream of the Banshee’s” Steven C. Miller going wild and hair near this Christmas season with his chaotic and carnage-ladened “Werewolves.”  Kicking it off in the werewolf category however is English director Alexander J. Farrell making his debut fictional feature with “The Beast Within.”  The 2024 released conceited thriller plays on a child’s perception of events, especially when she sees her parents joyless faces, co-written by Farrell and more seasoned screenwriter Grear Ellison (“A Woman At Night”) and both have worked previously on Farrell’s last two projects, a documentary entitled “Making a Killing” that sheds like an antiquated law that results in capping financial need after preventable medical negligence and another cowritten session, a RomCom in “How to Date Billy Walsh” that was also released in 2024.  The UK production comes from a conglomerate of companies in Paradox House, Future Artist Entertainment, and private equity group Filmology Finance and is produced by the father-son duo Gary and Ryan Hamilton of Archlight Films who oversaw global sales of the film, Martin Owen, Tammy Batshon, Spencer Friend, Evan Ross, Sebastian Street, and Paolo Pilladi.

Looking for his next big hit to branch out from the shadow of “Game of Thrones’” bastard hero, Jon Snow, is Kit Harrington taking the headlining role as an intermittent explosive disorder father struggling to keep his family whole because of his own family curse.  Often resembling the HBO role that made him a household name when donning that iconic large fur coat that became an innate symbol of the Stark family, Harrington’s Noah character fails to become uniquely recognized as he’s quite the mystery with little background to his compound abode and his occupation of what seems to be a lumberjack of sorts, always cutting down trees in the nearby forest.  What’s even more mysterious is the family lineage of temporarily transmogrifying into an aggressive, animalistic beast when the full moon is high.  His reason for being cursed stems mostly from anecdotal knowledge of his own grandfather’s tragic history with being plagued by the same condition.  This places Noah’s family onto spider-cracking eggshells as his wife Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings, “NOS4A2”) finds herself loyal to a fault by caring for Noah’s condition but taking the brunt of his abusive behavior all the while daughter Willow (“Caoilinn Springall, “Stopmotion”) initially doesn’t know what’s truly happening but has this underlining fear of her father, noted by wedging her rocking horse underneath her room’s door handle every night.  Willow’s grandfather and Imogen’s dad Waylon (James Cosmo, “Highlander”) serves as a buffer between Noah and his family, maybe even perhaps the voice of reason.  Performances are mostly strong with Harrington forcing Noah’s hand a little to be brutish, a quality that doesn’t quite stick as intended.  There’s also some finale unresolve essentials with Waylon that doesn’t determine his fate as we’re left with only a threadbare implied outcome, an unfortunate state for one of the handful of principal characters.  The supporting actors rounds out with Ian Giles and Martina McClements (“When the Lights Went Out”) who never share scenes with the key intimate cast.

Aforementioned, “The Beast Within” is from the perspective of a child, in this case a child with great imaginative qualities as seen with her hobby of matchitecture of her home and nearby buildings, but the story is also definitively an allegory for an abusive husband and father that uses the lycanthrope mythology as a bestial symbol for one man’s vile nature.  Noah’s deceptive behavior lures in what the family wants, a loving husband and adoring father providing, protecting, and caring for them, but Farrell strings along a hidden truth with spot visual clues of Noah’s true self.  Those clues are terribly evident to the family devolution but there’s also a stasis of hope when Noah’s charm and smile glimmer through the cracks of his monstrous shell that’s mostly kept at bay from the audience.  The allegory keeps well until the end and then the allegory loses its legs and not mounting to much when everything laid before our eyes in the story is suddenly washed away by Farrell’s inability to stick with his metaphorical story and go explicit in the last few scenes when the child’s perspective veil is dropped, as if the new feature director couldn’t trust audiences to come to their own conclusions.  Yet, timeless set locations in the expansive English countryside, the compound set design, performances, and the limited but practical effects of the wolf man add to the independent film’s slow burn horror-dramaturgy that seizes the opportunity to label man a beast under his worst genetical conditions. 

