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Magnetism Will Separate the EVIL from the Rest of You! “Black Circle” reviewed! (Synapse Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Cosmic horror is the “Black Circle.”  2-Disc Blu-ray/CD on Amazon!

After Isa manages to clean up her life and obtain a upper management job, she’s eager to share her tremendous focus secret with sister Celeste, a university student hitting a mental wall with an important term paper.  Isa says the key to her success came after cleaning out the belongings of their grandmother’s deceased cousin, where she unearthed a record LP on magnetism produced decades ago by a master of the craft.  Celeste is instructed to listen to the LP’s backside right before going to sleep with the promise of her life changing for the better.  After setting the needle, Celeste wakes up next morning feeling unburdened by the challenges ahead and is able to knock out her paper in one day, but she senses another presence following her, watching her, and having vivid dreams of a monstrous double of herself from being inside what the LP calls the black circle.  Shortly after, Isa has disappeared, exiting her new job with erratic and paranoid behavior, only to resurface on Celeste’s doorstop ranting about LP’s frighteningly powerful suggestion and that she’s being followed by someone driving her car.  The sisters track down Lena, creator of the LP and master of magnetism, where they also meet a pair of young psychics who explain the unforeseen, accidental harmful side effects of the LP she thought were all destroyed.  Lena agrees to save the sisters who are faced with losing themselves from themselves. 

Hypnotism has diminutively entranced storytelling, scratching only a limited surface of films with only a few being widely known, such has “Office Space,” “Stir of Echoes,” or “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” to name a select few recognizable titles.  To further hypnotism into obscurity, a similar spellbinding field is introduced by filmmaker Adrian Garcia Bogliano.  The Spanish writer-and-director of “Here Comes the Devil” and “Come Play with Me” chills us with a cosmically laced and existentialism albatross with his 2018 “Black Circle.”  The Swedish production, natively titled “Svart cirkel,” pulls loose inspiration from the often-controversial works of German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, as in mesmerize, who first coined animal magnetism as an invisible force within the human body that can be manipulated by skilled magnetizer.  “Black Circle” is produced by Bo and Rickard Gramfors and Bogliano’s longtime collaborator Andrea Quiroz within a conglomerate of production companies that include Klubb Super 8, Njuta Films, Salto de Fe Films, and Evilinski Productions.

Felice Jankell (“The Bunker Game”) and Erica Midfjäll play the two sisters, Celeste and Isa, embroiled in magnetism bad luck happening up on an old of circ 1970s-1980s LP in today’s age.  There’s quite a bit of tension between the two sisters who are not conjoined at the hip like most close-in-age siblings as they battle their own personal demons that are only talked about rather than exhibited.  Yet, we get the sense of their daily struggles through Jankell’s body language for Celeste and the recollecting conversations both sisters have regarding Isa’s troubles keeping glued together and those existential problems are what connects them, or rather what connect us all as sentient beings, making the characters relatable.  Isa exposes Celeste to the LP in hopes to help Celese regain control over her life but what ensues is not only a weight lifted off her capacity to overcome but also an underlining fear of being followed, watched, and frightened by grotesque dreams of herself in a monstrous form.  At this point, Isa and Celeste are experience parallel psychosis spurred by the record that leads them, and us, to the headliner of film, genre icon Christina Lindberg   The once sweet-faced Swedish brunette, who once donned an eyepatch and took a shotgun to her rapists in the role of Madeleine in “Thriller:  A Cruel Picture” and who once debuted as a 16-year-old virginial maiden in the sexploitation “Maid in Sweden,” has now grown up to become a woman basking in the essence of power and control at all times with Lena, a magnetism expert attempting to rectify unintended mistakes distributing a soul separating, charmed-grooved vinyl from decades earlier.  Lena has rich history that’s dropped in segments from the moment she’s introduced on screen, almost immediately displaying her limitless power on two young, intrusive psychics (Johan Palm and Hanna Asp) who enter her home by the summoning Supreme, an exterior planed creature who supervises the psychic realm.  Performances are incredible skintight as actor brings an elevated show for their individual role, including the rest of the supporting cast in Hans Sandqvist, Iwa Boman, Inger Nilsson, and Erica Midfjäll’s twin sister, Hanna, to sell the “Black Circle’s” premise and promise more convincingly terrifying.

