Category Archives: occult

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!

Spiraling Vloggers Seal Their Fate When Face-to-Face with the “Woods Witch” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Woods Witch” Available on DVD from SRS Cinema!

Vloggers Jonah and Jocelyn struggle to sustain a healthy dose of followers for their internet channel.  To spice things up and increase follow traffic, the two embark on a 48-hour challenge to stay in the nearby haunted woods of Allensville where a number of people have gone missing, even a fellow, more popular, vlogger named Garrett Gasper after he was self- recording and suddenly vanished when stumbling upon the blood tree, a tree that oozes a blood-like substance from the trunk.  Tagging along are vlogging, ambivalent friends Dacia and Eugene to help capture the spooky essence of what should be an easy, follower-increasing stunt for the impulsive influencers.  They’re also joined, reluctantly I might add, by a local cowboy, two bar patrons, and a father looking for his daughter who don’t know what they’re instore for as what ensues the unorganized, slapdash survey of the woods is far from being simple and safe when they stumble into the area of a seemingly hippie commune that’s actually a sex cult devoted to the woods witch Melora.

If you’re a diehard horror fan, or even just a physical media movie aficionado, you might have heard of the name Shawn C. Phillips.  The eccentric, high-energy, social media personality buys, watches, and reviews the latest and greatest on home video weekly on this Youtube channel under the handle Coolduder.  Aside from being also a movie actor with a range of roles in mostly low-budget, independent, B-to-Z grade horror films, such as “Girls Gone Dead,” “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake,” and “WTF!,” Phillips’s social media presence further extends to an inspirational weight loss journey, shedding over 235 lbs.  Having been a longtime actor and producer, one of the Baltimore, Maryland native’s newest ventures is directing having shot mostly self-recorded videos to be inserted into other filmmakers’ movies.  Phillips’s latest is “Woods Witch,” a found footage comedy-horror that’s one-part “Blair Witch Project,” two-parts ADHD (Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder).  He codirects the film with costar and “Amityville Karen” actress Lauren Francesca in her debut directorial and cowrites with Julie Anne Prescott, writer of many more recent “Amityville” inspired budget horrors like “Amityville Karen,” “Amityville Shark House,” and “Amityville Bigfoot.”  DRAX Films (“Bae Wolf,” “Acorn”) is the production company behind feature that provided most of the funding in conjunction with crowdfunded portion.

Obviously infatuated about being in front of the camera, taking a backseat to his own co-directed film wouldn’t be enough for the nearly 40-year-old personality who costars alongside Lauren Francesca as social media influencing boyfriend and girlfriend Jonah and Jocelyn.  Loud and opinionated, the couple struggle with maintaining viewership but, before that, they also they also struggle with the foulmouthed, death-threatening volley between Jonah and Jocelyn’s robbing-the-cradle by robbing-Jonah’s-cameraman mother, played by Sally Kirkland (“Fatal Games,” “Two Evil Eyes”).  And that sort of leads into a couple of themes “Woods Witch” harps on.  One theme is the constant bickering, shouting, and squabbling between anyone and everyone in a free-for-all of one-upping each other or to not take humility very well in front of others.  None of the characters side with one another, steadying a position of satellite attitudes and courses that lead the story into all different types of unhinged and unfocused directions.  The second theme connects with Sally Kirkland and the other in-and-outs of overripe star power for what crowdfunded money could afford and while there are some likeable and decent names in the cast, such as the late Tom Sizemore (“Relic,” “Saving Private Ryan”) in his last role before his death, James Duvall (“May,” “Donnie Darko”), Robert LaSardo (“Strangeland,” “Death Race”), and Lisa Wilcox (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Master”), they used to headline the attraction with only minutes to shine in their respective scenes.  The cast fills in with Kelly Lynn Reiter, David Perry, Carl Soloman, Bill Dawes, Lorelei Linklater, Nicole Butler, Ken Davitian, Bryant Smith, Eva Hamilton, G. Larry Butler, Mary Jones, Tom Harold Batchelder, Jake Pearlman, Brian Metcalf and Sadie Katz. 

