EVIL Wants to Cut Out Your Unborn Child. “Inside” reviewed! (Second Sight / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order The Limited Edition Copy of “Inside” From Second Sight!

Four months after deadly car crash that claimed the life of her husband, a disheartened and depressed Sarah is 24 hours away from being induced into labor on Christmas day.  Just wanting to be left alone, Sarah is eager to lower her head into her work as a photojournalist of capturing horrifying images that bear a resemblance to her own accident and inviting her editor over later to discuss the work ahead.  As the even lingers into night, an unexpected woman knocks at the door and menacingly tries to break into her house.  As the police arrive to investigate the incident, the woman is nowhere to be found and brush off the incident with little concern, but the woman returns, finds herself inside Sarah’s home, and is determined to cut the baby directly from Sarah’s womb to be her own child.  The tormenting violence becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the two women with an unborn child hanging in the balance. 

Extremely violent and soul biting, “Inside” is one of the more corrosively dehumanizing and destructive films under the French New Extremism, French New Wave Horror, flag.  The 2007 French feature cowritten-and-directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury broke the duo into the industry as formidable and fearless filmmakers, reaching global heights having helmed later in their careers a segment of the popular anthology “ABCs of Death 2” and tackling one of America’s more renowned and bred-and-buttered horror franchises with the chainsaw-wielding cannibal in “Leatherface.”  “Inside” comes after the tremendous success of Alexandre Aja’s “Haute Tension,” opening the flood gates to other extreme French horror films in early 2000s with also “Martyrs” and “Frontier(s).”  La Fabrique de Films and BR Films in association with Canal+ server as production companies with later “Frontier(s)’s” Teddy Percherancier, Frederic Ovcaric, Rodolphe Guglielmi, and “Witching and Bitching’s” Franck Ribière and Vérane Frédiani producing the film known as “À l’intérieur” in France.

Not your typical home invasion ultraviolence, Sarah and who we know as labeled only as The Woman are two vipers circling each other, ready to strike when the guards are let down.  Of course, both have distinct personalities and strategies in the measured way of attack and survival that will impress on viewers preconceived notions about them.  As Sarah, Alysson Paradis, younger sister of Johnny Depp’s wife Vanessa Paradis, is bathed in exposed light, literally and figuratively, as the pinpointed principal woman from the start, battered and bloodied in the opening two car accident, to the end, in the final harrowing moments with the relentless Woman but though Paradis performance reeks greatly of depression and perhaps hopelessness with the death of her husband with a baby soon to be brought into this world without a companion by her side, the momentum shifts towards proposed surface villain of the story, The Woman, in a frightening portrayal of stony guile and grim severity by the established, character provocateur French actress Béatrice Dalle (“The Witches’ Sabbath”) in comparison to Paradis relatively filmic beginnings.  Dalle’s role expresses more physically than vocally with motivation coursing through her eyes, facial expressions, and body language that strikes a transfixing chord, turning Dalle’s the Woman into not only an unpredictable killer but an on-screen killer with a lighted purpose without confounding arbitrary slaughter as the yearning for The Woman’s reason never breaks silence until the shocking end.  François-Régis Marchasson, Nathalie Roussel, Ludovic Berthillot, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Aymen Saïdi, Emmanuel Lanzi, and Dominique Frot (“Among the Living”) fill out “Inside’s” cast.

Most will plainly see and interpret “Inside” as a regular home invasion thriller of a pregnant woman defending herself to survive a mad woman’s unborn baby obsession, and maybe that’s how Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury mostly intends the narrative to be as an overly graphic portrayal of hate and envy that makes us uncontrollable sinners at heart.  However, there’s something inside me to dig deeper below the face value of terrorizing prenatal torment of a young, expecting mother-to-be in what could be construed as a double-edged explanation.  The Woman doesn’t hold a name as she symbolizes all the worst qualities of a mother, such as anger, deceit, and she even smokes, in Sarah that could be considered a split persona or an archetype of duality.  Sarah is cladded in a bright white nightgown while The Woman is dressed all in black from head-to-toe, contrasting a good versus evil, and both want the same child.  The climax does rebuff the split duality theory to an extent but the way the script is written and how the film is shot very much suggest these two women are cleaved from the same whole with a patriarch-less presence and, to add as an interesting note to further examine and contemplate, all the male characters in the story are slain by the same women while the only other female character is brought down by the other in what is a powerful suggestion of split gender and how gender plays a role in their individual lives.