If you were forced to only see one indie contemporary release this year, “Black Circle’ should be it.  Bogliano’s “Black Circle” doesn’t dazzle with a ton of effects nor is production value or exotic and grand set locations applied to lure in viewers, but what Bogliano does do well, and what ultimately instills a fascinating story, is the well-written script, character developments, and the subtle effects that bore a fear of the unknown dread persistently and consistently throughout.  Bogliano delivers a unique story sold on the rarity of proto-hypnosis with a premise fashioned around the development of his own mythos of psychic realm rules and beings. Best part about Bogliano’s piece of the macrocosmos is the way he chapters the narrative, ushering viewers gently and with explanation inside a context construction that uses phantasmagorical visuals and voice over narration to interpret magnetism jargon or to provide inside to setup the next chapter. This processing style of breaking up the acts accentuates, or offsets, the rather raw Dario Goldgel cinematography of the reality story, turning “Black Circle” in pedagogic inside into the basis of the wildly scrutinized, often criticized, hypnosis. What’s also neat about “Black Circle’s” story is the lack of a clearcut antagonist. Neither Lena, the two psychics, or even the monolithic, fazing Supreme serve as opposition against the two sisters but, in a twist of the tale, the sisters are actually their own worst enemies with doppelganger trouble in what afflicts us all at one point or another – existence. Yes, “Black Circle” is about the existential encounter that relates to good and evil, a theme of duality done without a tale of twins (or if you want to get technical, “Black Circle” was casted with a set of twins) and involves more with a separation of, what the story calls, an ethereal double that will eventually absorb itself into being the stronger, dominant replacement if the magnetism vinyl continues to be listened to in enough times it will weaken the original, strengthen the evil carbon copy, and there will be no going back.

Become entranced by Adrian Garcia Bagliano’s “Black Circle” now available on a Synapse high-definition Bluray release. The AVC encoded, 1080p, dual-layered BD50, presented in a 2.40:1 to really grab the space of tighter quarters and lengthen the berth, has less transfer complications than let’s say most of Synapse’s catalogue. The digitally recorded video doesn’t require as much remastering as a decades old production on celluloid or videotape, but the narrative does feign video degradation or aging in the more elucidation scenes on magnetism 101. Details are fine and textured, blacks are especially inky and void-encompassing, and no signs of compressions issues with a bitrate average around low-to-mid 30s. The light sepia grading envelopes a welcoming, steely coldness around the characters and their astral plight. The Blu-ray comes with a Swedish DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix and an English dub Dolby Digital 2.0. With being reliant on pulsing waves to match the hypnotic scheme, the backdropped soundtrack adds to the unsettling pensiveness, like the metallic hum of a tuning fork, that never protrudes outright and even into the character’s dialogue space. Not a ton of spacing depth between dialogue and ambient but enough to sate directional awareness and atmosphere. English subtitles are optionally available. Bonus features include an audio commentary with the director, two individual interviews with director Andrea Garcia Bogliano and star Christina Lindberg, both in fluid English, an Inside Black Circle behind the scenes featurette, a still gallery, and the original teaser trailer. Synapse’s release is actually a 2-disc set containing a CD of producer Rickard Gamfors score. Inside the black Blu-ray casing, a red and black insert card with the three faces of main principal characters, the sisters and Lena, in linear composition overtop the black circle with the title underneath. On the backside, the complete 18-piece CD track list complete with instrument and mixing acknowledgements. Also in the insert liner is a 2023 Synapse product catalogue. Front cover art has retro appeal with a black background emphasizing the perfect spiral red and black circle being touched by disembodied and flat matted red hands. The disc itself mirrors the front cover’s spiral but sheens like a vinyl LP but in red and black alternate rings. Dread the duplication, fear the far-side of yourself, when becoming magnetized by magnetism of the underutilized genre that knows no limits and has a plethora of petrifying possibilities inside the “Black Circle.”

Cosmic horror is the “Black Circle.”  2-Disc Blu-ray/CD on Amazon!

Staying in the Closet Can Lead to an EVIL Series of Events! “The Latent Image” reviewed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Out today on DVD “The Latent Image” from Cinesphobia Releasing!

An aspiring novelist isolates himself in a secluded cabin to write his work-on-progress thriller without distractions, especially avoiding he contentious ones with his longtime boyfriend. Working through the night hours on the precipice of a storm, a mystery man drifts into the cabin, injured and claiming car trouble. After letting him stay the night on the couch and knowing he should ask the drifter to leave, the man’s rough allure instills deep desiring dark fantasies to bubble up to the surface that result in keeping his lingering presence around while also the experience doubles as subject inspiration for his novel. Yet, there’s something off about his unexpected and unusual visitor that lends to curiosity into what’s being hidden or being unsaid. The drifter’s trunk becomes an object of obsession that turns into wild speculation. Fear and fantasy collide into an explosive and destructive cat-and-mouse game of downlow and deadly secrets.