“Woods Witch” uses multi-media found footage to tell the story where a bunch of egregiously entitled vloggers trek into infamously mysterious woods for hits, likes, subscribers, and e-revenue.  Not an original bone in its narrative body by any means, Antoine Le’s “Followed” comes to mind, but “Woods Witch” doesn’t hit where it should as a heavily improv comedy-horror that lampoons found footage horror in the woods and, instead, has undeniably become massively cacophonous of in all areas.  Going into the feature familiar with some of the cast and the distributing banner, expectations of a Shawn C. Phillips directed film were all fastened at the lower screwball level with horror elements tacked in here and there, aptly fitting the mold the social media influencer has established for himself with the eccentric personality of a physical media farceur who adores horror, but nothing can prepare audiences for how much confused noise is strewn about with the constant yelling, backbiting, and randomizing introduction of characters that turns what should have been an entertainingly crass and witchy film into just being a completely crass and witchy yawner.  Being completely flat and unfunny wouldn’t be a totally fair statement as “Woods Witch” does have its moments, such as the tree blood being rubbed all over Phillips’s naked torso and him, as Jonah, proclaiming naively Dascia’s kinkiness can be found humorous, but these funny bit moments are far and few in between and there’s just not enough new, fresh, or actor-driven comically-inclined wit and materially to feast on to support the lack of horror despite a few morsels of gore that are left in the dust, overshadowed by an immense pre-trip setup of interviews and infighting that ruins the rest of the reel. 

Enter the world wide web and wacky world of Shawn C. Phillips with his co-directed film with Lauren Francesca in “Woods Witch” on an SRS Cinema DVD. The MPEG2 encoded, 480i upscaled to 720p, DVD9 pulls the differing, clashing video qualities together, mostly earlier on and near the finale, for a coherent beginning, middle, and end narrative telling. If only I could say the same about the story, themes, and character roles. Anyway, not a lot of banding as there’s not a lot of dark scenes in what mostly is fill lighting that brightens up what’s in the scene. Details are okay enough when not implementing shaky cam’s in-and-out focusing found footage and lighting doesn’t completely washout the miniscule bits of texture. The coloring also has a naturally graded look as well as the objects’ organic color palette as budget doesn’t allow for too much fancy cinematography to also evoke a sense of realism. The English language PCM 2.0 stereo mix is consistent as it is coherent with the clarity and the dialogue. Even with pandemonium breaks out, which is often with the screaming and snappy conversations between each other, dialogue remains unscathed without audible squashing feedback or other interferences. English closed captioning is optionally available in the extras. Special features include a behind-the-scenes raw footage from fellow Youtuber Kenneth Ramone who has a small part in the film, a handful of cut scenes, theatrical trailer, funny trailer, an audio commentary by director/star Shawn C. Phillips going deep into the casting, locations, backstories, script and improv moments, etc., and there’s a Lisa Wilcox stinger in the post-credits as the mayor for an additional or extended scene with some improv. The SRS Cinema package comes in a standard DVD Amaray case with eye-catching illustrated artwork, disc pressed with the same artwork, and is an unrated, region free release with a 96-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Humor and horror underperform in the film “Woods Witch” that’s sole purpose is to be a comedy-horror. What the film does do is parody other found footage features and their filmmakers under a misguided sense that in-the-woods horror, from a camera lens point of view, is past its prime when in reality, the long-in-the-tooth subgenre is better than this parody by far.

“Woods Witch” Available on DVD from SRS Cinema!

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!

Ancestor’s Didn’t Quite Incinerate All the EVIL. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” reviewed! (MVD Visual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Burn While You Got’em. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD home video!

Siblings Nathan and Mirra are reunited at their childhood farm home after their father suddenly passes away from drowning.  The self-well-kempt Mirra handles the business end of their father’s farmland estate as the recovering drug addict Nathan struggles with his past urges while also helping with the cleanout of their father’s things.  They meet farmhand Alice who still maintains the crops and who is close to her unusual and quieter sister Scarlett.  Soon after, Nathan begins experiencing vivid nightmares on drowning and an unknown woman crawling out from the depths of the ocean.  He also feels the presence of malevolent forces around him and digs into his father’s past only to find that his ancestors were once witch burners and that the farmhand and her sister’s family lineage had settled from Massachusetts long ago.  In the midst of piecing the clues together, the siblings find themselves in the lingering black cloud of darker forces seeking retribution of a fiery ancestral past.

“The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is the 2022 released, independent horror from writer-director-and-costar Elise Finnerty.  The first-time feature film director from Long Island, New York infuses a slow dread of psychological thrills with a painted American folklore maquillage where past imprudence and costly mistakes catch up with the future generations stuck in a rut of their own problems. Filmed in and around Finnerty’s hometown, “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is a family affair film with the filmmaker producing her first film co-produced by the immediate Finnerty family of father Dennis, mother Diana, and brother Sean.  Nicolas Alvo and Brett Phillips also co-produce with executive producers lined up with Estelle Girard Parks, Maxine Muster, Shannon Gallagher, and Alec Phillips financially footing the feature under the banner of Red Booth Productions, founded by Estelle Girard Parks and Elise Finnerty.