A terrible, dark, ancestral secret can never be contained and now the terrible animal is loose onto Blu-ray home video from Well Go USA Entertainment.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 stacks up against the rest of the label’s catalogue as par for the course with a slightly softer image mostly under natural daylight and key night lighting and foundationally based with a mixture of yellow and red hues.  Though soft, details are not lost.  There’s an abundance of sharper medium to closeup shots, especially in darker scenes, where granular textures surface and the layers separate more distinctly.  Where the softness prevails is in the exterior wide shots of the 1.78:1 aspect ratio that can’t seem to not only create a greater sense of space but also can’t fathom the finer diversities of road, land, forest, and structure in what is likely a dovetail diffusion of color around the edges.  Ultimately, your brain figures it out but to the eyes the landscape is a bit one noted.  There is a pinch of splodgy murkiness in the shadows that doesn’t affect the presentation immensely.  The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 diffuses the layers with solid balance.  There’s plenty of isolated audio capillaries to carry over the ambiance denotations of an ever-present fear, such as the howling wind, the violent banging of a fortified gate, or even the animalistic sounds deep in the distance, creating the depth needed to present danger from afar.  This is also coupled with tighter tension of closer vibrations, the hacking of the trees, the creaking of a floors, etc., for heightened lossless reproduction.  Dialogue renders clearly and cleanly throughout.  English and French subtitles are available for preference.  In the special features department, this Well Go USA release only comes with the film’s trailer plus pre-feature previews of other label releases.  The Blu-ray disc is pressed with a clawed imagery inside a standard Blu-ray Amaray with snap-lock and has only an advert card in the insert for this film, sharing space with “Twilight of the Warriors:  Walled In” and “You Gotta Believe.”  Rated R for Strong Violent Content and Language, “The Beast Within” has a runtime of 97 minutes and is listed as region A playback only but I was able to play the disc in Region B. 

Last Rites: “The Beast Within” is a by-the-book and subdued English allegory for fearsome behavior and Farrell’s debut is finely drawn but up to a point when audiences are quickly subjected to an unnecessary and redundant end-all, tell-all of daddy’s true being.

“The Beast Within” is Calling! Own Your Copy Here!

Cheese Isn’t the Only Snack on this EVIL Rodent’s Diet! “Rat Man” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

See Nelson de la Rosa as the “Rat Man” on Blu-ray!

On the Caribbean Island of Santo Domingo, a genetic fiend scampers on the streets.  By injecting the sperm of a rat into a Monkey embryo, one fervent geneticist’s desires to be globally renowned creates a small yet deadly human rat.  Intelligent, agile, and with a lethal poison under its fingernails that could kill a normal size human in a matter of seconds, the creature escapes confines and roams the streets looking for fresh meat to eat.  One of the victims is a photoshoot supermodel from New York City that prompts an unofficial investigation of the mistaken sister to the supermodel and a mystery writer who are now on the hunt for the whereabouts of the others from the photoshoot group.  As the bodies pile up, the rat man wreaks havoc on the small island villages where the survivors and investigators must fight for their life to avoid being gnawed upon.

“Rat Man,” aka “Quella villa in fondo al parco,” translated to “That Villa at the End of the Park,” is the 1988 the Italian-made, creature feature of predominant spaghetti western and poliziotteschi director Giuliano Carnimeo in what would become one of his last feature films  Credited as Anthony Ascot, the western “Sartana” franchise and “The Exterminators of the Year 3000” director tackles the horrors of genetic manipulation with survivalist rodent given primate intelligence, a far cry from Carnimeo’s usual genres.  The screenplay comes from “Demons” and “The Ogre” writer Dandano Sacchetti under the penname David Parker Jr.  Carnimeo and Sacchetti Americanize their credits to appeal more to western audiences who, in the late 80’s, were lapping up Italian horror and creature features starring known international actors in tropical republics and “Rat Man” falls perfectly into that category.  “Zombie” and “The Beyond” producer Fabrizio De Angelis produces the film from production companies Surf Film and Fulvia Film.

