Tag Archives: 2018

EVIL Manga to EVIL Movie! “Liverleaf” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“LIverleaf” Pushes Through the Bleak to Shine. On DVD Now!

The move from Tokyo to a dwindling rural town hasn’t been easy for middle schooler Haruka.  Most of her classmates have grown up with each other and formed vicious cliques that bully her relentless during and after school.  Mitsuru Abu, a photography enthusiast and Haruka’s classmate is also an outsider but has family ties to the area, is about her only friend and whom she finds attractive.  Upon returning home after spending the day together, Haruka finds her family home engulfed in flames, her mother and father dead, and her little sister severely burned over her entire body.  The loss of her family, her only emotional support, mentally compromises Haruka’s self-control and sends her spiraling into a revenge fueled murdering spree, targeting her bullying classmates who had a hand in the inferno of her family home.  The root of malevolence is not as it appears on the surface, and it will be up to Haruka to kill her way in finding the truth and reveal the secrets.

Adapted from the popular manga series, “Misu Misō,” written by Oshikiri Rensuke, the film version incorporates the indelicate dramas of being a school age teen in while reproducing faithfully the graphic gore, violence, and disturbing nature of character of the series in great detail.  Titled “Liverleaf,” as in the resilient, mountainous found three-lobe leafed flower that resembles the human liver and can withstand harsh winter conditions, is helmed by “Let’s Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club” director Eisuke Naitô and penned by Miako Tadano of “The World of Kanako,” another manga-based film adaptation.  The 2018 film, which can be described as a revenge-drama with particle elements of horror, is shot in one of the snow-covered foothills of Japan’s mountain regions and is produced by Shigeto Arai (“We Are Little Zombies”) under the production banners of the Nikkatsu Corp. and the L’espace Film Co.

Anna Yamada is in the lead role that’s very familiar and culturally significant to Japanese cinema.  A scorn-born femme fatale that’s merciless and personnel, the kind of role that Quentin Tarantino exacted in his tribute to Asian revenge narrative with “Kill Bill,” starring Uma Thurman, hunting down the offending party and dispatching the scum from the Earth in a one-by-one fashion.  The “Suicide Forest Village” actress Yamada headlined “Liverleaf” as mid-to-late teen portraying the manga series’ preteen or early teenage girl Haruka Nozaki.  She isn’t the only nearly adult woman to play a teen in the throes of hormones, peer pressures, and angsty conditions sideswiped by wickedness and a taste for dominance as the whole student body pretends to be a youthful waste in a snowy, mountainside village on the verge of collapse.  Howling Village’s Rinka Ôtani, as Taeko Oguro, stands out with her bright orange hair and a sense of indifferent authority being the supposed head of the gaggle of bullying girls.  “Liverleaf” is Ôtani debut picture and Ôtani would eventually reteam with Yamada on “Suicide Forest Village,” but their first dichotomized performance as protagonist and antagonists brings a palpable tension to the screen.  Throw a boy both girls stoically can’t admit with a lot of expression and that pressure pot grows into an ugly shape of jealousy spurred love triangle.  Mitsuru Aibe is tall, handsome, kind, and a photography buff always looking for the raw and beautiful moment to capture on film.  Played by Hiroya Shimizu, “The World of Kanako” and “Sadako” actor instills that hope for the future and a glance of stability amongst the opposing craziness that has ensued between the rebirthed revenger Nozaki and the horrible highschoolers now fearing for their lives because of their responsible part for the monster they’ve created but does he really provide a safer, greener pasture Nozaki needs to return to once her retribution is complete?  Kenshin Endô, Masato Endô, Reiko Kataoka, Seina Nakata, Arisa Sakura, Aki Moita, Minoir Terada, Kazuki Ôtomo, and ReRena Ôtsuka are cast in one messed up and depressive high school student body that ends in a blizzard of bloodshed.