Based on the 2019 short film of the same title, writer-director Alexander McGregor Birrell (“Braincell,” “Sleepaway Slasher”), alongside co-writer and star Joshua Tonks, return to “The Latent Image” for a 2022 full script treatment to flesh out a fleshy grass isn’t always greener on the other side homoerotic thriller.  “The Latent Image” is Birrell’s third feature length film of essentially is Joshua Tonks inaugural writing and producing credit into the United Kingdom production that clashes tantalizing and dangerous one-time temptations with the safety and security of routine and longevity woven out of being inside a complicated gay relationship that stings with old systematic-induced worries and consequences.  Latent Image defines as an exposed picture or film not yet developed and Birrell and Tonks use that to purposely shield viewers from the utmost truth until the petrifying picture is clear.  Latent Image LLC in association with the queer community storytelling serving June Gloom Productions are the picture’s production handlers with the latter company’s Brandon Kirby and Michael Varrati as executive producers and Tonks and Birrell co-producing their debut feature collaboration.

Being Joshua Tonks’s grandstand into his first feature production and as the lead character, the British-born, Vancouver film school-trained actor reprises his short film part with only two significant differences:  one being a principal name change from Robert to Ben and the other in providing Ben with more substantial backstory in the form of reveries or creative abstractions of a linear trickster narrative.  Ben’s old school, a reflection seen through his love for old photography without a display screen, his typewriting of the novel, and filming on celluloid film stock with a Super 8 camera.  This affinity for the antiquated matches his sexual stigmas, a flaw that shepherds in more harm than good.  Tonks readily handles Ben’s technological quirks as well as deepen his character’s philandering fantasy life with sexual daydream and night terror trances of being pursued, abused, and enjoying it.  Tonks works off the more indelicate stranger-danger of fellow Vancouver film school graduate Jay Clift.  Long hair, leather jacket, rugged approach, Clift in the role simply known as The Man portrays patience as weapon to wield to win over the quasi confidence and trust of the lonely and relationship confused novelist with an active imagination, a deadly combination to be caught with your pants down.  Clift becomes the character interloper in Ben’s life in more ways than one, some more subtle than others, and equivocally provides baited lure to either seduce the novelists or setup him for a fate far worse.  To complicate matters, Ben’s boyfriend, who he has a current agitated relationship with and viewers will initially think is safe and cozy back at their abode, will eventually enter the picture with newcomer William Tippery in the role to complete the all-male, three-man cast.

“The Latent Image” plotline doesn’t justify Birrell’s picture as anything else but another stranger showing up at cabin in the woods thriller.  However, beyond the shallows of the film’s surface level tension are deeper waters surrounding Ben’s parting of pathways.  The novelist not only struggles to conjure up a decent spinetingling narrative, but he also struggles personally with an uncertainty of where he fits into his relationship with at-home boyfriend Jamie and with this new, dark fella wandering into the cabin in rake portance.  From the beginning, Birrell and Tonks often visits Ben’s unconscious chimera but also often feels very real in its merge of reality and fantasy of what Ben’s sometimes wishes would happen, but don’t expect this thriller to be a based in psychosis.  “The Latent Image” is not a mental health movie of one man’s isolation snaps his baseline reality.  That would have overdone, overcooked, and overserved with stale bread and flat soda.  What “The Latent Image” taps into is not the age-old tale of a drifter’s in doubt motivations but rather a fear of being found out or fear of oneself when they themselves are unsure of who they are as a person and that can be a scary thought to let the imagination run wild. 

“The Latent Image” lands a debut distribution deal with the Philadelphia based Cinephobia Releasing.  The single layer DVD, arriving on retail shelves September 12th, is a compressed MPEG presented in anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio.  Between the use of anamorphic lens, split lens, Super 8 reverse stock, and a ton of mood lighting, “The Latent Image” really pops cinematically with a variety of visuals and looks that can induce a breadth of emotions.  For a DVD presentation in an age where Hi-Def continues to the upward climb, the Cinephobia Releasing has tremendous sharpness and detail inside and out of the fuzzy warmth and often the vividly brilliant, focused lighting that induce back and front shadowing, decoding at average of 8 to 9 Mbps that eliminates any prospect of compression complications.  The English audio options include a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a Dolby Digital 2.0.  The 5.1 trumps the 2.0 In offering much environmental elements of rustled foliage and depth of character actions.  Dialogue conveys strongly, securing its spot Infront of the other tracks where depth allows.  English optional closed caption subtitles are available in the setup menu.  Special features include an audio commentary with director Alexander McGregor Birrell and stars Joshua Tonks and William Tippery going over their mindset of the characters, background, and visual and stylistic choices in an enlightening discourse, the 2019 short film “The Latent Image,” the audio commentary for the short featuring just Birrell, and other Cinephobia Releasing trailers.  The 83-minute film is released not rated and has region 1 layback, untested for other regions.  Well executed indie suspenser with a subtext clout to one’s essential nature and a smartly planned story has exposed “The Latent Image” as impressively top-notch and worth seeing. 