With the smaller production comes an intimate cast working in a handful of public locations and only a couple of home interiors and about a third of the cast are also working multiple roles in front and behind the camera, such as Elise Finnerty and Estelle Girard Parks not only the chief governors of “The Ones You Didn’t Burn’s” creative process but also as the inscrutable sisters Alice and Scarlett.  In principal roles, you receive exactly what writer-director Finnerty intends with her happy-go-lucky helping hand farm manager that strikes a small odd chord within the adrift Nathan, son of the drowned father who never recalls his father mentioning Alice.  Nathan, played by Nathan Wallace, is clearly exhibited and stated as a habitual user attempting sobriety but the more delineated the dreams become and the uneasiness that washes over him, mixed with the sudden, subconscious grief of a lost father and being peer-pressured by an immature, drug-fueled, and degenerate high school buddy Greg (Samuel Dunning), Nathan becomes mentally bombarded to the point of using again and breaking, though ambiguity leads us to believe that some witchery might be subverting his faculties.  Wallace shows great range in a downward spiral character arc, complimented by sheer intensity when that strangeness takes hold and shape.  Also feeling the pressure, in a different manner, is Nathan’s sister Mirra, sequestered by Jenna Rose Sander to make Mirra go solo sorting all the postmortem to-dos of her father’s belongings, extending out any hope or chance of Nathan and Mirra to reconnect in light of death.  In fact, the siblings become even more estranged and tensions simmer, especially when Mirra finds comfort in newfound friends, such as Alice and Scarlett, lending to more loss and disconnect for Nathan and other, again, possibly witchery waywardness to divide and conquer in the name of rancorous retribution.

“The Ones You Didn’t Burn” certainly is a slow burn filled with more fluff and reoccurring scenes than desired in an intriguing face value premise of a pair witches setting the wheels in motion to rid the land of witch burning descendants.  Insidious dreams and ubiquitous tarot card dinner flavor the film’s underlining horror but there’s not a ton of dynamics between characters as progression evolves almost without interactive sway, relying heavily on those dream sequences and Nathan’s zippy scrutiny into his father’s past as he comes up with not a lot, or rather circumstantial, evidence to deduct Alice and Scarlett as witches.  Finnerty certainly parallels Nathan’s supernatural trepidation with a more relatable one, drugs, stress, and lack of purpose that could be instigating a false drive to put a stop to the evil at work, affecting the only family he, a money-less addict, has left to rely on.  Finnerty provides some lucratively strong visuals with the stark night beach scenes of an unfaced woman crawling from out of the surf toward a bewildered Nathan in only what could be described as psychosexual and ominous.  Does Nathan fear beautiful women who have influence or authority over him and his family now that the patriarch is gone?  Mirra loaned him money and is successful professionally that initiated a denotation of inferiority only aggressively exaggerated by Alice and Scarlett’s inclusion of Mirra into a trifold takeover that will inevitably exorcize his junkie backside for good.  In any case, whether you believe Finnerty’s intention is to ride a fine line between witchcraft payback, and one being cut loose from his threadbare support system, “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is a character-driven story that needed more character development and story devices but has tuned in performances and some eerie dreamscapes. 

MVD Visual in partnership with Jinga Films and Danse Macabre release “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD.  Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the MPEG2 encoded, single-layered DVD5 settles for mostly natural grading in the exteriors with interiors being hard-lit by the natural light blocking features with the low-lit nightmares casting tenebrous drapes with key lighting techniques to isolate main objects.  Compression on here is decent with pleasant detail to show for it and only a few patches of softer nuances around skin layers.  The back cover lists a 5.1 stereo audio mix but the sole English language available, per my player technical readings, on the DVD is a 2-channel Dolby Digital stereo and I do believe the latter over the former as there is no singular output from the multi-channels; however, what’s render is par for the course and suits the release well with ample volume in all regards:  range, depth, dialogue, and a brooding, melancholic, and, at time, tension building soundtrack from composer Daniel Reguera.  Dialogue renders clean and clearly throughout.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Only other MVD and Jinga Films trailers, along with this feature’s trailer, are listed on the static menu in regard to bonus content with trailers of “After,” “Midnight Son,” and “Gnaw.”  On the standard DVD Amaray case front cover is an illustrated and portrait compositional of Elise Finnerty’s Alice character overlapping with yellow and black branches that give it that folklore and woody-witch coating.  The disc is pressed a same art but cropped and there is no insert or reversible cover included.  The region free DVD has a runtime of 70 minutes and is not rated.  “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” debuts Elise Finnerty as a competent filmmaker with a retrained witch tale with payback overtones and dysfunctional family undertones. 