In what can be said to be the most definitive edition of one of the most brutal films ever produced, Second Sight Films’ Limited-Edition boxset of “Inside” is amply packed with goodies, in application and in a tangible sense. Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, double-layered BD50 from the UK label holds tremendous value with not only new special features and neat and attractive corporeal contents but also valued by retaining image fidelity with a gritty 35mm print. Natural grain and low-fi celluloid present the seedy grindhouse overlay that’ll take audiences from the comfy, cozy reality into a dark, anomalous atmosphere with warm muted coloring, lambency, and an overall light general haze suffused into the setting. The cinematography has been purposefully constructed with analog building blocks for a rough look for a rough story. Not technically applicable here but “Inside” is set around Christmas, Christmas eve into Christmas day to be exact, but the choice production dressing exhibits little holiday spirit with a far less ostentation presentation and in how the characters dress the season feels more fall like than winter. The lossless French 5.1 DTS-HD master audio offers plenty of spatial awareness during intense pocket skirmishes inside the quaint two-story home, which is the primary setting of the story. The range provides laceration slits and surgical squishes of blades and scissors while gunfire shocks with an innate immediacy. Even with a mostly prominent inconversable back-and-forth, the dialogue that does come up carries through with robust confidence without overbearing the action or feeling out of synch. Speaking of being in synch, English subtitles are available with the French audio track and are error-free and pace well. Special features include a new audio commentary by The Final Girls’ and film critic Anna Bogutskaya, new audio commentary by editor Elena Lazic of the online magazine outlet Animus, a newly produced interview with writer-directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury First Born as well as newly produced interviews with principal actress Alysson Paradis Labour Pains, producer Franck Ribière A New Extreme, cinematographer Laurent Barès Womb Raider, and stunt coordinator Emmanuel Lanzi Reel Action, with The Birth of a Mother, a Jenn Adams analytical essay focusing on a denied mother’s perspective and the opposite. The limited-edition physical elements of the release add additional magic to the whole package with a rigid, cardboard sleeve case with new artwork by Second Sight retainer artist James Neal. Inside the “Inside” sleeve is a 70-page book with color pictures and thematic essays from film historians and critics Chad Collins, Kat Ellinger, Annie Rose Mahamet, and Hannah Strong. There are also 6-5×7 collector art cards adjacent. The green Blu-ray Amary case houses the same Neal front cover from the rigid sleeve, likely will be the face of the standard release, with the interior disc art having a simple yet effective image of a blade open pair of scissors and psycho-split or -sliced title in red and while. UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language, this Second Sight release is B region locked and has a runtime of 83-minutes.

Last Rites: Second Sight invests in “Inside” and its first-time French directors nearly two decades after initial release with a comprehensive package that not only elevates beyond what many labels sought to get out of the gore-laden entropy, quick cash, but this premier release also has depth and range into the film’s applied style and dives into demystifying the breadth of thought preluding random terror.

Order The Limited Edition Copy of “Inside” From Second Sight!

Conman Bites Off More EVIL Than He Can Chew. “Impulse” reviewed! (Grindhouse Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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As a boy, Matt Stone had an altercation that resulted in the transfixing death of a man at his hands.  As an adult years later after a sanitarium stint, Stone seduces wealthy women as a sophisticated and well-off playboy, using the cultured guise as way to con women out of thousands of dollars, and then murders them when has milked them for all their worth or when their patience for his extravagant and philandering behavior has run it’s course.  When he meets widow Ann Moy, Stone begins his plan of deceit, eyeing not only the single mother for her riches but also Ann’s even more affluent and eccentric best friend Julia.   Stone’s scheme begins to unravel when a strong-arming ex-partner unexpected show up to force into his ploy, his mental instability flares into paranoia and near psychosis, and then there’s rambunctious Tina, Ann’s young daughter who even though doesn’t want Stone to replace her deceased father also witnesses firsthand Stone’s violent transgressions. 

Personally, when William Shatner comes into the conversation about anything, “Star Trek” inevitable pops into the mind first thing.  “Star Trek” and “Captain Kirk” have become not only a household name for Trekkies but also for the non-science fiction laymen who rather get lost in, dare I say, rom-coms.  Shudder.  Diehard horror fans know Shatner is more than just the charismatic space explorer seducing alien women, karate chopping the Gorn, and become inundated with the furry Tribble.  The now 92-year-old Canadian born Shatner has sporadically yet constantly been the star of thrillers for much of his career, such as 1966’s “Incubus,” 1975’s “The Devil’s Rain,” and even the more recent 2019’s “Devil’s Revenge” with fluctuating, polarizing success.  Yet, one of Shatner’s engrossingly more disturbing performances comes from director William Grefé’s (“Mako:  The Jaws of Death”) 1974 schizo-thriller “Impulse.”  Penned by “Blood Mania” and “The Killing Kind’s” Tony Crechales, “Impulse” was filmed in Tampa, Florida under Conquerer Films with Socrates Ballis in his first producing role.