One thing about “Liverleaf,” if looking at and considering all the components of the feature as a whole, to take away from the adaptation is how Eisuke Naitô facsimiles the plot points of a manga series or, in more general terms, Naitô” has plucked the rudimentary concepts straight from any regular extreme manga series, not just from Oshikiri Rensuke’s Misu Misō.  Yet, “Misu Misō” is very faithfully extracted from the illustrated pages for live action execution down to many of the details with very few changes to the story’s original design. Gore has an extreme graphic nature juxtaposed against the snow, contrasting in homage to those historical revenge genre films set in the same harsh, white blanket, and like all the heroines, or anti-heroines, Haruka Nozaki speaks her soul in her outfit, dressed in a continuously deepening red after each gruesome dispatch of her classmates.  This saturation into crimson extends into this belief that Nozaki is bordering being supernatural, like most condemned women done wrong, who somehow find the superhuman strength, endurance, know-how, and resilience in their own disdain for blood and violence to slay beyond their normal means without batting an eyelash.  “Liverleaf” is not the chippiest of narratives with a coursing core of grim doom and gloom through a quickly dilapidating little town with an austere school, junk pits, and modest structures that inhabit indifferent teachers, brooding teens, and a mental illness that ranges from inherent sociopathy to social sociopathy of peer pressures and bullying. 

SRS Cinema brings manga pen and paper to the big screen with their unrated DVD release of the film adaptation titled “Liverleaf.”  The MPEG2 encoded, upscaled 1080p, DVD9 release is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  “Liverleaf” stands out unusual from the other SRS releases, a company that prides itself on standard definition 480 and 720 resolutions and compressing features and their special features onto a packed DVD5 that creates eye artefacts on already low budget, commercial grade, inexperienced film.  Instead, “Liverleaf” has punchier colors and distinction on that segregates the austere from the vibrancy and the extra space helps allow for this decoding to be as smooth as possible on what some may now consider an antiquated format.  Decoding at a higher range of 7-9Mbps, compression imprudence doesn’t show itself here with a clean picture that retians inky voids, charted snow mounds and footprints in a white sheet of snow, and the colors and details on objects that natural enlarge themselves when in contrast, such as Nozaki’s red jacket or the red, orange, and yellow glow of house flames against the night sky.  The Japanese LPCM 2.0 stereo renders a clean mix of dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack.  Dialogue’s clean, crisp, and clearly upfront of a subdued diegetic sound mixed from the boom mic or from post and a Hisashi Arita soundtrack that scores Japanese revenge in non-traditional Japanese notes.  Post mix and action does create some separation that uncouples the visual onomatopoeia of the activity but remains negligible throughout.  The burned-in English subtitles synch well and are error-free.  Extras include a featurette from Manga to Movie that goes into the history of manga and the adaptation concept which most thought the film couldn’t be adapted, Elijah Thomas supplements with his own thoughts and opinions on “Liverleaf” as well as another featurette titled Liverleaf’s Obsession that looks at the character’s dangerous obsessive qualities, the trailer, a Oshikiri Rensuke, biography The Comically Twisted Mind of Oshikiri Rensuke with narrator voiceover going into the writer’s family history and “Misu Misō” genesis, the trailer, and talent files on Anna Yamada, Eisuke Naito, Hiroya Shimizu, Miako Tadano, and Rinka Otani.  These features house behind a static menu, that only has a play option alongside the extras, with a neat art illustration of a murderously ominous Naruka Nozaki.  The cover art hints at the film’s stark contrast aesthetics with a Naruka Nozaki wrapped her red coat and jetblack hair sprawled out on the white snow.  The Amaray does not come with a reversible cover nor any tangible extras inside.  DVD has region A only playback and has a runtime of 114 minutes. 

Last Rites: “Liverleaf” is a surprising, better-than-no budget teen revenge thriller that deals with obsession, depression, and a consternation that Haruka’s tragic journey through the pits of a lowly high school hierarchy will only get worse before it gets better.

