EVIL Has a Sweet Tooth for Children! “The Devil’s Candy” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 14, 2026

“The Devil’s Candy” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Is Now Available from Second Sight Films!

A financially struggling, heavy metal inspired painter buys a bargain country house with an adjacent studio to work toward commissions and to home his wife and daughter in a bigger, lighter space. When an unstable man with a child-like intellect disability arrives at their doorstep, wanting to come home to play his electric axe guitar to drown out the Satanic chants he continues to hear, he becomes the beginning of the family’s nightmare in their new home. The man is a child serial killer, an unwilling agent of the Devil, who believes children are the Devil’s candy and when he can’t muffle out the continuous chanting in his ear, he must obey the commands to supply his master with more hacked up adolescence. A couple of near miss encounters with the painter’s young daughter put the family on edge and into police witness protection but that won’t stop him from coming for her.

Sean Byrne, the Australian filmmaker who debuted with the insane prom queen killer in “The Loved Ones” and who turned Jai Courtney into a shark-obsessed serial killer in “Dangerous Animals,” directed “The Devil’s Candy” in between those two productions and is his only solely U.S. produced film to date. The 2015 film that mirrors the Satanic Panic era with its heavy metal and its unspecified yet strongly suggested 1980’s motif is written by Byrnes to symbolize the contentious efforts to divide family bonds in the best and worst of times with the killer representing the invasive and dangerous wedge when the painting father suddenly develops a muse for his work, losing track of time while working and neglecting his family responsibilities. “The Devils Candy” is produced by Jess Wu and Keith Calder (“You’re Next,” “The Guest”), Chris Harding (“You’re Next,” “The Guest”), and Roxanne Benjamin (“Southbound”) under HanWay Films and in association with Snoot Entertainment.

Ethan Embry is an interesting casting choice to be play principal father Jesse, a father-painter with a heavy metal music edge who becomes possessed to paint disturbing images of upside crosses and children burning. Embry, who has the softest, puppy-dog eyes in the industry, fits remarkably as the likeable Jesse, sporting a long hair wig overtop his scruffy facial hair and athletic and muscular toned body that becomes a character in itself to display his intensity as a normal painter and more so as a possessed painter but never leaning toward being malevolent under the influence of possession, just a bad dad to daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco, “Maps to the Stars”) that jeopardizes their close bond. I found it curious that Shiri Appleby, “The Killing Floor”) is mostly out of the narrative picture as wife Astrid. There are a couple of heart-ot-heart scenes between her and husband Jesse but from the most part, Astrid is absent working across town and leaving much of the family relationship strain in the hands of Zooey and Jesse without Astrid weighing on Jesse’s lapse in judgements: forgetting to pickup Zooey from school, leaving the door open late at night while painting, etc. Astrid is written with too much understanding and not enough mother bear ferocity. My personal favorite supporting actor, who has been around for decades and here has a bigger antagonist role, is Pruitt Taylor Vince finding and exhibiting his inner calling to kill children. “The Identity” and “Mississippi Burning” actor with noticeable nystagmus that moves his eyes involuntarily, mostly side to side, has in his firm grip one of the more subtle yet disturbing characters with layers, struggling with the Devil’s speak commanding his ear and becoming violent went his attempts to subside the viperous, chanting tongue hit roadblocks. “The Devil’s Candy” rounds out the supporting pars with Tony Amendola (“The Curse of La Llorona”), Leland Orser (“Alien Resurrection”), Craig Nigh (“Terror Birds”), Oryan Landa (“Hollow Scream”), Jamie Tisdale (“From Dusk till Dawn: The Series”), Mylinda Royer, Marco Perella, and Sheila Bailey Lucas.