What most don’t realize about William Shatner, from their limited scope of him inside just “Star Trek,” is the man has range and can accomplish more complexity than just being confident space captain.  “Impulse” really drives Shatner to split hairs and be a polygonal persona, one that goes into deep anxiety at the sight of blood or extreme violence, one that can polished and suave in charm and romance, and one that can be ruthless and cunning.  All these traits fit into Shatner’s performance bubble of Matt Stone, chiseling each angle of the traumatized encoded individual into a wolf in sheep’s clothing in constant conflict with himself and those around him.  With the exception of Tina, those around Stone are targets as he swoons Anne Moy (Jennifer Bishop, “Horror of the Blood Monster”) and Julia Marstow (Ruth Roman, “The Baby”) of their money.  Anne and Julie feed into Stone’s false promises and hidden agendas and, as characters, Bishop and Marstow play their diverse friendship with traditional flare that can be easily duped by a stranger from off the street and barely know.  Tina is the only wildcard.  With the look like Heather O’Rourke and a prickly preteen attitude, Kim Nicholas falls in tune with the boy who cried wolf but, in this instance, as the girl who cried wolf as she becomes the aware adolescent privy to a fault to Stone’s dangerous side.  Agitated by the loss of her father and her mother’s effortless slip into a physical relationship, not to forget to mention her impish naughtiness, turns Tina into an incredible source, labeled spiteful, and angry at the world despite her true knowledge of her own world burning down around her with Matt Stone at the wheel.  “Impulse” rounds out the cast with James Dobson (“The Search for the Evil One”), Marcia Knight (“Stanley”), Shatner’s then wife Marcy Lafferty (“Kingdom of the Spiders”), and James Bond’s Odd-Job himself, the former heavy weight wrestler Harold Sakata as the ex-partner Karate Pete crashing Stone’s scam.

William Grefé steers childhood trauma to be the root cause that shapes Matt Stone into a cold and calculating killer.  While not driven to be a rabid dog seeking to kill on sight, the sweet and innocent child only protecting his mother from the potentially rapist hand of a drunken brute had not only been scarred by the incident but also incited his mother to institutionally commit him as if assigning him blameful wrongdoing, extenuating his reality into a woman hating deviant.  And the worst part of it is, and the part that Grefé is able to define and make Stone be sympathetic to audiences, is Stone knows he shouldn’t have been deinstitutionalized, as he more than once referred to his situation as a puppy left out in the middle of the street.  Then, does “Impulse” become more of a tragedy for our principal villain as an unfortunate byproduct of a catastrophic situation, an ill fit mother, and a system that have all let him spiral down to this point in the story?  The only individual to see through his ruse, in fact, is another child, Tina, with a child’s sixth sense in their melting pot of developing emotions.  The social niceties and grown-up cognitive reasoning shield Anne Moy, Julia Marstow, and others, and even to an extent the unscrupulous brute Karate Pete, from Stone’s devious nature and his will to survive at any cost, no matter who he has to kill whether be a lover, former partner, or a little girl. 