“LIverleaf” Pushes Through the Bleak to Shine. On DVD Now!

One Out of 7 Most Freaky, if not EVIL, Places on the Planet! “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” reviewed! (Second Sight / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Become Engulfed by the “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” on Second Sight’s LE Blu-ray!

Horror Times, a web series dedicated to horror and hits, travels to the Gwangju providence for their next big event, a special episode aimed to rake in 1 million views worldwide as they explore the supposedly haunted, deserted, and derelict Gonjiam psychiatric asylum after midnight on its anniversary date of its closing.  Already buzzing with historical disappearances of those curious and brave enough to investigate the dilapidated corridors and rooms, Horror Times brings in four guests to join his three-man crew to record every second of what CNN labels one of the seven freakiest places on the planet.  Setup with wall-mounted motion activated cameras, harnessed with individual GoPros, and given a multi-layered script to follow on each of Gonjiam’s four floors, all is going as planned broadcasting live the strange atmospherics that slowly see climbing views from the director’s camped base outside the structure, pulling some fabricated strings to not only heighten his viewer pool but also get genuine frightened reactions from his guest team, but when the team and the cameras unexplainable paranormal occurrences, how far will a director go to reach his milestone goal.

Based off the actual CNN listicle of the top 7 freakiest places on the planet, “Gonjiam:  Haunted Asylum” was a real brick-and-mortar edifice committed to the committedly insane and one of the most suspected haunted places in South Korea until it’s demolishment shortly after the 2018 film’s release.  “Epitaph” writer-director Jung Bum-shik joins the ranks of the South Korean supernatural spookies, accompanying notable entries such as “The Tale of Two Sisters,” “Phone,” and “Cinderella.”  Cowritten by Sang-min Park, Gonjiam:  Haunted Asylum” refreshens the ramshackle mental institutionalized horror subgenre with a dash of social media influence and found footage that entangles grudging ghosts with cyber terror.  Historical thriller and drama producer Won-guk Kim spearheads the project under Hive Media productions and distributed globally by Showbox Films. 

Like a cable-aired, modern-day version of “Ghost Hunters” or “Kindred Spirits,” the vessel Horror Times exploits people’s spirituality beliefs by mingling the exploration of urban legends with gimmicky ploys to keep eyes glued to the show, run up viewership, and earn the root of all evil, money.  The Mystery Incorporated meddling kids might not have a talking Great Dane, but the Gonjiam ghost hunters are a dynamically doomed blend of greed and curiosity, helmed by their captain Ha-joon (Wi Ha-joon, Squid Game) and his on-the-ground, string-pulling marionettes Seung-wook (Lee Seung-wook) and Je-yoon (Yoo Je-Yoon) to conjure up not spirits but pranks under the guise of Gonjiam ghosts.  The unsuspecting portion of the team react as expected, believing the unexplainable as genuine articles of a haunted asylum, until the jokes bleed into the reality of the structure’s incensed force.  Other than Charlotte (Mun Ye-won), a Korean American who travels to Gonjiam to add the location to her lists of CNN’s freakiest places on the planet, there isn’t another mise-en-place character.  Perhaps the others’ backstories are lost in translation but Sung-hoon (Park Sung-hoon, “Hail to Hell”), Ji-hyun (Park Ji-hyun, “The Divine Fury”), and Ah-yeon (Oh Ah-yeon) lose sympathy points for just being there for the sake of being there.  If you haven’t caught on already, the characters and actors name match to add to the faux realism of found footage. 