Out today on DVD “The Latent Image” from Cinesphobia Releasing!

When Trying to be Good, EVIL Will Always Pull You Back In! “Streets of Darkness” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Just Look at this “Streets of Darkness” Cover!  It’s a Must Own!  

After avenging the death of his friend and sister, Danny completed his prison stint and was released back into his Miami neighborhood to restart his life.  Looking to stay clean of violence, Danny doesn’t want to connect himself to any crime organization but when a cruel Cuban drug lord assaults his mother due to his father’s past transgressions, Danny’s seek for solitude drives him into the embracing arms of the Italian mafia who also has a grudge against their rival drug trader.  One hit leads to another and Danny finds himself back in the criminal world rising quickly to become one of the mafia’s profitable enforcers.  Danny has everything he’s ever wanted – money, respect, and the woman of his dreams – but when a pre-affiliation sexual tussle with one of the crime boss’s young vixens come to light, a division between the family turns the tide on Danny’s uncertain future when a target is placed on his back.

If you’re looking for that Miami Vice feel of a movie with hot locations, hot bods, and hot criminal action, look no further with “Streets of Darkness” having been rightly resurrected from video obscurity, lost to Father Time since the mid-1990s.  The 1995 crime thriller comes from director James Ingrassia who hasn’t cinematically published a movie since his double billed features of 1988 – a surfing themed sex comedy entitled “Hot Splash” and an island survival slasher in “Kiss of the Serpent.”  “Streets of Darkness,” paying titular tribute to and cashing in on perhaps the popular stage fighting game “Streets of Rage,” is also a direct sequel to “Just a Chance” of 1992, a semi-biographical story of Danny’s descent into the depths of criminal syndicates told anecdotally while in his incarceration  Both stories are the pen presentation of Creative Productions’ Vincent LaRusso, the creative wordsmith, producer, and star of both films trying to capitalize on the market’s desire for toned bodies and gang dramas with treachery and murder. 

Vincent LaRusso isn’t just the leading man of his own film, he’s also a workout enthusiast that helped his own cause in creating a chiseled mafioso who’s smooth with women and even smoother laying down criminal keystones to the way he runs operations.  Yet, LaRusso’s character Danny can often talk-the-talk but can’t seemingly walk-the-walk with his own principles as he quickly turns against his own rules of operations by joining the mafia with dollar signs in his eyes after repeating himself, at least three times, noting how he doesn’t want to be attached to anyone or anything.  Repeating himself also becomes a running motif, or maybe a running joke, as much of LaRusso’s script recycles a ton of aforementioned material.  You can even make “Streets of Darkness” a drinking game on how many times Danny, or any character in general, says, “you understand me?”  If you do make it a drinking game, the possibility of being drunk half-hour in is very possible.  You’ve been forewarned.  Commingle the script spiraling with LaRusso’s one note performance and what churns out only scratches the surface of potential in what could have been a lucrative gem of indie filmmaking.   Instead, what’s achieved is a lifeless centric character in the midst of decent supporting players, such as Armand Cassis as the ruthless Cuban Hector, Jerry Babij as a cuckold crime boss, and Christine Jackobi as the cuckolding and scorned Diabolique.  Speaking in regard to the latter’s veneer that LaRusso aims for, “Streets of Darkness” offers that sexy, supermodel, Andy Sidaris-type of female principals, including a Hawaiian Tropic contestant.  Monique Lis and Jennifer Cole (a Miss Hawaiian Tropic), along with Christine Jackobi, fit that busty and beautiful bill that solidifies that beach body and vice viscera.  “Streets of Darkness” fill out with Joseph Cappello, Peter Gaines, Stanley Miller, Frank Palanza, Gennaro Russilo, Louisette Geiss, Lou Rebino, Angelo Maldonado, and Patrick Berry.

LaRusso’s “Just a Chance” was a made for CTN, the Christian Television Network, to deliver a religious message of strength of endurance and overcoming the cause-and-effect in turning toward a life of violence and crime.  For the sequel, LaRusso wanted to embark on a more entertaining product for the public with edgier content, hence the naked women and graphic violence which most of the Christian community won’t understand, shy away, and definitely wouldn’t fund a financial base.  With a budget doubling “Just a Chance,” LaRusso is able to obtain through private funding a higher production value with areal cigarette boat footage in and around Miami and its waters, decent lighting in a broad and focal sense, camera movement work, variety of locations though many look like hotel rooms, and achieving the overall Miami mise-en-scene cinematography.  For a 90’s indie production, “Streets of Darkness” reaches that particular look of tropical turmoil and drug scene, the perfect beachy bodies, and the complex story of one man’s reluctant return to the savage, dark streets but the picture doesn’t take the elements to the next level beyond other Miami-based gang/cartel movies like “Scarface” or “Cocaine Cowboys” where there’s a continuous blanket of thick aired intensity and explosivity of big shootouts.  “Streets of Darkness” is more expositional and story driven, likely due to budget reasons, to integrate gangster Danny’s plight into our own understanding of this character’s vow to do the right thing but ultimately destines him in the opposite direction.  The editing starts off funky with a clunky fast forward scene that comes around later to then slowly but eventually, level out to a chin high in too deep path of no return from life of crime.