Satan and heavy metal are nearly synonymous in the horror assemblage – Charles Martin Smith’s 1986 “Trick or Treat,” John Fasano’s 1987 “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare,” Jason Howden’s “Deathgasm,” and even “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” blends Hell with Rock ‘n’ Roll! – and all give a villainy credit to the God antithesis known as the Satan. “The Devil’s Candy” is a poster child for the Metal and Satan genre, as part of the dubbed “Metalsploition” or “Rocksploitation.” Yet, the Sean Byrne film plays a different kind of setlist, one that doesn’t slap Satanic right into your face but rather plays to the tune of possible mental illness with a subtle flavor of supernatural forces at work, behind the veil of derangement and delusion. Hell and brimstone, corporeal demons, or any kind of the depths emerging from the fiery pits of the underworld are greatly and purposefully omitted from “The Devil’s Candy” and that is a welcome change from the aforesaid films, grounding this terrifying exchange more onto the fabric reality, as seen in news reports of child kidnapping and murder. This instability doesn’t only apply to the Pruitt Taylor Vince’s Devil whispered, child-killing character but also applies to Embry’s Jesse, a family man with a metal edge who flirts with temptation, tempted to the darker side of metal, by being influenced with a malevolent muse to draw disturbing images and skirting responsibility that threatens the stability of his family, causing trust severing discord. He also toys getting in bed with an artist curator who thrives and lusts after dark, provocative, profane art, with his gallery name being Belial – another name used for Satan in other cultural and religious beliefs. Jesse must resist fame, fortune, and the guile techniques of Satan on Earth, another pointblank theme mentioned in the movie with a televangelist and return to his roots of connecting with his daughter and wife instead of selling his soul, or selling out, to the Devil.

Second Sight Film’s dual format, 2-disc, 4K UHD and Blu-ray set of “The Devil’s Candy” is a tremendous gift to the physical media world. The HVEC encoded, 2160p resolution, BD100 and the AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50 are strikingly peak picture quality for their respective formats. The limited edition contains a new, producer-approved 4K restoration of the original digital print and, while there’s likely not a massive different between the digital master and the restoration, Second Sight’s imaging for the release is superb, nonetheless. Hovering a settled moody and low-key tone, creating an abundance of shadows and underexposure, Simon Chapman’s cinematographer creates the necessary anxiety that nowhere is safe away from a maniac driven by the dark Lord. There’s beauty in the hard contrast with a cooler tone in more lit areas with details coming through greatly in these scenes that warrant them. Skin tones and fabric textures have organic tactile and reflective presence. Both formats are presented in a widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio that gives it a tighter yet lengthier exhibition for the high-def resolution. The English audio on the both discs is an encoded lossless DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and it rocks! Metal is master for the metalsploitation picture with great emphasis on the low-tone and harsh electric guitar strumming while a heavy rock soundtrack, consisting of metal band tracks from Metallica, Goya, Slayer, Pantera, and Machine Head to name a few, is infused with the satanism scenario and Jesse and Zooey’s metalhead lifestyle. Dialogue is clean and clear with prominence above the layers where appropriate, never conflicting with the metal rock. Range and depth play a factor with off-screen action told through key non-diegetic sounds that can almost paint a picture in your head, and this also goes toe-to-toe with the non-diegetic chanting inside the mind/ear of our principal characters because of its omnipresence, which seemingly engulfs the entire space in frame and then some. Optional English subtitles are available. All the special features are encoded on both discs, which is quite unusual for a UHD to have the full list of extras and perhaps suggests a more efficient HVEC compression. These extras include an audio commentary with director Sean Byrne, Into the Fire a new intro interview by director Sean Byrne, new interviews with actor Ethan Embry Those Fragile Things, director of photography Simon Chapman Devil in the Details, editor Andy Canny The Cutting Room, production designer Thomas S. Hammock A Big Step Forward, and Sean Byrne’s short films: “Advantage Satan” and “Work?” Like other limited edition sets from Second Sight Films, “The Devil’s Candy” receives a rigid slipbox with warm illustrated art by graphic artist Huan Do that extends beyond the slip box onto the bi-fold UHD and Blu-ray tall jewel case, a front and center lobby card of six with the rest being images from the film, and the book, a 120-page read of new essays from Aton Bitel, Reyna Cervantes, Becca Johnson, Joe Lipsett, Mary Beth McAndrews, and Zoe Rose Smith. The book also includes production artwork of potential paints, cast and crew credits, and physical media acknowledgements. This is a heavy (metal) set! The UK certified 15 release for strong threat, violence, and language has a region free UHD and a region locked B standard Blu-ray with a runtime on both discs clocking in at 79 minutes.