While usually Italian productions go after American names, like John Saxon, Christopher George, or Robert Vaughn, “Rat Man” looked elsewhere amongst the surrounding Anglo-Saxon countries and plucked a few names that lead the charge in what would become a cluster of principals to become ensnared by tropical bred, genetically tainted vermin standing just over 2-feet tall, with elongated sharp teeth, and poisonous fingernails.  Without a defined lead, the script swirls through possible hero and heroine tropes, such as the investigating team-up between New Zealand actor David Warbeck (“The Beyond”) and Swedish actress Janet Agren (“Eaten Alive”) who are no strangers starring Italian productions.  Agren plays Terry who flies into Santo Domingo under the impression her supermodel sister was brutally murdered, and she happenstance meets at the same hailed cab Warbeck’s character, work vacationing mystery writer Fred Williams, who for some reason, some how becomes involved in helping Terry without significant cause or benefit other than possibly the mysterious case being a good plot for his next book.  There’s also the case of the false hero and final girl with the pursuit of photoshop photographer Mark, played by Austrian actor Werner Pochath (“Devil in the Flesh”) and his hot model Marilyn, by Italian actress Eva Grimaldi (“Covent of Sinners”).  These intended, or perhaps not intended, red herrings do make “Rat Man” favorably unpredictable as well as grim in regard to centric characters.  Grimaldi becomes the object of obsession with gratuitous nudity and a showcase of her other assets.  In more forgiving times when the diverging physical differences subjected actors into selective roles, the film employed one of the shortest men in our lifetime with Nelson de la Rosa.  Standing all of 2’ 4 ¼” because of Seckel Syndrome, the Dominican Republic born actor donned the makeup, false teeth, glued-on nails, and the ratty clothes to be transformed into the titular villain.  Limited movements and with no dialogue, de la Rosa’s underrated, give-it-his-best performance reveals to be a bright spot in story about a rat spliced with a monkey with the assistance of some movie magic; that one scene where he climbs up the window drapes and looks over his shoulder at Eva Grimaldi as she sleeps in a dark room and he’s slipping into the shadows gives proper chills.  Cast rounds out with Anna Silvia Grullon, Luisa Menon, Pepito Guerra, and Franklin Dominguez. 

Out in the cinema land, there have been worse genetical abomination movies through the decades.  “Rat Man,” surprisingly enough, champions for the middle ground as a solid, campy, man-made creature-on-the-loose feature with, dare I say it, okay performances, competent camerawork, and a villain unlike any other scampering around.  Sure, there are cheesy moments, but rats do like cheese, or so the stereotype goes, and that adds a layer of relaxation and ease knowing Giuliano Carnimeo had a sense of acceptability rather than trying to make a absolute, serious horror movie.  The one aspect I will mention where there was difficulty in swallowing was the scattered story flow.  “Rat Man” seemed to be everywhere all at once from beaches to the jungle to the vacant streets of Santo Domingo without rhyme or reason.  For a while I ran with the theory the Rat Man followed the photoshoot group, targeting the eye candy for its own perverse desires, but that promising concept was blown to smithereens when the little village of St. Martin had been terrorized and abandoned in a moment of exposition awareness.  Carnimeo’s jump from out of the western pot and into the horror fire translates his eye for the lingering and peripheral dread, much like a showdown of glares that has revolutionized to the lie and wait of the rat man cometh but if only the director could yoke the loose story for a straighter edge, “Rat Man” would have been acute as pestilence in the Italian horror mercati.

The “Rat Man” chews its way onto a brand-new Blu-ray release from Cauldron Films.  The restored in 4K transfer is pulled from the 35mm original negative and presented on an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, dual-layered BD50, exhibited in the original European widescreen aspect ratio of 1.66:1.  Primarily in low key, shadows run the range of a creature lurking in every nook and cranny, turning “The Naked Doorwoman’s” Roberto Girometti’s, credited as Robert Gardner, cinematography from darkened eyesore to a penetrating thriller of what’s scuttering beneath the shadows.  Emerging from the color is the perfect diffusion of color and texture underneath the natural looking stock grain.  There also isn’t a compression blemish insight or any kind of unnecessary enhancements from this good-looking print.  The only audio optional available is an English dub 2.0 mono track.  Despite an assortment of nationalities, the English dub does make the distinct accents go away with language uniformity.  Foley strength lies principally in the forefront but does champion the beast with a low growl always at your feet, or face depending on the camera angle.   English subtitles are optionally available and synch well with no errors in spelling or in grammar. Cauldron Films exclusive bonus features include an audio commentary, also available on the audio setup portion of the fluid menu, with film historians Eugenio Ercolani, Troy Howarth, and Nathaniel Thompson, and three Italian language with English subtitles interviews with cinematographer Robert Girometti, camera operator Federico Del Zoppo, and post-production consultant Alberto De Martino. “Rat Man’s” trailer rounds out the special features encoded content. The standard release comes in a clear Amaray Blu-ray case with new illustrated artwork that gives a real sense of what to expect by Justin Coffee. The reverse has the original, and if I might add beautiful, poster art that’s less surmising but more intriguing. Authored for region free playback, Cauldron Films’ “Rat Man” scurries with an 82-minute runtime and is not rated.