Due to some shady dealings with a corrupt distributor, the Beta SP master was lost but Ron Bonk and SRS Cinema was able to obtain the VHS master tapes for an Apple Hi-Def ProRes digital remastering of “Streets of Darkness” onto DVD.  What results is a beautifully slick and clean appearance of Vincent LaRusso’s vision, especially for a standard definition 480p, sourced almost impeccably from one of the best possible VHS format options, the Beta SP.  Though virtually wear free with no signs of VHS degradation issues, details are generally and expectedly soft presented in the letterbox 1.33:1 full frame but not overwhelming glossy smooth to the point of splotchy or granularly patchy.  Remastered coloring, along with the innate lighting, sell “Streets of Darkness’s” semigloss South Beach brushstroke and achieving LaRusso’s production value desire tenfold.  Audio options only include an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix has been augmented with additional score and soundtrack by Tim Ritter (“Truth or Dare?,” “Killing Spree”) and Toshiyuki Hiraoka (“Clownado,” “Cannibal Claus”).  From the commentary track, a few of original soundtracks had expired copyrights and so additional music was needed to rescore the film but, honestly, the additional pieces delved too much into Tim Ritter’s gore-and-shock territory with heavy low-frequency tones that rattle the eardrums and don’t necessarily scream Miami’s synth-beat rock or Latin flair.  I would have been interested to hear the original music and compare to the newly supplemented release.  However, dialogue protrudes into the forefront with lesser force than normal but still clean, clear, and prominent other than the heavy duty, reverberating bass notes.  There’s slight static feedback throughout but doesn’t hinder the audio senses.  The Brutal special features include a second film, the Vincent LaRusso’s “Just A Chance” along with video commentaries and interviews with both films featuring video discourse between LaRusso, Tim Ritter, and filmmaker Larry Joe Treadway and Ritter and LaRusso only on the audio commentaries.  The bonus content ends with theatrical trailers of both films.  While not chockablock with physical fixings, the SRS release has one of the more amazing cover arts sourced from the original poster elements of a shirtless and ripped Vincent LaRusso in between two model women for the front cover.  Immediately eye-fetching and intriguing, the image is accentuated by SRS’s mock retro designed DVD casing with a round ACTION and BE KIND REWIND stickers and an image bordering encompassment to make the appearance of a VHS cover.  Disc pressed art is the same image but cropped to focus on the three individuals on the front cover.  The not rated film has a runtime of 102 minutes and is region free.  “Streets of Darkness” is a win-win for SRS Cinema and Vincent LaRusso in its newly remastered form that revives the Miami mania even if it’s only for one more heat and beach encore.

Just Look at this “Streets of Darkness” Cover!  It’s a Must Own!  

Only EVIL Can Be Constructive Therapy for EVIL! “Dark Nature” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Battle Your Inner Demons By Battle The Exterior Ones in “Dark Nature” now on Blu-ray!

Joy walks on eggshells around hot-headed and explosive boyfriend Derek.  Almost having been killed by Derek’s eruption into anger one night, Joy manages to flee his wrath for six months.  Long time good friend and weary ally Carmen convinces the haunted Joy to join a therapy group overseen by a psychologist with unconventional healing methods.  One of those methods is backpacking into the mountain wilderness for a therapeutic getaway to face personal fear with three other women who also experience the familiar paralyzing and manifesting symptoms of towering trauma.  Miles away from civilization, the group treks for two days until an unsettling feeling of being watched and their supplies being stolen forces them into a face-to-face with a mysterious influence that reconjures their individual terror through sight and sound, leaving them incapacitated with anxiety.  When realizing the amount of danger mounding against them, the fear-facing trip through the wilderness will put that aspiration to the survivalist test.