Last Rites: “The Devil’s Candy” is a hard-rocking, hard-hitting thriller on the cusp of Satanic Panic but submerged fully in dangerous mental illness surrounding the welfare of children.

“The Devil’s Candy” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Is Now Available from Second Sight Films!

Two Out-Of-Town Girls. A Town Full of Depravity. One EVIL Massacree! “Even Lambs Have Teeth” reviewed! (DVD / Syndicado)

Posted by Steven Lewis on November 17, 2022

It’s True. “Even Lambs Have Teeth!” Now On DVD.

Katie and her best friend Sloane volunteer to work on a countryside organic farm for a month in order to have one fabulous shopping spree weekend in New York City. Taking Katie’s Uncle’s precautions semi-seriously, the two young women play it fast and loose while waiting for the bus that heads straight to the farm as they agree to hitch a ride with local boys, two brothers, who offer a ride instead of taking the bus. Instead of arriving at the farm to work on the NYC trip, Katie and Sloane wake up chained to shipping containers where they’ve been incorporated into a twisted town’s sex trade systematized by the brothers, their mother, and a local shopkeeper of missing women to provide the local perverts a quality product. Raped for days and coming to the fatal end of their use, Katie and Sloane barely escape with their lives only to turn back to reign down merciless revenge on the entire community of accomplices.

When your parents warn to never get into a stranger’s car, this is why! “Even Lambs Have Teeth” is the 2015 exploitation rape-revenge thriller from “Recoil” director Terry Miles looking to get his hands dirty with a script diving into the unpleasantries of a rural prostitution ring while washing his hands clean of sin with vindictive, vigilante justice antibacterial hand soap. The Canadian horror film, which embraces a title suggesting not everything cute and fluffy is harmless, meek, and without malice, joins a slew of like-minded films of the last decade in the resurgence of the subgenre from the high profile remakes of the trailblazer rape-revenge pilots of the 1970’s, such as “The Last House on the Left” and “I Spit on your Grave,” to contemporary crafted original works from Coralie Fargeat’s “Revenge” from 2017 or Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” from 2020 that enacts a woman’s voice on the subject matter of sexual assault and the course the victim ensues to not right a wrong but rather to satisfy an itch for six-feet-under retaliation. Having one of, if not the, longest pre-title opening sequences ever at a staggery 23 minutes before the title comes up, “Even Lambs Have Teeth” is from the Random Bench Productions’ producing team of Braden Croft’s forgotten sasquatch flick “Feed the Gods” of Elizabeth Levine, Robin Nielsen, Adrian Salpteter, and Danielle Stott-Roy along with Gregory Chambet (Av: The Hunt”) and Dimitri Stephanides (“Don’t Hang Up”) under the banner companies of WTFilms (“Slaxx”) and the France-based Backup Media (“Piggy”).

In order to be the sweet and promiscuous that oozes innocence and ignorance while also, on the other side of the coin, becoming the subjugated flavor of the week by exploiters craving the almighty dollar at the expense of your body, Katie and Sloane need to be a rock solid, yin and yang energy force to machinate the undoing of their captors and rapists without an ounce of empathy, compassion, and hesitation. Tiera Skovbye (“Summer of 84”) and Kirsten Prout (“Joy Ride 3: Road Kill”) put forward the right foot in Katie and Sloane’s plight and fight for not only to survive but also to make sure what happened to them never happens to any other woman misfortunately stepping one foot into a town full of tongue-lapping wolves by laying waste to the Podunk prostitution syndicate. Skovbye and Prout start invincible as if the world is their oyster that includes Prout gender reversal of stereotyped horny best friend. We don’t see that kind of confidence again in both women until after the dirty deeds are done to them by the likes of distinct, depraved men with one thing in common – their undying perversion for cargo container chained young women. These customers so to speak are played by Craig March (“Suspension”), Graem Beddoes (“Horns”), and Christian Sloane (“Black Christmas” ’06) and go through the entrepreneurship of one demented family business. Hunky bothers Jed (Garrett Black) and Lucas (Jameson Parks) lure the itching to have fun Katie and the always randy Sloane to their isolated house where their mother (Gwynyth Walsh, “The Crush”) drugs them with blueberry pie before meeting the ringleader of the bunch, the unofficial town mayor in Boris (Patrick Gilmore, “Trick ‘r Treat”) who isn’t as dippy or uncivilized in his business practices. Performances are more than solid all around for an under-the-radar Canadian tit-for-tat flip the script. The cast comes complete with Manny Jacinto, Darren Mann, Brittany Willacy, Valerie Tian, Chelah Horsdal, and Michael Karl Richards as the detective uncle.