Last Rites: Forget setting out the poison, “Rat Man” can’t be exterminated with a phenomenally invincible release from Cauldron Films. In the slim pickings of the killer rat subgenre, “Rat Man” leads the pack rats as one of the more bizarre, degrading, and omnipotent villains ever to be on prowl.

See Nelson de la Rosa as the “Rat Man” on Blu-ray!

EVIL, Over a Decade in the Making! “Profane Exhibit” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Profane Exhibit” is Finally Here! Come And Get It!

Forged, smelted, and baked from the fiery grounds of hell, 10 stories of bleak and utter horror crimson the soul with blood and pale it with terror.  Ten directors, ten stories, ten obscure unfathomable depictions tell of a draconian religious sister matron with a despotic rule over a child orphanage, a daughter held prisoner by her parents in her own home basement, a cult willing to sacrifice newborns for the sake of their demonic tribute, the Third Reich submitting to extreme measures to keep their ranks pure, a reenactment of a father and son’s unnatural skin-to-skin bonding, a nightclub’s underground bloodletting witchery, and more unnervingly bizarre ballads.  These tales of torment tatter the life force piece-by-piece until there’s nothing left to exhibit, nothing left of one’s humanity, nothing left of being human.  A cruel anthology awaits just beyond the play button, ready to shock, appeal, and maybe even stimulate the perverse, primal nature in us all.   

An anthology a decade in the making or, to be more specific, a decade plus one year in the making in the long awaited “The Profane Exhibit.”  The 10-short film anthology is the brainchild of Amanda Manuel that began principal production in 2013 and finally saw completion and release in 2024 after a slow slog of shoots, edits, and post-production this-and-thats to finally crossover the finish line.  Varying from micro shorts and to average length short films, the anthology employed 10 different in degree genre directors from all over the world to make the mark in what would become a manic syndrome of monsters, mayhem, and molestation.  Yes, we’re talking about some really gross things, some terrifying things, and some other abnormal, abstract, and abysmal things that could be happening right now in your nightmares, or under your nose.  Anthony DiBlasi (“Malum”), Yoshihiro Nishimura (“Tokyo Gore Police”), Uwe Boll (“Bloodrayne”), Marian Dora (“Cannibal”), Ryan Nicholson (“Gutterballs”), Ruggero Deodato (“Cannibal Holocaust”), Michael Todd Schneider (“August Underground’s Mordum”), Nacho Vigalondo (“Timecrimes”), Sergio Stivaletti (“The Wax Mask,”) and Jeremy Kasten (“Attic Expeditions”) helm shorts they’ve either written themselves or by contributing screenwriters Carol Baldacci Carli (“The Evil Inside”) and Paolo Zelati (“Twilight of the Dead,”).  Harbinger Pictures and Unearthed Films, who also premiered it’s at-home release, co-produced the anthology.

Much like the diversity of directors, the cast is also an assortment of aggregated talent that stretches the global gamut.  Popular and classic horror figures like Caroline Williams (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2”) and Clint Howard (“Ice Scream Man”) play the normal couple next door conversating about politics, date night, and work while all the while they’ve locked their daughter away from the world and use her as daddy’s little sex slave in Uwe Boll’s “Basement,” depicting the normal and safe is actually abnormal and danger right in the middle of suburbia.  Others such as the underrated scream queens Monique Parent (“The Witches of Breastwick”) as a fully naked and willing “Goodwife” to her sadistic husband, Mel Heflin (“Queen Dracula Sucks Again”) donning a pig mask, naked by the way, in a rave club along with Tina Krause (“Bloodletting”), Elhi Shiina (“Audition”) and Maki Mizui (“Mutant Girl Squad”) finding happiness amongst death, and notable global genre actors Thomas Goersch (“Voyage to Agatis”) as the German father crippled by his son’s retardation, Dan Ellis (“Gutterballs”) as the hardworking husband who has everything but it all means nihilistically nothing, and Art Ettinger, the editor name and face of Ultra Violent Magazine doing his part with a bit patron part in the nightclub.  Mostly all listed have previously worked with their short film directors previously that denotes a sense of ease and expectation from their performances but that still makes their acts nonetheless shocking.  “The Profane Exhibit” also sees a few newer faces in the conglomerated cast with Christine Ahanotu, Tayler Robinson, Tara Cardinal, Mario Dominick, Witallj Kühne, Valentina Lainati, Josep Seguí Pujol, Dídac Alcaraz, and Stephanie Bertoni showing us what they can dish out disgustingly. 