“Dark Nature” is a women-led psychological creature feature surrounded by themes of abuse, trauma, and the handling of the psychosomatic stress when at rock bottom and faced with internal, or external, demons figuratively for traditional storytelling and literally for cinematic storytelling.  Calgary filmmaker Berkley Brady writes and helms her first feature length film in 2022 from a storyteller’s collaboration with Tim Cairo, screenwriter of “Lowlife.”  Shot in the copious thicket of the picturesque and idyllic Canadian Rockies that stretch the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, Brady’s scenic beauty parallels a skin deep exterior amongst a character group seemingly okay in the open-air while within the wayward withholding of crises becomes too burdensome to bear alone.  Brady and Michael Peterson co-produce “Dark Nature” under Nika Productions and Peterson Polaris in association with the Indigenous Screen Office and Telefilm Canada in this this Dread presentation, the production company subsidiary of Dread Central, and Tim Cairo, Kalani Dreimanis (“Polaris”), Jason R. Ellis (“Mother, May I?”), Patrick Ewald (“Turbo Kid”), and Katie Page (“The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot”) serving as executive producers.

The cast comprises of five women at the core and one man hovering around the peripheral like a lingering, festering open sore.  At centerstage is Hannah Emily Anderson (“Jigsaw,” “What Keeps You Alive”) in character throes of relationship lamentation and a cracking psyche over the tumultuously violent and rarely passionate ex-boyfriend Derek, played convincingly cynical of his partner by Daniel Arnold (“Even Lambs Have Teeth”).  First meeting Joy, over a stove of a steaming dish and on the phone in an exchange of concerns and pseudo-comforts, audiences will already be in bed with the young woman’s nervous fraught when a sullen Derek steps into the apartment as she tries to appease him with his favorite food and positive inquisitively around his day.  A tense exchange of words turns into a lust entanglement of pre-sex kisses and touches that spirals into a physical aggression that has nothing to do with foreplay or sex.  The abusive opening act sets the tone for Joy’s edgy mindset into the early and middle acts as she’s standoffish and verbally combative and questioning everything about the group’s choice to venture into the wild under the unconventional means of one Dr. Carol Dunnley, casted by an over the years, well-versed television and movie doctor, or authoritative mentoring figure, Kyra Harper (“Hellmington”), with others continuing to rake over an unpleasant past.   Métis raised actress Roseanne Supernault (“Rhymes for Young Ghouls”) joins Helen Belay and “Don’t Say his Name’s” Madison Walsh as the other nature walking companions seeking a renewed lease on life.  While Belay broods in secrecy with a jaggedly defined backstory of a possible abduction or maybe something worse with Tara, Supernault adds a coping comedy mechanism with her former military background that has caused Shaina intense flashbacks.  “Dark Nature” might not be their characters’ exclusive story but certainly they’re components serve a pieces of the psychology behind it as well as fodder for the forest-dwelling fiend as the narrative aims to fragmentally unfold more of Joy’s affliction that not only cull reasons why this trip may or may not be a good idea but also challenges the friendship strength between her and Carmen until Joy can face down and take responsibility for her unprincipled stance on the seared in fear that renders her powerless and controls her.

“Dark Nature’s” adianoeta works excellently to service both the reclusive avoidance in seeking desperately needed help and the sinister presence lurking and stalking through the lush mountain weald.  Yet, audiences will identify more with the latter because like the principal Joy people tend to avoid their own problems and redirect to another pressing issue that has really nothing to do with them or affects those as a whole, turning a person’s dark nature into not a generally relatable theme no matter how intrinsically installed it is into the incorporated picture.  While seemingly sweeping with Joy’s entire circumstances, we’re led to believe the anxious woman remains haunted by her past, her abuser having this hold over her akin to Stockholm syndrome, as while on the trek through the mountainside she can hear his voice, hear the repetitive clicks of his Zippo lighter, and even experience his tight grip around her throat but Brady winds up the narrative with a few vacillating curveballs that pull toward difference directions to swing-and-miss from being squarely hit until the grand reveal of explanation.  Even then, the explanation retains some purposeful vagueness with an antecedent anecdote of an ancient indigenous people once offering sacrifices to a spirit on the very land the group is treading on.  The tale doesn’t offer much detail and certainly isn’t a full-proof explanation of what ensues but adds that comforting layer of setup into what becomes madness erupted from a furtive, cave-dwelling creature shellacked in a black muck and with supernatural abilities of emerging a person’s most personal fear.