What separates “Even Lambs Have Teeth” from the rest of the pack? That’s the million-dollar question that helps us select a title amongst a sea of sordid rape-revengers and provides different angling lures that can draw interest and elevate beyond the material that has just been recycling the mold every so often. What generates an enjoyable watch is the well-written dialogue with witty, provocative banter from Kirsten Prout that can blush her best friend to near unbearable shame. The exchanges throughout feel fresh enough to keep our ears tuned into the action and the actors do a phenomenal job keeping up the character acts that evoke a rightfully root for or a rightfully despise against. Not everything about the characters is entirely copasetic with a wavering integrity in what they do. Katie and Sloane revenge spree buckles the knees of nearly every individual involved, reducing them down to a sniveling murderee for the sole sake of a money offering gag device. While the gag greatly points out a commonly used trope in these types of stories, there’s an immense let down with the way a group of predators go down with virtually no fight or no dignity. The starkness of the sudden turn of events might unmask who they really are on the inside, weak stomached sociopathic and chauvinistic control freaks with a hankering for either quick cash or to get their rocks off. Comparing “Even Lambs Have Teeth” with other rape-revenge flicks, the Terry Miles production is on the lighter side of explicit material, for a lack of a better way to describe. Usually, audience bear witness and endure in shared disgusts to the unspeakable acts of violence, torture, and sexual assault to not only shock the viewers but also directly force them into a role of surefire support for the woman so when she ultimately escapes and goes postal with a no holds barred policy against her violator(s), we clap and cheer for when the rusty nailed and sharp object rod is plunged in a fit of rectal sodomy retaliation. “Even Lambs Have Teeth’s” third act is the cleanest with a familiar territory of a quick and dirty barrage of brutality, an expected recourse handed down for all the pain and suffering that doesn’t stop until these hopeful girls, who are now forced to be pragmatic women, kill every last person involved.

A punishable by death dose of executions without the judge, jury, or trial in Terry Miles “Even Lambs Have Teeth,” now released on DVD home video from the once VOD emerging Syndicado who have now entered the physical release game. The single-sided, single-layered DVD5 presents the film in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio with a rather remarkable picture quality that’s able to capture the minute objects like floating dust and differentiate between assorted lighting. Skin tones appear textural and natural and the organically lit tone leaves noir at the door and the glossiness of hyperviolence unneeded as the premise itself is satisfyingly unfeigned to be dolled up as something else. The English language Dolby (though not listed as such) surround sound caters to mostly every whim with clear dialogue, good enough depth, and a soundtrack with fidelity albeit the same song stuck on repeat. What’s essentially a feature only release, bonus material only includes the theatrical trailer of the film with a final product package not terribly appealing with a colorless tawdry cover of a dirtied Tiera Skovbye and Kirsten Prout glaring stoical outward with weapons in hand. The unrated feature has a straightforward and brisk three act structure within the confines of 78 minutes. Not as vile as most but undoubtedly slimy, “Even Lambs Have Teeth” bites down hard with a respectable rape-revenge thriller in a subgenre that has yet to hit a wall.

It’s True. “Even Lambs Have Teeth!” Now On DVD.