Veritably surrounded by the actual notoriety of the former Gonjiam psychiatric hospital, the story adds to the established frightening folklore of the rundown building and though the filmmakers were not allowed to shoot inside or on the grounds of the restricted abandoned building, Gonjiam blueprints were used to reconstruction the grimy, trash-laden hallways and various rooms inside a high school.  The effect works like charm used to teleport audiences, along with the help of social media GoPros, selfie sticks, and the like, right into the crumbling ruins; you can almost smell the mold and stank of beyond putrid chemicals and filth.  Yoon Byung-Ho’s cinematography plays with the signal disruption touch, often deploying randomized and intentional interference to convey signal disruptions or, perhaps even, the foreshadowing with the wraithy wrath of spirits; yet “Gonjiam” never truly feels like a found footage film due to its radical differences in video media being implemented and there’s often the unexplainable, no camera-in-use angle that dilutes the subgenre medium.  “Gonjiam” falls into this unquantifiable realm of storytelling that’s hard to digest.  The chaos that ensures in the third act is more palpable, geared toward developing a heavily reliant, hard and fast tension and trembling fear without needing bloodshed for the crowd-pleasing shock factor.

Second Sight sees through the dense barrage of found footage films and spots the pearl amongst the muck with “Gonjiam:  Haunted Asylum,” curating a limited edition, big box, Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, nears 24 FPS and has flawless technical recording in its digital capturing.  Blacks are dense and rich to create that unknown void apprehension, the neglected belongings of a forlorn hospital have palpable consistency that’s grimy and rusty, and skin textures appropriate lose definition but maintain quality to the extent of equipment limits with GoPros, cell phones, and camcorders in low and hazy key lighting, onboard camera lighting, and some night vision for authentic found footage grip.  There’s not much in the way of diverse color for what is a graded tone of tenebrous obscurity throughout.  I’ve already touched upon Byung-Ho’s purposeful transmissive trouble that impresses more of an annoyance than an integrated factor of fear.  The Korean DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 delivers on the need-to-hear atmospherics that shudders in echoes and the frantic churn of survival.  What there is not a ton of, and gratefully kept to a minimum, was the eerie wails of the dead as their moments are kept mostly visual in a virtually scoreless runtime that focuses on the surrounding milieu rather than building tension artificially through minor key notes.  Dialogue comes through clearly and clean, especially when muzzled by video camera audio band transmissions.  English subtitles are translated well and synch fine enough with the rapid procession.  Special features include an feature-length audio commentary by Mary Beth McAndrews (Dread Central editor-in-chief) and Terry Mesnard (Gayly Dreadful editor-in-chief), UK’s Zoë Rose Smith’s Fear the Unknown visual-essay on the Gonjiam’s origin, history, and what makes the Korean film scary, and archived featurettes with interviews, including with director Jung Bum-shik amongst various crew, that explore the rumored beginnings of Gonjiam’s notoriety that fuels the production into recreating Gonjiam nearly identically, live recordings of the film’s sheer eeriness told through the images captured by the camera harnesses and phone footage, the new faces of fear that circles around the cast and behind-the-scenes table reads, The Sanctum of Horror that aims to explore the connection between the actual freaky locations and their cinematized yarn to create a legacy of folklore for the now demolished Gonjiam hospital, The Truth of the Ghostlore explores Gonjiam’s history and urban myth and how that forms the ghosts in the film, Korean press conference film launch, and the film’s trailers.  As much as we love Second Sight’s authored special features, which from films of the East are rarely produce, there also plenty to be excited about with the physical attributes of the limited edition set, including a rigid and thick sleeve box with a Luke Headland designed Gonjiam building in red and black.  The inside contents include a 6 collector’s art cards in the same red and black color scheme, a 70-page book with new essays from Sarah Appleton (“The J-Horror Virus”), James Marsh (“Wisconsin Death Trip”), film critic Meagan Navarro, and horror content creator Amber T, and finished off with the film itself, encased in a green-colored Amaray with the same front cover artwork as the rigid slip box.  There are no inserts, and the disc is pressed simply with the title, English and Korean, splashed in red on a black background.  The LE set is hardcoded with a region B playback, has a runtime of 94 minutes, and is UK certified 15 for Strong Supernatural Threat and Language.

