Tag Archives: 2023

When the Artist Becomes the Art, EVIL Takes Over Their Soul. “Stopmotion” reviewed! (Acorn Medial International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Stopmotion” Available on Blu-ray!

Living under her arthritis-enfeebled mother’s tremendous stop motion reputation and browbeaten into being the hands of completing her overbearing mother’s last film, Ella Blake can’t find her own voice in the animated art form.  During one already tension filled morning, Ella’s mother has a stroke and falls into a comatose state.  The unfortunate opportunity opens a door for Ella to complete her mother’s final masterpiece on her own as she moves out from the traumatic memories of her home and into a vacant high-rise apartment to be left in occupied solitude, but when a curious and brash little girl finds her mother’s story mundane and offers an alternative, more grotesque story, one which insidiously fascinates with disturbing themes and grisly creativity, Ella finds herself starting afresh, listening to the yarn of a young girl’s chilling vision, whole slowly cracking under the immense pressure of completing a film worth calling her own. 

With the timesaving, cost-efficient computer-generated imagery, many once popular animation techniques have nearly become a lost art in the recent feature film pool.  Stopmotion is one of those dangerously close to extinction animation styles, which has played a pivotal part in some of the most thrilling and magical films in history, such as, but not limited to, the live-action dominion of Desmond Davis’s “Clash of the Titans,” Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” films, and Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” to the fully animated features of Henry Celick’s “Caroline,” another Burton film in “A Nightmare Before Christmas,” and Phil Tippett’s “Mad God.”  Stopmotion animator and filmmaker Robert Morgan aims to add his entry to the dwindling, yet sustaining for now, artform with his 2023, debut full-length film “Stopmotion” co-written by Morgan and Robin King (“Mnemophrenia”).  The UK film is produced by Alain de la Mata and Christopher Granier-Deferrere under the French production company Blue Light and is presented by the UK’s British Film Institute, or BFI, with IFC Films and Shudder.

In the tragic lead role of spiraling down through pressurized suffering , trying to surface and take a breath from Ella Blake’s domineering mother’s shadow, is Aisling Franciosi, an Irish actress who also had a principal role in the segmented Dracula tale of “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” released the same year.  As Ella Blake, Franciosi plays into the young woman’s meek and submissive behavior as a subservient daughter to her conceited mother (Stella Gonet, “Spencer”).  All the while on the inside, Blake’s bottled voice contains lethal doses of self-destruction, barring her indefinitely inside the mental boundaries of her psyche, and never surfacing between the already emotional scarring and the grief for mother’s authoritarian parenting as Blake herself becomes very much like the armature puppet she manipulates into position for her film, needing that command structure to follow orders.  That need to be creative is so strong within Blake she fabricates another persona splitting soul into a dissociative disorder that takes the yoke and, ultimately, control over her and her project.  And, in some distressing and grim fairytale type of way, the voice recreates a story that parallels Ella’s life with the Ash Man (effects and prosthetic-cladded actor James Swanton, “Host”) chasing down and manipulating a wax puppet version of Ella in a grotesque mirror dynamic between Ella and her mother.  Tethering Ella ever so barely to reality is flexible boyfriend Tom (Tom York) and his flaunting animation corporate head Polly (Therica Wilson-Read, “Suicide Club”) to what’s in front of her rather to the voice inside of her but their truth is far too combative for Ella to stay fastened to a much strong influencing voice that’s far too close to her.   The upcoming “The Beast Within” actress, Caoilinn Springall, rounds out the cast as the little girl of the apartment building. 