Burn While You Got’em. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD home video!

100-Year Return Brings a Plague of Flesh-Eating EVIL to a Small Town! “Messiah of Evil” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!

Arletty travels up the California coast to a small beach town known as Point Dune.  The reason for her visit is to find her artisan father after a series of bizarre letters came to an abrupt stop.  She arrives at his mural-graffitied home to discover it empty and decides to stay a few days to ask around town about his whereabouts and to be present for his return home.  Her inquiries at art gallery shopkeepers lead to a motel where Thom, a wealthy collector of urban legends and spooky stories, and his two travelling female companions, Laura and Toni, have also sought out Artletty’s father for his bizarre experiences.  As the days pass, Point Dune slowly becomes a literal ghost town that forces Thom and his companions to stay with Arletty and, together, they experience the horrible truth of what’s really happening to the  residents of the west coast community who eagerly await the arrival of the dark stranger. 

Once married filmmakers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz are the creative minds behind the stories of “Howard the Duck” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”  They also wrote “American Graffiti” in what was to become their link toward working on Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones sequel since both “American Graffiti” and “The Temple of Doon” were both produced by the father of “Star Wars,” George Lucas.  Yet, in the midst of “American Graffiti,” the couple also penned and Huyck came into the entrance of directing with the 1974 horror-thriller “Messiah of Evil” that pulled from various themes of mindless consumerism and the rising fears of dangerous and deadly cults in the U.S.  Also known by a variety of titles around the world, including “Dead People,” “Night of the Danmed,” “Messiah of the Evil Dead,” “Revenge of the Screaming Dead,” and “Blood Busters” to name a few, the Californian coast shot film is a production of the International Cine Film Corp and V/M Productions with Gatz producing and Alan Riche (“Deep Blue Sea”) serving as executive producer. 

“Messiah of Evil” slinks into the soul leaving behind dread’s unwashed pull against what we know as conventional horror.  In order to accomplish such a fear-induced feat, a cast must envelope themselves fully in world of weird and irregularities that nestle an uneasiness stemmed not solely from their performances but from how they react to the eccentric environment, to the crumbling small town society, and to ghastly behaviors of normal-looking people.  Like most daughters, Arletty has concerns for her father and seeks to understand the truth behind his unhinged letters.  Marianna Hill (“Schizoid,” “The Baby”) plays the quietly curious at a cat daughter dabbing residents with barely an effort in interrogational questioning of her father’s whereabouts.  Hill floats Arletty through stages of a slow descent into madness that simmers slowly to a boiling point understanding of what’s taking shape around her.  The same happens to Thom, played by Richard Greer (“The Curious Female”), who initially is a fraction of the nonconformity surrounding Point Dune with his obsession toward collecting strange stories and his polyamorous collection of women.  Of character, Greer is resoundingly in control without being dominating with Thom who has wealth and magnetisms but isn’t someone to be beholden to forever as we see with Laura (Anita Ford, “The Big Bird Cage”) who deserts him for his open-door intimacy policy in his pursuit of Arletty and with the childish Toni (Joy Bang, “Night of the Cobra Woman”) in her infinitely naïve opinions surrounding the dull Point Dune.  One actor I wish we had more of but is utilized perfectly as Arletty’s father and a harbinger of what’s coming is Royal Dano (“Ghoulies II,” “Spaced Invaders”) in a non-humorous nor drunken idiot role that seemed to typecast him later in his career.  Dano’s short but sweetly terrifying stretch divulges a man torn between his previous life and a new terror that now occupies him as he interacts with Marianna Hill as concerned and contaminated father holding it all within toward his frightened, confused daughter.  “Messiah of Evil’s” cast rounds out with Elisha Cook Jr (“Rosemary’s Baby”), Bennie Robinson, and Charles Dierkop (“Grotesque”). 