Was the 11-year wait worth it?  Over the last months years, “The Profane Exhibit” received substantial hype when Unearthed Films announced its home video release, pelting social media with here it comes, get ready for it posts, tweets, and emails and for fans who’ve been following the decade long progress, director Amanda Manuel’s “The Profane Exhibit” does not disappoint as the content storyline harks back to the lump-in-your-throat, gulp-swallowing roots of general discomfort from an Unearthed Films release.  While it may not “Slaughter Vomit Dolls” level gross of upheaved bile and whatever was ingested moments before shooting, the filmmakers go deeper into the viscerally ignorant, ugly truths.  We’re not talking monsters or supernatural entities tearing Hell a new rectum, but “The Profane Exhibit” delineates the sordid nature of the human condition in an egregiously behavioral way that some of these ideas are not so farfetched.  A select few of the filmmakers incorporate surrealism into their shorts, such as with Yoshihiro Nishimura’s aberrant Mary Poppins, known as Hell Chef, replaces a spoon full of sugar with a bowl full of cooked human when turning a frown upside down of a young girl who just killed a man who she suspected tried to rape her.  The Geisha-garbed Hell Chef flies through the air holding up her Wagasa, Japanese umbrella, when her job is done.  Most others are grounded by realism with sadism being the primary culprit – “Basement,” “Goodwife,” and, to an extent, “Sins of the Father” and “Mors of Tabula.”  And then, there are shorts like the late, and great, Ruggaro Deodato’s “The Good Kid’s” that feels hackneyed and unimpressive coming up short amongst the others and makes one think if his name alone awarded the short a spot in Manuel’s lineup. 

In all, “The Profane Exhibit” delicately caters to the indelicate and is a visual instrument of visceral imagery curated for pure shock value. Unearthed Films’ Blu-ray release has finally arrived and is now in our bone-exposed and gory fingertips. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 allows for dual-layer capacity for not only to squeeze in the 108-minutes’ worth of micro shorts, but allow for extended extras, deserving to fans who’ve waited years for this production to see the light of day.  Like any other anthology, a mishmash of styles but up against each other with the assemblage of different stroke directors and cinematographers but there seems to be no issues with compression, such as banding, blocking, aliasing, or any abundance of blurry noise, in the flexing widescreens aspect ratios of 2.35:1 and 1.78:1.  A good example of Unearthed Films’ codec processing is Deodato’s bridge scene; while I don’t care for the short all that much, the long shots of the bridge are nicely detailed in the nighttime, lit only be the bridge’s powered light poles, creating a downcast of warm yellow along a solid shadow-spotty bridge.  You can see and realize the stoned texture without even using your imagination on how it should look and that tell me there’s not a ton of lossy codec at work here.  An English, Spanish, Italian, and German mix of uncompress PCM 2.0 audio serves as the common output to be as collective and unified as possible.  No issues with hampered dialogue with a clear and focused track.  There dual channel quality is robust and vibrant, living up to Yoshihiro Nishimura’s surreal energy and a commanding Japanese tone while still finding voice prominence in other shorts, if dialogue exist.  Depth is fleeting without the use of a surround mix with an anthology that’s centered around the human condition rather than atmospherics, but I do believe Jeremy Kasten’s Amuse Bouche would have greatly benefited from the distinct gnashing, squirting, and smacking sound elements of a pig being processed to consumption in his wraparound.  English and Spanish subtitles are optionally available. Years of bonus content has been produced and collected for this special release which includes an audio commentary Director Michael Todd Schneider, Producer Amanda Manuel and Ultra Violent Magazine’s Art Ettinger, a world premiere interview with creator Amanda Manuel and short director Michael Todd Schneider at the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival, a world premiere Q&A, a 15-minute mini documentary Ten Years Later with “Mors in Tabula” director Marian Dora, an extended short entitled “Awaken Manna” with introduction and discourse, PopHorror’s Tiffany Blem Zoom interviews select directors with Michael Todd Schneider, Uwe Boll, Jeremy Kasten, and showrunner Amanda Manuel, image gallery, and trailer. The 2024 release has a runtime of 110 minutes, is not rated, and is region free.

Last Rites: Worth it. That’s the bottom line for this long-awaited film imbuing with bottom-feeders. Unearthed Films returns to roots with rancidity and fans will find their bloodlust satisfied.

“The Profane Exhibit” is Finally Here! Come And Get It!

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!