First There Was a Good Guy Doll. Then, There Was a Turkey. Now, EVIL Comes In the Form of a “Killer Piñata” reviewed! (Darkside Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on May 25, 2021

A father purchases 3 piñatas for his young child’s birthday party the day before going on a weekend getaway. His college age eldest child, Lindsay, stays behind to have a night of drinking with her best friends, one of them being her ex-boyfriend who hasn’t figured out that her romantic interests no longer lay with the entire male sex. With the pink piñata done in at the party and the other Captain American-resembling one bashed to smithereens by Linday’s friend, the surviving donkey piñata, possessed with the bullied and vindictive soul of a piñata factory worker, is fueled by bloodthirsty vengeance and on a campaign of death as one-by-one Lori’s friends fall casualty at the paper macheted hooves of the candy-filled sinister piñata and it’s up to Lindsay and a hook for a hand, old Latina piñata shopkeeper to stop the carnage.

I, personally, never whacked a sweet-treated stuff piñata on a joyous, celebratory occasion in my 37 years of growing up (in retrospect, my childhood didn’t seem very fun) and after watching Stephen Tramontana’s farcical horror-comedy, “Killer Piñata,” the 2015 release, receiving an enhance 2021 Blu-ray director’s cut, has now instilled a crippling fear of the inanimate that secures the fact that I, and probably my kids and my kids’ kids, will never take a baseball to those cute little piñatas ever! With a penchant for the worst-of-the-worst horror movies and being an acolyte of the Jordan Downey’s brazen killer holiday turkey masterpiece, “ThanksKilling,” Tramontana, along with his entrepreneurial cohorts who started out in the healthcare field and have turned into amateur B-horror filmmakers, helms his crowdfunded sophomore feature, but first donkey piñata bloodbath, and co-wrote alongside fellow screenwriters Nick Weeks and Megan Macmanus who spun a wild fantasy into cinematic reality. The 8 day shoot around Chicago’s Logan Square employs Tramontana’s investment partners Jennifer Kunkel as producer and Paul Summers as cinematographer, editor, and score artist under their pun of a production banner, Angry Mule.

“Killer Piñata” casts Chicago regional actors who thought starring in a film about a murderous piñata would be a once in a lifetime opportunity as well as a challenge to broaden their craft by working with puppets and, boy, were they right! Stage actress Eliza-Jane Morris stars as Lindsay, battling not only a party donkey figure but also her sexual preference ignorant ex-boyfriend, Scott (Billy Chengary). Much as Lindsay in herself is a trope of what is known as the final girl in horror, the script is riddled with trope characters just to make it abundantly clear “Killer Piñata” means funny business. Scott is the clingy, insecure ex who can’t see between his legs why Lindsay is no longer interested. His pal, Chad (Nate Bryan), resides on the opposite side of the spectrum as the confidently shameless, hypersexualized, and vain best friend who is equally matched in being confidently shameless, hypersexualized, and not terribly vain with Lindsay’s bestie, Rosetta (Lindsay Ashcroft). Martin (Daniel Hawkes) rounds out the group of the ill-fated soirée as Rosetta’s much hated bothersome cousin who is perhaps the only character out of the five to feel any morsel of pity for as he’s incessantly bludgeoned by insults, especially by his own Rosetta, and doesn’t have a single clue what’s in store for him. The most seasoned talent on set played a fiesta Latina shopkeeper with a “I Know What You Did Last Summer” hook for a hand; “High on the Hog” and “Asylum of Fear’s” Joette Waters gives an over-the-top Dr. Loomis performance. Cast rounds out with a fair amount of bit roles from Elvis Garcia, Sheila Guerrero-Edmiston, Steven James Price, and Elias Acevedo who all indulge in the nonsense of a superficial inanimate villain horror.