A psychological creature feature that offers worse things in the world than one’s own personal demons comes to Blu-ray home video from Dread’s physical distribution partner, Epic Pictures.  The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25, presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, of “Dark Nature” looks undoubted sharp with details even if the color graded is somewhat desaturated.  The decoding of data details nicely around the foliage, skin features, and even in darker scenes with black levels not succumbing to any compression artefacts.  “Dark Nature” has two English audio options with a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo of crisp sound design with a surround the wagon barrage of audio cues casting out through the back channels to denote an autonomic attack when alone in the woods.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and sorted out through the chaos with a perfect depth and reverberation from outside-to-cave-to-cave-to-outside.  An eclectic range is spread-out through the tale from the flashbacks adding explosions and whizzing gunfire to the guttural roars and bush movements of the creature that resemble an enclosing chill of being watched.  “Dark Nature” marks the debut score for the Canadian band Ghostkeeper and while the additional of delicate broodiness sweeps over the images, creating an ominous overhang for much of the picture, I wouldn’t say the score adds to the film’s soul in the subtilty of the low, whispery tones. English subtitles are available.  Special features include an audio commentary track, also hidden within the audio setup, with director Berkley Brady, makeup artist Kyra Macpherson (“Red Letter Day”), and costume designer Jennifer Crighton, a handful of deleted scenes cut for timing, Ghostkeeper stop-motion music video (1.33:1), and an oddly incorporated short film from “Dark Nature’s” editor David Hiatt (“Bloodthirsty”) entitled “Peanut Butter Pals,” a Scooby-Doo mystery solving trio comically and melodramatically tracking down a cave monster, “Dark Nature” trailers with a countdown list of a theatrical, 30-second, and 15-second trailer, and Epic Pictures trailers including “Colonial,” “Satanic Hispanics,” “Tomorrow Job,” “The Lake,” and “Woman of the Photographs.” Physical features are slimmer with a traditional snapper and a rather generic cover art of Joy and Carmen covered in blood superimposed in the foreground of a forest. Disc pressing has the two actresses, still covered in blood, reappear but this time within the jaws of a creature. The region free Blu-ray clocks in at 86 minutes and is not rated. Berkley Brady’s woodland set neurosis knot never says die in the face of adversity no matter the form in the filmmaker’s female-driven debut.

Battle Your Inner Demons By Battle The Exterior Ones in “Dark Nature” now on Blu-ray!

Limited Edition EVIL to the Extreme! “August Underground” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / DVD/Blu-ray Combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received! 

A young farm owner invites his quirky, video-taping friend into the soiled and confined basement of his home where he keeps a nude, young woman gagged and rope bound to a chair, previously been tortured, and covered in her own blood and filth.  Both feeling giddy with excitement over their new plaything, the two sociopaths revel inflicting more torment and pain on the woman while her boyfriend’s mutilated and dead corpse is being dismembered in the next room.  When their basement plaything expires after days of neglect, the two joy killers hit the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes and backroads to continue a merciless killing spree of whomever stands in their path.  Convenient store clerks, hitchhikers, prostitutes, even their tattoo artist and his twin comic book enthusiastic brother are not safe from their chockful of callous carnage and every moment is recorded via videotape for reliving the moment in posterity. 

As far as underground horror goes, Fred Vogel’s “August Underground” is about as extreme and underground as they come and still be recognizable amongst the most casual of horror fandom.  Vogel’s inaugural written-and-directed, pitilessly violent, exploitation begins a direct-to-video trilogy of torture-on-tape with SOV quality, imparting grisly shudders to the unfathomable amount of blank-labeled VHS cassettes through man’s stowage, collecting dust bunnies and remaining unseen over the years to the horrors the magnetic tape just might behold.  What “August Underground” essentially boils down to is a raw day-to-day look of two maniacal serial killers on a free-for-all of a butcher’s market, the shooting locations stretch from the recesses of Vogel’s hometown of Warren, New Jersey and all the way to the surrounding back roads and isolated areas of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Self-produced by Fred Vogel and co-producer John A. Wisniewski, “August Underground” set inaugural voyage on the blood red sea for Vogel’s Toe Tag Productions in 2001.

There is a severe lack of story for Vogel’s debut and that’s no oversight or a sign of omission of a subconscious creativity.  Most normal, everyday people video-record with the intent on not making a feature-length film but rather to capture memories and store them away for another day.  Vogel strives for that realism here where a plot is, for lack of a better word, pointless for the depicted atrocities where the sole purposes is to exhibit dementedness and insanity.  The same can be said about the cast of nameless characters.  The freeform recording does not spout off introductions or make references to monikers to, again, portray as much as organic conversation or realism as possible to further skewer an already gore and violence skewed imagination into thinking what we’re seeing is authentic and inconclusive of its entertainment purpose.  Fred Vogel, under his so-called porno stage name of Peter Mountain, plays the main principal dressed in arrogance and apathy as he’s recorded in a thumbed selection of runtime filmed by an equally bad-natured, sociopathic friend behind the camera, played by a post-release distancing actor under the pseudonym of Allen Peters.  The two complement each other in a Beavis and Butthead friendship kind of way with Vogel in synch with his character’s bloodlust as well as the burly bulk while camera buddy perversely watches, giggling to his friends’ blood shedding exploits.  Their relationship feels like a lonesome outlet to do harm and senseless killing makes the connection firmer, more enjoyable, in the easiest opportunities of a rural area where bored people do evil just to pass the time.  Vogel sets up a series of scenarios rather than plotting acts of a linear story in what becomes an anthology of anarchy that has us climbing down the manhole of maniacal mischief.  Mania is soaked into every inch of “August Underground” and that fits snug and makes warm the scattered story into a much more coagulated coherency.  “August Underground” rounds out the victims, I mean cast, with AnnMarie Reveruzzi, Erika Risovich, Randi Stubbs, Aaron LaBonte, Ben LaBtone, Victoria Jones, Alexis Iris, Stephen Vogel, Dan Friedman, Casey Eganey, Kyle Dealman, and Andy Lauer.