Last Rites: “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” is not just another shaky cam of paranormal activity. The film incorporates a component of reality, embellishing more on top an already suspected haunted building by giving the story teeth, and released with cultural purpose that binds fact and fiction with a terrorizing outcome of some really pissed off spirits.

Become Engulfed by the “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” on Second Sight’s LE Blu-ray!

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!

Another Cabin of EVIL in the Woods. “Exposure” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



Get exposed ot “Exposure” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

A rough patch in an abusive relationship opens up an opportunity for Myra and Owen to reconnect on a retreat at Owen’s family mountain cabin.  With wilderness for miles around, not a soul can disturb their serene getaway in retrieval what is lost in their relationship.  What they find is a biotic evil that has cursed Owen’s family once before and has returned to build a divide between the struggling lovers as a single, break-the-skin nip can transform anyone into a beastly monster.  Myra and Owen’s love for one another is put to the test when the monster blood insidiously begins to take over, leaving nearly nothing recognizable left behind the eyes. 

A complete monster movie bred out of the indie spirit with a callback to prosthetic practical effects that evokes a mental and emotion psychological theme around the durability of a relationship after being compromised by internal abuse and, possible, heredity mental health.  That’s the deep dive, suppositional story surrounding Austin Snell’s 2018 sophomoric feature film “Exposure” with a script penned by Snell and first-time screenwriter Jake Jackson.  “Exposure” is filmed in the wooded mountains of scenic Leadville, Colorado just outside the city limits of the quaint, stuck-in-time downtown where annual skijoring is a popular attraction right in the heart of town on mainstream.   Snell and Jackson produce the film alongside Clayton Ashley, who has worked as a gaffer on Snell’s debut feature “Erasure,” under their Kansas based LLC production company, Sunrunner Films.  

You can bet your lift ticket that the cast of “Exposure” is not strapping on skies and gripping to a rope for their dear life as a horse pulls the skier through the streets of downtown to go over manmade slopes and obstacles.  I wouldn’t think Snell would want to risk his four-person cast to such revelry actions that could result in injury.  Instead, a quiet, cabin-in-the-woods shoot leaves the actors to focus on the story at hand where a ingrained woodland evil infects and destroys an already bridle relationship between young couple Myra (Carmen Anello, “Zombie Beauty Pageant” and “I Am Lisa”) and James (Owen Lawless, “Hell Town”).  Anello and Lawless make a cute couple with some baggage hanging over their heads that is mostly implied rather than fully divulged and they sell well what their characters are struggling with, which is mainly trust.  Afraid of Owen’s temper, Myra is reluctant about moving forward in their relationship whereas Owen’s trust lies with Myra separating herself from an affair with a doting fling with a penchant for sending her sweet nothing texts she tries desperately to ignore.  I honestly don’t feel the immense love and hate tension in the room between Anello and Lawless who are more like best friends with an occassional spat than lovers going through a severe rough patch.  The more show of passion between them clings to the insincerity but that’s the high note for the connection between them.  Lynn Lowery (“I Drink Your Blood,” “The Crazies”) has a small role in flashbacks as Owen’s grandmother and Bruce Smith as the grandfather.

If you have already viewed Austin Snell’s “Exposure” then you likely know that the title is entangled in a double meaning. Perhaps even a triple meaning. Mountainous woods surrounded by frigid air with little-to-no help in sight leads to the vulnerability against the natural elements. In this case, the evil is the element, an unnatural one, that has laid claim to the area and sought the generational organic matter of Owen and Myra for its vile purposes – to spread its wickedness through the veins and mutate its victim into a hideous, baleful beast with a mind to match. The third meaning is more metaphorical as the term exposure can also be defined as the revelation of a typically bad thing that wasn’t clear before. In the film, Owen and Myra are going through a tough period in their romance with one of the inimical causes is Owen’s explosive and hurtful anger. Slithers of his masked morose behavior bubble to the surface in a motif view of just why they need to sort out the turbulent present in order for their possible future to resemble their merry past. The flashback story about Owen’s grandparents shed some light that what Owen may be going through is inborn, hereditary, and unchangeable; Owen’s reason and love mutates toward a gradual descent into monstrous behavior and that’s what the evil symbolically represents. Snell just happens to spin genuine relationship woes into an emblematic story with campy practical creature feature prosthetics and makeup. What most will dislike about “Exposure” is Snell’s true indie, natural approach to the special features that relies heavy on the cheesy, rubbery prosthetics and tangible tube and rod special effects without a lick of visual imagery for a smoothed over appearance. I applaud Snell for his raw, if not antiquated, choice that nods the throwbacks in the absence of contemporary conveniences.