A piñata running rampant in a suburb home with poisonous candy being expelled from it’s paper and cardboard rectum and able to mechanize corpses like in Gundam with a simple transfer of hoof-to-spine energy awards Tramontana and his thinking outside the box team a 9×9 baking dish full of creative brownie points. “Killer Piñata” can also be funny indicative to all by the nonsensical title and if you’re not stiff as a board in the humor department, you’ll find one scene to be unsettling shocking with a lingering piñata blowjob death that’s literally jaw-dropper and a teary eyeful. While the film is by no means an in earnest attempt at a serious plot, continuity mistakes, in scene goofs, minor equipment quality issues, and narrative pacing drag down Tramontana’s quaint pintsize slasher and even drags a little more apathetically with tired jokes, farting gags, and formulaic routines albeit some okay puns and a smirk inducing making weapons montage. Not until around the plot point of the third act is when the death scenes start to hit the fan, briefly hovering up to the “ThanksKilling” gore-and-gags level, splattering the blood splatter here and there while the first two acts barely register on the oh, damn Geiger counter in what’s an interior imbalance of how to set the tone of a killer piñata video diagram.

Only five years after the initial release of “Killer Piñata,” Darkside Releasing proudly releases an enhanced Blu-ray director’s cut of the film that saw an overhaul and rejuvenation on the color grading, a brand new sound mix, and a quicker pacing, which I still think could have been tweaked better. Presented not rated in a widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with a runtime of 84 minutes (originally 87 minutes but trimmed in the new director’s cut for pacing), there is some early on banding in the opening shot’s blue sky over Chicago, but for an indie production on a budget less than 5k, or now maybe more with a facelift in the new release, the coloring has a brighter glow and is not as flat some of the original footage appeared. The anecdotal animation nicely becomes an intermission to the story and a change of pace in the par quality with simple, but well illustrated, sketch animated backstory. I never knew the original score, but the Paul Summers pulsating electro-club rescore homages the works “Killer Piñata” is inspired by with an upbeat soundtrack mingled with a traditional minor key soundboard. Special features includes a new audio commentary, a recollection of pre-, post-, and during production in “A Look Back at Killer Piñata,” a reason why we never saw a sequel follow up title “Whatever Happened to Killer Piñata 2?,” the making of featurette with a few key scenes, and bloopers & deleted scenes. Stay put after the credits for a bonus scene that aims to piece together things for the potential sequel director Stephen Tramontana promises. The future for “Killer Piñata” is not yet certain and I firmly believe, in what I consider to be the promising next steps for the murderous inorganic party-pooper, is that the genre needs and should receive a crossover of Turkie vs Piñata in a showdown of the possessed puppets or in an egregious alliance to take a good chunk of mankind’s population down a peg!

https://vimeo.com/462262941

Take a Whack at the Killer Piñata Director’s Cut on Blu-ray!

Sion Sono’s Brings the Evil Back to the Japanese School Girls! “Tag” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 15, 2017

Life is seemingly pleasant and happy-go-lucky when two fully loaded coach buses of high school girls travel down a forestry passageway toward a lakeside hotel until sudden violence and gore turns Mitsuko’s classmates into minced meat. Overcome with shock and fear, Mitsuko escapes the terror only to find herself in another horrifying scenario. The vicious cycle continues as Mitsuko is thrusted into one chaotic, blood-splattering world after another, quickly losing her identity with each threshold crossing, and with no clue of what’s going on and how she got into this limbo of hell, Mitsuko must stay alive and unearth the truth behind the surreality of her being.

Nothing is more terrifying than being in a heart-pounding situation and not having one single clue why bodies are being sliced in half like corks popping violent out of champagne bottles, why childhood mentors break their professional oath and slaughter students with a ferocity of a mini-gun, or why being chased by a tuxedo-decked out groom with a gnarly pig head is in tow ready to drop kick anything, or anybody, standing in the way. Writer-director Sion Sono manifests that very chaos entrenched world in the 2015 action-horror “Tag” and, once again, the “Suicide Girls” director puts Japanese school girls back into the harrowed ways of gore and death over salted with an existential surrealism based off a novel by Yûsuke Yamada entitled Riaru Onigokko aka Real Game of Tag. Yamada’s story is followed more closely to that of Issei Shibata’s 2008 “The Chasing World” that involves a Government influence and parallel universes, “Tag” serves more as an abstract remake that Sono masters a soft touch of irrational poetry bathed in gore and strung with chaos rectified with a tremendously talented cast of young actresses.