The new Grindhouse Releasing, the first through the distribution firm MVD, is a 2-disc Blu-ray release restored from a rare archived, 35mm film elements.  The original negative was unfortunately destroyed and the restored, 4K scanned print comes with a prologue disclaimer that some elements may not be up to quality standards.  However, the print, on the March 12th Blu-ray release now available for pre-order, looks stellar, stored on an AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD50, and presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with only a few noticeable scratches, faint to the eye, in a few brief frames within the natural grain.  Grading can appear monochromatic gray in some exterior scenes but the overall grading pops and are distinct in natural-looking shading. We can also look at Grefé’s direction and Edmund Gibson’s cinematography as just as striking as the picture quality with brazen, worth-while shots that include an interior car shot aimed toward the windshield heading toward a watery grave. The English language original mono track, for a single channel output, clears the bar with room to spare with intelligible, comprehensive dialogue, capturing every word and sentence distinct and syllabized to great detail without too much interference, technically and from layering. Slight popping and background electronic interference never engulfs or take the reins over the layers. Decent spacing and a good range, supported by the Lewis Perles lingering unhinged musical composition, adds value to Shatner and the casts’ performances. Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray also comes with the original mono French soundtrack. English subtitles are optionally available. Loaded with special features with a William Grefé audio commentary, Shatner Between the Treks a Ballyhoo produced documentary regarding Shatner’s various projects before, after, and in-between, Kingdom of the Shatner is a William Shatner live interview in Santa Monica in Oct. ’22 after a Shatner triple feature, Shatner promo shorts, William Grefé shorts “Thumbs,” “Iceman,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Underwood,” a making-of “Impulse,” the 40th anniversary screening at the Tampa Theater with William Grefé post-film discussion, the raw footage of Shatner saving Harold Sakata from accidental lynching with two commentaries from Grefé and Shatner, still gallery, two theatrical trailers, and other trailers from Grindhouse Releasing titles. Also included are bonus Grefé features, including “The Devil’s Sisters that has its own special features with an introduction, Grefé audio commentary, radio spot, still gallery, and a revisiting of the film from the director, plus “The Godmothers” with only an intro by Grefé. Grindhouse Releasing’s “Impulse” is truly a lovefest of the two Bills, Grefé and Shatner, and the label really goes the extra mile with a deluxe edition and restored release with a character and title embossed, fully colorized, and rigid cardboard sleeve with a clear, dual disc push lock Amaray Blu-ray case sporting the originally illustrated, composition cover art that’s also reversible with the same sleave cover design that’s utter madness on printed cardboard. Inside, the discs are locked in on the right, one on top of the other with the top disc snuggly in behind the feature disc in a vertical layout, and both disc arts are rendered with pulpy aesthetics and primary colored, yet darkened feature stills for full fear effect. Opposite in the insert section, a 4×6 illustrated liner portrait of Matt Stone painted by artist Dave Lebow, and a 6-page linear note booklet with color pictures, grindhouse posters, and an essay by Jacques Boyreau. The 87-minute Blu-ray comes region free and is not rated.

Last Rites: The tale of two Bills, Shatner and Grefé, is a match made in heaven, or, better yet, a match made in demented evil with “Impulse” and Grindhouse Releasing stuns with a fully loaded, supersized, and Shatner-stuffed 2-Disc release that puts the film rightfully up on a grandstand pedestal.

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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, When All Through the EVIL “A Creature Was Stirring” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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During the height of a 6-day Christmas blizzard, nurse Faith remains home to care for her mysteriously afflicted daughter Charm.   Faith diligently stays vigilant over her daughter’s inexplicable condition with test after test and maintaining Charm’s constant body temperature between 102 to 104.4 degrees, seemingly stabilizing Charm’s condition.  If the temperature exceeds beyond, Charm transmogrifies into a barbed humanoid creature.  While Faith works on a compound cure, Liz and Kory, a sibling pair of Jesus zealots, break into the house seeking shelter out of the deadly snowstorm.  Faith has no other choice but to let them stay the night until the storm subsides but the appearance of Charm’s at-home care and the young girl’s sudden seizures and erratic behavior sends Liz into savior mode, meddling into more than she can comprehend.  Yet, something else lurks inside the house, between the shadows, and beneath the veil of reality that is way more terrifying. 

Even though Christmas might be long over and all the gaudy and brilliantly lit decorates are stowed away back into Grandma’s attic that doesn’t mean the holiday horror train has to depart the station.  And I’m not talking about no Polar Express with the edging on creepy motion capture animation.  I’m talking about “The Cleansing Hour’s” Damien LeVeck’s Twas the Night Before Christmas-inspired titled “A Creature Was Stirring.”  The equivocal creature feature set in the throes of a raging blizzard and inside a very decked the halls house is penned by debut screenwriter Shannon Wells under the original title of “Good Luck, Nightingale.”   Aimed to be more than what meets the eye, “A Creature Was Stirring” blends the involuntary struggles of drug addiction with potent secretions of supernaturalism.  The U.S. production was shot in Louisville, Kentucky, produced by LeVeck, wife Natalie, as well as “Scare Package” producers Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns with Vladislav Severtsev (“The Bride”) under the production companies Skubalon, 10/09 Films, and Paper Street Pictures. 