For the first time on home video, “Exposure” makes a Blu-ray debut courtesy of Scream Team Releasing and distributed by MVD Visual. The not rated, NTSC region free, AVC encoded Blu-ray is presented in a widescreen 16X9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio. The 1080p, high-definition resolution looks pretty good and detailed, despite the heavy blue tint and gels, with negligible compression issues, especially with the heavy use of fog machine and a number of night scenes that don’t display noticeable banding or fuzzy/blotchy pixelation. The English language PCM 2.0 stereo audio provides a lossy amplitude that’s definitively detrimental to “Exposure’s” teetering success with audiences and the tracks don’t punch like that should for an atmospheric creature feature. The dialogue also sounds a bit boxy and artificial at times but, nonetheless, the dialogue track is still clear and discernible. Special features include cast and crew audio commentaries, a quick glimpse featurette into the behind-the-scenes of the special features, production stills, theatrical trailer, and retro VHS trailer. The physical Blu-snap case comes with reversible cover art, which, if you ask me, the secondary cover is the best with the illustrated, shadowy monster looming over a brightly lit heroine carrying a flashlight and a small axe. “Exposure’s” tribute veneer to the 80’s creature feature is spectacular without a doubt but lacks the energy to fully come to terms with its theme that’s become caught in the throes of a throwback rather than in the throes of relationship reconciling.

Get exposed ot “Exposure” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

EVIL Won’t Let You Just Kill Yourself Even If You Wanted To! “Violator” reviewed! (WildEye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Violator” on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing and MVD Visual!

Desperate to track down her sister Naomi who becomes involved in an online social media forum about mass suicide, a woman’s investigation leads her on a train ride to a small village on the outskirts of the city.  There she meets Red Sheep, an internet handle for the mass suicide form greeter for those individuals seeking to give up their life willingly.  Returning her to the abandoned house where congregated patrons of their own demise wait for forum members from all over to gather before stepping into the afterlife, but the beneath the surface of simply drinking the Kool-Aid together is a wretched plan of death and self-inflicted suicide is not in the ill-fated stars for the group now sequestered in an isolated town. 

When the film is titled “Violator” and the very first images on the screen are flashing title cards, warning of violence and depravity from what you’re about to see, then a graphic intensity bar has been firmly set with the expectation that disturbing content is afoot.  The Japanese 2018 released horror-comedy comes from the cyborg-splattering mind of “Meatball Machine” writer-director Jun’ichi Yamamoto and is a continued part of the tokusatsu horror genre peppered with familiar Japanese motifs of mass suicide, samurai sword, oral fixations, and all with a pinch of Kabuki!  Yamamoto is no stranger to the Kabuki culture as he works in a callback scene and line from his 2008 actioner “Kabuking Z:  The Movie” into “Violator’s” evil eviscerating and executing entrapment.      