Actresses such as the Vienna born Reina Triendl. Being Japanese doppelgänger to Mary Elizabeth Windstead with soft round eyes and the picturesque of youthfulness, Triendl transcends tranquility and innocence when portraying a content Mitsuko in the midst of many of her classmates boorishly bearing the typical, low-level adolescent anarchy. When Mitsuko’s thrusted into phantasmagorical mayhem, Triendl steps right there with her discombobulated character in an undried eye panicky frenzy whose character then spawns into two other fleshy vessels, a pair of recognizable names of J-Pop fandom in Mariko Shinoda and Erina Mano, when Mitsuko enters another zone in her fictional world. Though different in all aspects of their appearance and in name – Misuko, Kieko, and Izumi, the three women share the same existence and fathom a unbroken entity of character that hacks her way through the brutal truth. The remaining cast, Yuki Sakurai, Aki Hiraoka, and Ami Tomite, sport the high school miniskirt wardrobe and garnish a bubbly-violent J-horror persona very unique to the genre.

“Tag” is a plethora of metaphors and undertones likely to be over-the-head of most audiences, but if paying close enough attention and understanding the subtle rhythmic pattern of Sono’s direction, the gore and the fantastic venues are all part of an intrinsic, underlining message of feminism and sex inequality that’s built inside a “man”-made, video game structure thirty years into the future. Sono points out, in the most graphic and absurd method, how men treat women like objects or playthings. There’s also a message regarding predestination with white pillow feathers being the metaphor for fate and being spontaneous is the key to break that predestined logic and all of this corresponds to how Misuko, the main character, needs to break the mold, to choose her path, and to remember her past in order to free all the women trapped inside a male-driven purgatory of pain, punishment, and pleasure. Supporting Sono’s ability to disclose an epic survival-fantasy horror in such a way comes from multiple production companies, one of them being NBCUniversal Entertainment, providing the cash flow that allows Sono to flesh out the gore, to acquire massive amount of extras, and to scout out and obtain various locations.

Eureka Entertainment presents a dual format, Blu-ray-DVD combo, of “Tag” for the first time in the United Kingdom. However, the disc provided was a feature-only screener and a critique on the video, audio, and bonus material will not be conducted, but in itself, “Tag” is a full throttle encephalon teaser warranting a need for no supplementary content aside from conventional curiosity into what makes Sono’s “Tag” tick. When all pistons are firing, from the visual effects of Satoshi Akabane to “The Walking Dead” familiar score, “Tag” is no child’s game with a heavily symbolic, touch-and-go and bloodied pro-feministic essence that would serve as an abrupt and acute wakeup call to all the Harvey Weinsteins in the world that women are not to be simply playthings and that their gender destiny lies solely with them despite the misconstrued male manipulation.

Want to be the Evil Doctor’s Guinea Pig? “American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on January 11, 2017

One man becomes the unfortunate subject of ghastly experimentations performed by a sadistic and blood thirsty doctor. Wheeled by abiding orderlies back and forth from his sterile white and padded cell to the mad doctor’s dark and dingy operating room office, the man’s will to live quickly begins to fade, yearning for death before suffering anymore in an alternative Hell. That is, until the handwritten notes start appearing on his padded room floor. The notes seep through between the pads from another tortured soul, a female, in the adjacent room. Withstanding new atrocities done to her before the man receives them, she pleads with the man to not leave her and to make a pact to outlive the inhumanities together.

Welcome to the new American Guinea Pig series! “Bloodshock” is the 2015 follow up film, on the coattails of 2014’s “American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore,” from writer-producer and Unearthed Films president Stephen Biro and directed by special effects guru Marcus Koch. Koch, whose effects credentials include the Barbara Crampton starring thriller “We Are Still Here” and Koch’s prior directorial work “Rot” and “100 Tears,” strays away from the straight forward concept with an ultra gore art house expressionistic horror film that aims to break your mind as well as your body. Open for interpretation, “Bloodshock” fits perfectly into the ever provocative Unearthed Films’ wide open cache of underground cinema and will alleviate Koch to the next level of filmmaking. My interpretation of what this poor man and woman are experiencing is simply a penancing purgatory that’s intended to cleanse their souls in the warmth of their own wretched blood; the two victims understand their pain, as if not feeling the invasive effects of being dissected while still yielding breath, and are willing to subdue themselves to a maniacal physician until they’re able to briefly thwart his tireless work to share pain and open wounds in blood-soaked passion of hopeless ecstasy.