Topping the bill as Faith is “This Is Us” star Chrissy Metz, portraying a nurse practitioner and mother desperate on concocting a cure to her daughter’s strange, monstrous manifesting condition.  Metz brings the multifaceted mania between being rock solid and stringent with medical checks and procedures and being able to turn aggressive when the moment calls for it, especially swinging a screwed-spiked baseball bat.  This underlines an underlying secret or hidden predicament viewers will be dipped into and begin processing all the little traces of one-offs that don’t necessary make sense to an already peculiar narrative.  Then, there’s Charm, played by Annalise Basso (“Oculus”), in constant oversight, constantly mutable, and urging to constantly be free from her mother’s impervious iron grip to lighten up.   Basso retains angsty opposition while tossing moments of reflective consideration for her mother and for herself, disquieting the teetering tranquility when Liz and Kory come into play.  Respectively played by “Halloween” ‘07’s Scout Taylor-Compton and “Stake Land’s” Connor Paolo, siblings Liz and Kory stir the pot that’s slowly simmering to a boil as one religious dogmatist and one eager to break the constraints of his sister’s purity with sex and drugs complicate the strained mother-daughter relationship with their intrinsic quirks that expose a deeper, rooted-to-reality problem.  The now generational scream queen Compton dons colorful dreads and a large Messiah back tattoo amongst a high and mighty attitude while Paolo can be praised for the sarcasm brought out from the scripted dialogue.  Each of the four principals are inherently different and clash, in a good way, to provoke complications. 

Drug addiction has infiltrated horror years ago and have been the basis of many notable films such as Abel Ferrara’s “The Addiction,” Larry Fessenden’s “Habit,” and Frank Henelotter’s “Brain Damage” to name a few from the massive lot.  “A Creature Was Stirring” taps into that same vein as LeVeck’s injects and shoots up his own interpretation of horrors with withdrawals.  Long time addicts suffer through agonizing, powerful withdrawals that screenwriter Shannon Wells incorporates symptomatically with a figurative approach and while Wells’ story invokes colorfully rich characters and enigmatic tale of terror, brought to life by LeVeck’s vibrantly warm and glow Christmas adorned and atmospheric house, the finished feature, that really has nothing to do with Christmas oddly enough, feels uneven when revealing the irony of surprise doesn’t become catchall illumination.   The most ambiguous part about the tale is the spiny-signified creature, a mutated, zoomorphic porcupine of sorts, to represent ferocity of the withdrawn drug with its hypodermic needle-like defense mechanism and malevolence nature.  The shadowy man-thing is given such a threadbare association between Charm’s anecdotal encounter with large rodent and its manifestation metamorphosis into the fold that the hostile has hardly any staying power as a villain and, like a rodent, really does feel just like a mouse was stirring as it scurries arbitrarily throughout the house but not all is negative as there are scenes that make you go holy crap when recollecting character and creature interactive moments that suddenly click and make sense, often coinciding and juxtaposed against really neat interior cinematography bathed in mixture of hard light and soft glows. 

Well Go USA Entertainment presents “A Creature Was Stirring” on a high-definition Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 has soft illumination but a grading design that’s befits the ’tis the season paradigm with the primary color warmth radiating out from Christmas lights strung up around the house and the beaming brilliance of white battery-operated light-up decorations. Between the crude adornment lighting, some lighter translucent gels, and with a splash of black-and-white, Alexander Chinnic cinematography, presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1, resembles a rave clad fitting into the drug theme as an echo of the one character’s pill-popping, molly-dropping past. Details become diffused by the varying, indiscriminate incandescence and shadowy fields that play into the creature’s tenebrific threat, but those same shadows are often deep without posterization. The English 5.1 DTS-HD master audio achieves the goal of the very title of something stirring inside creating rustling movements and spiny-shifting clacking, coursing through the back and side channels and maintaining an even keeled LFE. Space awareness is key for close quartered tension and that’s rendered well in the design. Dialogue comes off without a hitch and is elevated above the rest of the tracks with no issues with compression faults or a fractured recording. English SDH subtitles are available. Like most Well Go USA releases, “A Creature Was Stirring” shoulders only Well Go USA preview trailers with no real bonus features of its own in the semi-static main menu but what we do get is a better than modest laid out standard Amaray Blu-ray package with a lightly titled embossed cardboard O-slipcover and on the back two different texture types, a polaroid slick abutted against the smooth cardboard. Image design is a greatly detailed silhouette of the porcupine creature looming over the house. The same image is also on the Blu-ray cover with a simple red-beaded or red-string light encircling the title on the disc. There is no insert inside. Rated R for violence, bloody images, drug context, language, and some sexual suggestion, the 96-minute Blu-ray comes region A locked. 

Last Rites: Chrissy Metz battling a deformative disease, drug addiction, an angsty teen, two home invasive siblings, and a large porcupine monstrosity all in the name of “A Creature Was Stirring” is the prickly cold turkey suspenser this side of the New Year.  