“August Underground” is ugly, nasty, grimy, sordid, perverse, tasteless, callous, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection.  “August Underground” is also unique, bold, unafraid, successful, gory, realistic, practical, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection that’s actually, in its own way, gorgeous.  “August Underground” is all those things and more with its rough-and-ready, extreme exploitation that will be polarizing amongst horror fans and not be a film for everyone’s taste or collection.  Frankly, there are worse underground and extreme horror films out there in the world, but “August Underground,” through the disgusting trices of dismemberment, force feeding of feces, and vomit inducing snuff, has somehow ,at least in this reviewer’s humble opinion, who like in a Dr. Seuss line, has been here, there, and everywhere within the horror spectrum, slipped through the veil of obscurity, having a foot well positioned in the land of the universal acknowledgement where many genre fans putter around with the same old formulas.  The depth of this story is so shallow that digging any deeper into the themes and the possibilities isn’t necessary with its home-made movie facade of people joyfully torturing and killing people being already horrific enough. 

For certain to go out of stock and out of print into physical release obscurity once again, Unearthed Films’ limited-edition collector’s edition of “August Underground” is the 2-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo set to act on right now. The AVC encoded, high definition 1080p, BD50 comes from a MiniDV print, often considered the transitional format from analog and to digital in a tape format with lossy compression. Presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 aspect ratio, don’t expect image quality to be pristinely detailed and sharp as the MiniDV maxes out at 720p resulting in both, standard and Hi-Def formats, having indistinguishable presentations. Resembling the amateur, at-home movie, scaled down tape quality renders ghosting which shapes and details are bleary and the coloring resembles ember or incandescent with a warm, red-and-yellow layer. What we don’t see much of is a ton of tracking, static, or a ton of noticeable interlace but blacks can be prominently spotty with the horizontal bars. The lossless on-board MiniDV English audio is a PCM 2.0 that doesn’t extend beyond the limits of the camera’s microphone, but the clarity fairs well with clean and commanding dialogue with a natural range between the proximitous cameraman and his killing machine star of a friend in front of the camera. Also, equally interchangeable between the physical formats with what’s made to be a rough recording, discernible differences are minute at best. The Blu-ray and DVD have many of the same special features with the Blu-ray containing a few more frills over its format counterpart with a new Dave Parker interviewing Fred Vogel as well as a separate interview with Vogel and Mike Watt of Rue Morgue Magazine, another new interview with Fred Vogel from Severed Cinema Revisiting Infamy. The formats shared bonus content includes never before seen and new material, such as the original screener version of the film that comes with watermark and a slightly different color grading, a new audio commentary by Fred Vogel and Ultra Violent Magazine’s creator Art Ettinger, a new 10 questions with Fred Vogel answering some of the longstanding queries surrounding the film’s realism achievements and behind-the-scenes permissions and achievements, and a new Toe Tag Masterclass that compares storyboards with the screen version. Archived bonus content include audio commentary with Vogel and actors-producers-brothers Aaron and Ben LaBonte, another commentary track with Fred Vogel alone, an audio commentary by the witty, giggly “Killer,” Hammer to the Head closer look at “August Underground,” on location behind-the scenes, a behind-the-brutality of the film, outsiders’ perspective take in a Too Real for Comfort discussion, an introduction by director Fred Vogel, photo gallery, and trailers. The limited-edition collector’s set comes with a cardboard slipcover with a blurry, interlaced still of Vogel’s character wrapping a forearm around a gagged-girl’s throat while peering into the camera, but it’s the clear snapper case’s front cover that’s more developed with a graphic pencil-graphite illustration of the same slipcover image with more visible mutilated skin and visual weapon of human body destruction. Front cover is also reversible with an interlacing black-and-white image of the main killer. Both discs also sport two different art presses with the Blu-ray mirroring the slipcover image while the DVD has nearly the identical position of killer and victim but with a whole new victim. The region A locked edition has a digestible 70-minute runtime and is, of course, not rated. I would never say Unearthed Films has been diluting their pool of extreme underground gore and guts horror, but their “August Underground” release puts the brazen company back on the mondo-macabre map with definitely a too real for comfort twisted depravity and an au naturel sense of debauchery.

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received!