Dan Ellis puts in a powerful performance as the mistreated male patient with Lillian McKinnay, as the female patient, co-starring in an equally bold performance, especially being McKinnay’s first major role. Andy Winton’s diabolical medical maltreatment compares to the similar magnitude of “The Human Centipede’s” Dieter Laser by conducting exploratory, invasive, and unnecessary surgeries for sport while being candor about his blood lusting necessity. Amongst the three main actors, Biro’s script contains little dialogue, banking laboriously on physical renditions since both tortured patients’ tongues have been severed and jarred. Every movement is precisely executed and surged with attention, tuned to tell the story without much verbiage. Ultra gore isn’t everybody’s cup of cinematic tea and with an extremely thin film of dialogue as an outer coating, Ultra gore becomes that much difficult to be entertained by, but, recently, I’ve been lucky enough to come across another gore and shock film, coincidentally enough another Unearthed Films’ release entitled “Flowers” by director Phil Stevens, that had proved to me, as well as Koch has just done, that unspoken gore can be ingeniously crafted and thought provoking.

“Bloodshock’s” gore holds nothing back and leaves nothing to the imagination. The meticulous bone-sawing, head-splitting effects from a talented special effects team, consisting of Marcus Koch’s Oddtopsy FX crew, paint a sordid picture with a blood brush. Koch’s decision to go with Donald Donnerson’s cinematography under the two-tone of black and white doesn’t stiffen the poignant sight of blood, inner layers of flesh, or the splintering bone fragments. The Japanese would be pleased with their American counterparts realistically depicting gore and death captured amongst an underlying meaning. Unearthed Films has already taken the steps to continue the series with their next installment, “American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon,” which will pertain to a graphic exorcism and, currently, there are preview images and video scenes available.

The 3-Disc Collector’s Set from Unearthed Films and MVD Visual has priceless collector’s value. Not only does the set have a Blu-ray transfer of the 1.85:1 widescreen presentation, but also contains a DVD presentation and a third disc containing a CD of the Kristian Day industrial-jarring soundtrack. The black and white image quality is sharp and solid for a majority of 91 minute runtime. Some scenes go soft, losing shape to blotchy interference, but the qualities only supplement to “Bloodshock’s” charming grit. Only during the course of the patients unifying do colorful hues gradually seep in, almost unnoticeably, during an ostentatious sex scene involving blood and intestine that’s effectively edited to slowly build the passionate boiling point. Despite two of the main characters have their tongues removed, the Dolby Digital 2.0 audio has the dialogue so sorely crushed under the weight of the Kristian Day soundtrack that at some scenes I can’t even understand what the good mad doctor is saying. Also, on the DVD, I noticed that all audio tracks delay a second behind the action and dialogue. The bonus features are immense with interviews with director Marcus Koch, writer-producer, Stephen Biro, actor Dan Ellis, actress Lillian Mckinney, and two commentary tracks with Marucs Koch and Stephen Biro on one and actor Andy Winton, Gene Palubicki, and Alberto Giovannelli on the other. There’s also a behind the scenes featurette, production videos, and a booklet with a review from Ultra Violent Magazine! Unearthed Films certainly has a definitive release in their collection with “American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock” that’s packed with bonus material and full of venomous content abiding by the guidelines set forth by the Japanese. I don’t foresee the underground cinema juggernaut or the explicitly snuff-like Guinea Pig series ever slowing the flow of blood. “Bloodshock” fulfills the qualifications of the series by having the guts to show the guts and being just as demented and sick for fans who can stomach and endure grisly content.