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Killed by Your Monstrous, EVIL Twin Set on Repeat. “Island Escape” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Island Escape” Available Here at Amazon.com

Chase, a washed up mercenary with touch of amnesia regarding his past, is hired to round out a six-person team for a rescue mission on the Isle of Grand Manan where a top secret TSL research facility has gone dark and a high-level CEO’s daughter has gone missing.  Ordered to retrieve the daughter inside a 48-hour window, the team arrives on the seemingly deserted island to find multiple dead scientists having been torn to shreds.  The team soon learns they’re not alone when attacked by bigger, aggressive, monstrous versions of themselves.  Unable to believe their eyes, the one scientist left on the island has determined they’ve been trapped inside an encircling wormhole that resets the island and it’s inhabitants every 3 days, turning those left alive after the third day into these humongous, blood-hungry creatures.  With the mission quickly dissolution, it’s quickly being pieced together that the rescuing mercenaries are the ones who actually need rescuing and their only way to escape would nearly destroy them all.

I’ve said this once before and I’ll say it again.  Weaving wormholes, time loops, time travel, and the like into a narrative is a tricky, tricky business.  Bending time and space can calamitously collapse a story so bad that every internet warrior and science fiction nerd, including myself, will pick apart and ridicule the film until the end of time, but if the portent collapse can be averted and little-to-no complaints with the time travel aspect of the story can go unscathed for a better part of the runtime, then the power of the multi-dimensional space time continuum can be magical and enthralling.  Writer-director Bruce Wemple (“Altered Hours,” “My Best Friend’s Dead”) wraps his hand around a wormhole-driven action-horror “Island Escape” to grasp ahold of the unruly concept of time.   The Traverse Terror production, a division of producers Cole Payne and Mason Dwinell’s Traverse Media in association with Wemple’s 377 Films, and presented and produced by Patrick Ewald’s Dread Central, “Island Escape” rounds out the producer set with Vincent Conroy.

Bruce Wemple carries with him a cast entourage, a staple of actors who have worked years with the filmmaker through a number of project.  “Island Escape” is no different as Wemple signs aboard his trusted troupe to tackle the terror on TLS island with a rescue gone wormhole wrong.  The story has a trifold focus Chase (James Liddell, “Hell House LLC Origins:  The Carmichael Manor”) as the washed up gun for hire with memory loss, Addison (Ariella Mastroianni, “My Best Friend’s Dead”) as team lead and recruit of the Isle of Gran Manan mission, and Russ (Grant Schumacher, “My Best Friend’s Dead”) as the dithery team member not in Chase’s good graces based of fragmented memories of a failed mission.  Between the three characters there lies a fleeting tautness that’s not tremendous carried out as expected from initial introductions.  Instances such as Chase expressing his distrust for Russ never has the tension reach open air in any time they’re together or in the case of Addison as a melancholic memory for Chase that eventually evolves into mid-misison romance that’s more spontaneous than building momentum to in the first and second act.  The undercooked characters fail to establish boundaries, positions, and progressing or regressing dynamics and arcs.  There’s more headway with supporting staff in Tag, a self-penancing father doing dirty, dangerous work to support his young daughter and this consistently shows throughout his screen span, hitting upon the nerve of a father trying his best for the sake of his child.  The cast rounds out with a handful more of mercenaries and scientists to become minced meat by their devilish doppelgangers with Chris Cimperman (“First Contact”), Michael L. Parker (“First Contact”), Andrew Gombas (“The Tomorrow Job”), William Champion (“The Tomorrow Job”), and the feature length debut of Renee Gagner filling those roles. 

Wormholes.  The suspended openings in space let the Dominion race invade Star Fleet in the Alpha Quadrant of “Deep Space Nine,” dropped a fiery plane engine on top of the titular character “Donnie Darko,” and brought back something alien and terribly evil in the titular ship “Event Horizon.”  For Bruce Wemple and his “Island Escape,” wormholes have become more earthbound thanks to a shady research corporation delving into dangerous methods and unscrupulous science practices for the go-to cover up slogan of a better world tomorrow.  While Wemple spins an intriguing yarn needled quick to be full of cankerous clones coming from all corners of the island to attack their uncorrupted selves while trying to survive and flee, the filmmaker skip stitches during his knitting of a tight narrative, fashioning an uneven story that can’t quite get the pattern right for in some of the more restlessly difficult areas of trouble island.  Fleshing out Chase’s blank slate produces no reason to light, Russ’s lack of motivation in divulging life-and-death information, the deep dive into Island experiments fall to the wayside, the CEO’s daughter seemingly dead to all of a sudden be alive, and I could go on with all the loose ends that kneecap the better parts of story, such as the creature action and the wormhole aspect, but the fact won’t escape that there’s a mishandling of the island’s treacherous overgrowth that’s severely underplayed and the epic scale Wemple tries to impress is torpedoed by omitted small cogs that turn the bigger, weight-bearing gears. 