Huyck directs with colorful and verismo synergism that takes the positives of what should be life’s routine pleasures and turns them against us as fantastical and harrowin deadly elements of false securities.  The rolling crashes of Point Dune’s waves takes on a constant cacophony of sinister foreshadowing, a bright and welcoming supermarket becomes a vacant trap in every aisle, the entertaining movie theater darkens with blood on the screen, and an artist’s home, full realistic murals and colors, is an oppressive feast of lifeless eyes.  Point Dune becomes a dead town, literally, as the inhabitants succumb to dark forces from beyond their years, turning primeval in their contemporary three-piece suits and evening blouses.  Huyck and Gatz story pulls inspiration from U.S. history and folklore to mark the 100-year return of spreading evil amongst the land, an evil that resorts to cannibalism by either spellbinding archfiend, an internal infection, or the rise of the undead and not just any mindless, shuffling, flesh-eating zombie but a transmogrified plotter able to move fast and think as a single unit with the touched by evil masse with telltale signs of a single rivel of blood seeping from out of their eye and their insatiable need to consume other people. ”Messiah of Evil” is not overtly graphic like George A. Romero zombies or like the unbridled number of zombie films to follow inspired by Romero’s zombie game-changing wake for the last 60 plus years, separating the flesh-eaters from Romero’s gut-gnashing, pale faced, and slow-walking undead and Huyck and Gatz’s transmitted pestilent receiving horde running fast in their best church shoes with vastly different traits. Huyck and Gatz dip into more eldritch means with the return of a paganistic dark stranger in a pared down explanation without explicitly being definitive who or what the dark stranger (a demon? Antichrist?) is that is driving foreboding signs to a doomsday-disseminating end. ”Messiah of Evil” thrives as the mysterious and strange fulcrum of the beginning of the end told through the point of view of young woman left to tell the world of what’s to come only to be about as believed as much as a man wearing a polka-dotted tutu who has delusions of unicorns dancing the waltz with garden gnomes in his front yard. 

United Kingdom distributor Radiance Films releases a new restoration transfer of “Messiah of Evil” also on their U.S. line. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 presents a 4K scan of the best-known surviving 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As noted in the release’s inserted booklet, the restoration processes used was the Digital Vision’s Phoenix Finish and DaVinci Resolve was used for color correction, under the supervision of Sebastian del Castillo at the Heavenly Movie Corporation. Audio was also restored with the Izotope RXB. For a surviving print, the original elements look pretty darn good with barely any celluloid hiccup. No vinegar syndrome, not significant tearing, or exposure to name a few issues of possibility. There are a few minor blemishes and missing or damaged frames that seem to provide an unwanted cut but most of “Messiah of Evil’s” film problems stem mostly behind the camera with a rework of the story during the stop-and-go production and conflicts in marketing the film, hence the various title aliases of the film from around the globe. Other detail low points are when the film is bathed in blue and purple gels and tint for to set an apprehensive wander and wonder while retaining more natural grading in its majority throughout. The resorted audio is a lossless English LPCM mono mix. Really focusing on the electronic score of Phillan Bishop (“The Severed Arm”), the low-frequency score sets a perpetual and durable tone of dread out of place in a prosaic small town, much like the Arletty’s father’s work-of-art home that sticks out amongst the mediocrity. In design, dialogue remains robust yet delicate when the scene calls for it, such as Elisha Cook Jr. story of how he was born in what is essentially him, as a vagrant paid for his story, making the only noise in the room. Dialogue in these moments is greatly discernible with negligible electronic interference. Depth layers the permeating isolation of a town gone mad in unison with the range stretching from the distressing design of rolling, crashing, oppressive waves to the scuffles of zombies’ consuls and heels scuffing against asphalt, pavement, and shattering through panes of glass. Radiance provides English subtitles with their release. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by film historian and horror archetype authors Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower, an archived interview with director Willard Huyck, and a new, feature-length documentary showcasing “Messiah of Evil’s” background, themes, production, and influences by various horror scholars, including Kat Ellinger who also voiceovers a visual essay on American Gothic and Female Hysteria, which if I’m being honest, parallelly treads on similarities with Ellinger’s Motherhood & Madness: Mia Farrow and the Female Gothic on Imprint’s “The Haunting of Julia.” Radiance has in the short time poured their heart and soul into their releases and “Messiah of Evil” is no different with a sleek cladded and clear Amara Blu-ray case that’s subtle in showing less but feeling more on the cover art, opposite of the reverse side that houses a classical black and white compositional illustration of characters. Inside the 28th release for the label is a 23-page color booklet insert with the appraisal writings of Bill Ackerman, transfer notes, release credits, and acknowledgements. The disc is pressed red, much like the red moon in the film, with a stark black title. The Radiance release is unrated, region free, and has a runtime of 90 minutes. ”Messiah of Evil” uses cult fears, satanic panic, and the loss of ordinary life to penetrate the spirit by way of slowly eating at it. The crawling, creeping dread meanders, much like Artletty who is seemingly held in place at Point Dune, and we’re glued to the engrossing rate of the terror to come orchestrated by the captivations of a once married couple on a fast track toward success.

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!