I wouldn’t call “Violator” aces in acting, but I’m not speaking to the general known fact that Japanese portrayals are often over-the-top exaggerated, and I’m referencing more toward the lack of selling the bizarre by any means possible.  The cast more than often feels like a rehearsal and robotic to the point where picking out cues can be almost a game.  Most of the cast are once overs or have a select history in the indie-tokusatsu market.  The biggest name in the film also has the shortest screen time with Nikkatsu Roman Pink film actor Shinji Kubo as the leader of the pact who lures lost souls to the abandoned house of doom.  Kubo doesn’t make or break “Violator,” but his character is pivotal in turn of events that alters the course of a few particular principals. Mai Arai plays the worried sick and searching woman tracking down her sister Naomi (Sora Kurumi) before she makes a grave suicidal mistake. Along the way, Arai’s character bumps into a mixed company of varying personalities revolving around their own death – one early 20-something young’un treats her suicide like the next cool thing, another ostentatiously can’t commit, and while another couldn’t be bothered by anything else surrounding her and plays it cool. The small village inhabitants are just as diversified and as quirky as the emotionally haphazard suicidals but with special, supernatural abilities to absolutely mess with their minds until satisfying their morbid, high-on-death munchies. Shinichi Fukazawa (“Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell”), Shun Kitagawa (“Prisoners of Ghostland”), Kanae Suzuki, Anna Tachibana (“Corpse Prison”), Ichiban Ujigami, and Rei Yatsuka round out “Violator’s” cast.

With a provocative title and a stern, flashing warning for taboo content, “Violator” starts off slow and continues so until about 3/4s into the film. Yamamoto glides not the sliced underbelly with murderous rage and profane callous through sexually and wicked means. No, Yamamoto builds each individual character, giving the what’s usually throw-away victims the time of day with a prolonged preface before their death that sets in who they are, what mindset they’re in, and, instead of just being collateral damage, what catalytic action becomes their ultimate undoing. By providing singular personalities, Yamamoto instills a breadth of subconscious care amongst the audiences that unintentionally react with the pangs of sympathy for the less naive during their demise to a straight up I’m glad they’re dead death because of their horrible unprincipled being and them dead makes the world a better place. Eventually, Yamamoto turns the keys to rev up the havoc as the death pact suicide squad disband into distinct, slasher-esque junctures to make good on the promise of building the character to give them a proper cutthroat curtain call and it’s about this time “Violator’s” pre-film turpitude caution actually applies with strange ritualistic kabuki decapitation, a virginal last-gasp cunnilingus before a protruding vaginal spear pierces through the skull, and a toy doll becomes a literal eye-opener for a suicide documentarian. Idiosyncratic in their own right, the kills are a violent spectacle that make “Violator” memorable enough to not forget it, but there’s far worse inflammatory material out there in the world of cinema that “Violator’s” handful of okay kills doesn’t exactly set off our internal omigod alarms.

“Violator” is the kind of off market brand and violence-laden film that fits like a glove with indie distributor, Wild Eye Releasing, in association with Tomcat Films (“The Amazing Bulk,” “Mansion of Blood”) and is perhaps one of the best releases out from the shlock usually produced from the latter company. With a muted colored and basic arranged DVD cover mockup that evokes every suspicion of an unauthorized release, I couldn’t love this cover any more than I already do with the promising depiction of a hysterical bloodbath and the singular moments represented in the collage of carnage and madness don’t stray away from the truth. The not rated DVD is presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 72 minutes. DVD image quality is not terrible with a rate of decompression hovering around 6-7 Mbps, but still a little fuzzy in particular scenes with more than one character present and a in low-lit show production, that can hinder the viewing. The Japanese language PCM stereo track has no real flaw to speak of with a good synchronous English subtitle track and no detectable compression issues other than the lack of surround sound audio strength. The metal soundtrack also didn’t align, or rather clashed, with the mise-en-scene, added for just the sake of adding to make the story edgier. Bonus features include only a scene selection and trailers on a variable menu. Coy and different, “Violator” thinks outside the box with a simple supernatural revenge narrative that penetrates slowly at first but then really rams in the sudden disarray without a precautionary moment to lube up first.

“Violator” on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing and MVD Visual!