Dread presents Island Escape onto a high-definition Blu-ray distributed by Epic Pictures.  The AVC encoded, 1080pm, BD25, presenting the film in an anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio, is a slurry of personal style and cinematography issues.  Capacity-wise, not a ton of wall-bearing issues that would make the visuals crumble; a few fleeting areas of dark side banding and quick movement aliasing pop up occasionally.  Where most of the issues stem are stylistically with poor VFX compositions that stymie any high-action utile climaxes.  The light pink/fuchsia grading replaces much of the island’s, or island-like setting’s, innate green foliage for a broad one-tone that has an adverse effect of unnaturally darkening the characters.  Two English audio options are available to select:  a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Stereo 2.0.  Both lossy formats offer what this particular films needs, a fast and loose sufficient mix that gets the job done without causing too many waves.  Most of the dialogue has a ADR pretense that I would take a wild guess and say is more a sound design issue of not creating space in the depth field.  Each character sound to be on the same audio plane that forces a full-on push of dialogue right to the front of the audio layering that makes ever channel in the 5.1 the same.  Ambience Foley is harshly isolated from other tracks so if a character is walking through the forest, you hear nothing else but the lonely crunching the tree litter that doesn’t mesh with onscreen movements.  With most digital recording, no interference and damage flaws are present.  Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available.  Special features include a roundtable commentary with writer-director Bruce Wemple at the helm with most of the cast speaking through Zoom or some kind of video chat program.  In addition, the commentary is greatly colorful with more jokes and jabs at one another and at themselves that reflect how much of a good time they have working with each other on this film and previous Wemple credits.  Also included in the special features are a few deleted scenes, the making of “Island Escape,” feature trailer, and other Dread presented film trailers.  Like most Epic Releasing products, a standard Blu-ray Amaray case displays an intriguing cover art for Dread’s 47th at-home title with a wormhole opening to an skull-faced Island and a helicopter and four soldiers walking toward it.  Disc art renders the same image and there’s no insert included opposite side of the case.  With a region free playback, “Island Escape” has a runtime of 86-minutes and is not rated. 

Last Rites:  The haphazardly executed science-fictional survival film “Island Escape” has good plot bones underneath the shambled edifice of an ambitious façade with only decent monster mayhem and creature effects dwelling inside. 

“Island Escape” Available Here at Amazon.com

This One Has the EVIL Touch! “The Hand” reviewed! (Synergetic / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Hand” Pops Onto DVD at Amazon! Click Here to Purchase.

After a night of heavy drinking, Bong-soo wakes up from a strange nightmare.  The nightmare continues when he habitually walks into the bathroom and discovers a grotesque hand sticking up and out of the toilet bowl.  The confused yet calm Bong-soo wakes his wife who passes out at the sight after the hand twitches right in front of them.  Bong-soo calls 911 to report the strange occurrence and when his residence’s security guard and the dispatched EMTs check out the scene and see his wife passed out on the floor and a supposed severed hand sticking out of the toilet, the unbelievable scenario spirals into suspicion and Bong-soo is detained for suspected gruesome acts of foul play, but when the hand violent moves again and the bathroom door suddenly becomes stuck, those left standing, out of the hand’s deadly reach, are left with only toiletries at their disposal to do battle against the a force their unable to flush.

Preying on one of the more irrational fears that something will slither up the toilet while you make the business, “The Hand” extends that fear with a supernatural startlement.  Shot in 2020 but released in 2023, “The Hand,” or “The Hand:  Attack of the Things” is to the degree of a ghostly-demonic thriller sprinkled with dry humor from South Korea by writer-director Choi Yun-ho, claustrophobically shot inside an apartment bathroom which, and let’s be being honest, is roomier than most bathrooms in two-story houses.  Toilet horror is a subgenre that’s not everyone’s cup of eau de toilette but has resiliently found a niche audience and continues to live quietly in the indie shadows, such as with Evan Jacob’s “Death Toilet” films, Matthew Mark Hunter’s “Killer Poop” franchise, and the Asian market, specifically, has an interest in potty horror-humor, “Zombie Ass:  Toilet of the Dead” instantly comes to mind.  However, the absurdity of these titles doesn’t infect Choi Yun-ho’s less feces-filled horror, focusing more on the curled, demonically-skinned hand from out of the toilet.  “The Hand” is a feature presented by Korea Creative Content Agency and Inoi Media and a production of Spooky House, and R202 studio.

With an intimate setting comes an intimate cast to do battle with the mysteriously unknown monstrous hand.  Lee Jae-won is up to the task, or, well, placidly taking in the situation with subtle caution, as the expressionless alcoholic husband Bong-soo.  The regular Korean television actor infiltrates into his first leading man feature, or perhaps barely a feature with a film runtime of under 60-minutes, tackling close-quarter dynamics and a computer-generated thing with finger fingers, elongated fingernails, and a reach that turns the already compact bathroom into practically the size of a coat closet.  Considering the mention of his drinking problem more than once, Bong-soo’s alcoholism isn’t one of the more centric elements, especially at the chagrin of his wife Joohee (Jeong Seo-ha) to create a dynamic hurdle to arc over.  Once the building security guard (Soo-ho Ahn) and 3-person 911 team, with Park Sang-wook portraying lead paramedic, the energy devolves to a humorous suspicion of Bong-soo and the pigeon-hearted presence of the lead paramedic as the two men ever so lightly buttheads in a confounding position and through the progression of the ordeal, the squabbling pair form along the way a bond out of insta-desperation.  When the wife finally revives, another breakthrough moment between Bong-soo and his wife becomes realized that they’ll never take each other for granted again as they do slow motion poses and battles with an army of apartment wall-protruding hands who carry a deadly touch.  The jagged line graph tone maintains a comedic constant right through the heart of “The Hand” that lets the characters sway freely in various complexions without jarring their principles too flippantly. 

The titular hand is a fully operational character in itself.  A complete CGI mockup straight from the backstory sewers of Hell, conceived from a threadbare anecdote of a woman found dead in a nearby sewer tunnel with her arm missing a few days prior told by the paramedic leader.  That arm, with gnarled hand attached, is thought and assumed to be the same wretched one sticking ominously straight up and out from the toilet bowl.  Texturally, the synthetically composited hand looks pretty darn good with barely a trace of smoothed over plastic-splash veneer.  These scenes are also intermixed with a rubber hand cast with obvious contrast against the CGI hand.  That is until the arm extends feet beyond its chamber pot dwelling to tightly grip unsuspecting prey, like a crocodile lying in wait.  When in more a realistic scale, the hand’s movements are tremendously naturally looking with the help of green-suited animator and between appearance and mobility, the captured result, though miniscule in size appropriate for the indie film, has realistic attraction that edges “The Hand” out of the absurdity of circumstances and into more thrilling territory while still focus lit by comedic lighting.  The characters themselves are the more farcical models in comparison with representatives often aloof or arrogantly confident with ostentation as terror responses straddling between nonsensical and pragmaticism.  

“The Hand” arrives onto DVD home video from Synergetic, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio on a MPEG2 encoded, standard definition, DVD5.  Decoding at a fairly high compression rate of 7 to 8Mbps, image quality has a fair amount of detail and color saturation from off the lesser disc capacity.  Facial details can appear soft throughout, sometime blotchy or waxy that fuses the contours and skin without delineation, and the CGI hand, though textured nicely, can have an early day video game blockiness about it in a handful of scenes.  The surround locations, such as bathroom and apartment, are hue balanced and display distinct visual variation.  The Korean Dolby Digital 2.0 mix is the only audio option available that comes with burned in English subtitles.  Dialogue renders over clearly inside the natural digital recording and prominent amongst the rest of the mix, isolating the changing levels of inflections and tones of what the moment calls for.  The English subtitles synch consistently with the action, but there are spot grammatical errors.  Aside from the play and chapter menu selection on the static menu, there are no selectable bonus features.  The after credits contains how the CGI scenes are composited together so stay tuned after the movie.  The scroll-like artwork with a monstrous hand, illustrated with a mock age-fading, is really neat visually and well-done.  Inside the bendy Amary case is just the disc with the same artwork in concise form.  With the region free playback, the Synergetic release runs at 62 minutes and, assumingly, comes unrated, as the rating is not listed on the back cover.

Last Rites:  Comedy and horror create stationary white-knuckle tension in “The Hand” despite not reining in a tightfisted backstory on the hand itself which ultimately turns the five fingered paw into more of a marginal footnote. 

“The Hand” Pops Onto DVD at Amazon! Click Here to Purchase.