As much as I wanted to seep and soak into “Stopmotion’s” one-frame-at-a-time madness, I couldn’t help but to think I’ve seen this story before.   A sort of déjà vu encircles me and hits me squarely in the gut as I lament over the possibility of feeling the same way I felt before with another film.  Then, it struck me like a bolt of lightning that this storyline shares similarities with the 2021, Prano Bailey-Bond film, “Censor.”  Now, I’m not saying “Stopmotion” is a direct carbon copy but follows a familiar pathway, a movie industry outlier forced by life and submersed under the weight to finishing what the heroines have started only to crack in deep obsession.  On a high level, character impetuses that lead to the same conclusion are in stark contrast and Ella Blake’s descent fathoms family trauma and fixation with trying to be an individual and not just a minor component of a bigger, more impressive, machine that overshadows the necessary cog that makes the whole operate.  Coupled with surreal imagery, otherworldly stopmotion animation, and physical effects that’ll make your skin crawl, or melt like wax, “Stopmotion” enlivens an animator filmmaker’s creativity outside the personifying vocation, blending genres and animations to exact a reality bending mania.  Morgan’s fragmented segues evoke an alternate reality that skips the portions where the audiences’ minds might fill in the gaps.  There is no gap filling, only essential, contextual moments, as if Morgan is the puppeteer to his story by arranging the movements one frame at a time reflect Ella’s poignant reminders and dour moments that mold her.

“Stopmotion” animates a living hell.  The Shudder exclusive lands onto a RLJ Entertainment subsidiary UK label, Acorn Media International, Blu-ray release.  The Blu-ray is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio encoded with AVC, high definition 1080p, on a BD25.  Though in spartanly stark and gritty-glum set dressings, “Stopmotion’s” grading is on the lighter side of saturation diffusion, held mostly to a shade array of reds, greens, browns, and yellows.  There is numerous isolating, low key-lit scenes concentrated on the framed charactered and engulfing them in darkness but with that, there were no notifiable issues with posterization or banding.  Depth, especially in the stop-motion portion of reality, has spatial length and dimensional delineation, a testament to Morgan’s stop motion animator’s background and experience as some examples of the craft often look flat.  The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 offers a lossless fidelity through the broodiness of Lola de la Mata’s compositional vocal and violin score, stringing through the surrealistic switch of cerebral crossfire.  Dialogue creates no challenges with a clear and clean presentation, range of effects heighten in animation’s Foley, and, again, depth creates that an enwreathed sound field through the back and side channels.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Special features include an interview with star Aisling Francosi, interview with writer-director Robert Morgan, and a behind-the-scenes featurette.  The Acorn Media release is rated 18 for Strong Bloody Violence and gore, has a runtime of 94 minutes, and, though not listed, played in region A playback so does seem to have at least dual-regional encoding between A and B.  The tangible Blu-ray comes in a standard Blu-ray case with a creepy, head-nesting puppet artwork.  The interior has standard appeal with just the disc inside, pressed with the same front cover art. 

Last Rites: “Stopmotion” depicts a tragic fall but not from grace in what is a more sad and sullen reality, and the escape is a freshly personified hell of one’s own making. 

“Stopmotion” Available on Blu-ray!

This 600 Horsepower Outboard Propeller Runs on EVIL! “Motorboat” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

As Chief Brody Always Said, This Isn’t a Boat Accident!  “Motorboat” on DVD today!

Messiah Ward and his cult of followers once plagued the surrounding Lake Jude for years, conjuring black magic and death in order to appease their netherworld lord.  Ward’s evil is only matched by the goodness of a man of the cloth, but the pious risktaker is no ordinary priest but Messiah Ward’s very own brother, Father Thomas.  Taking matters into his own had to save the souls of his community, Father Thomas mercilessly guns down Messiah Ward and his acolytes, ending his reign of terror…or so he thought.  Two years later, a black and powerful phantom speedboat appears on the lake, killing those who dare enter its waters.  With the help of the local lake patrol officer Barney Rayl investigating the homicides, Father Thomas must serve as the wrath of God once again to stop his brotherly possessed motorboat from hacking up any more innocent swimmers and fishers with its deadly outboard propeller. 

I’ve seen my share of possessed combustible engine films with cars, trucks, and even a killer bulldozer.  Hell, I’ve even seen a rubber tire on a rampage.  Yet, I’ve never seen a killer boat movie until today and the Polonias are responsible for the slaughter on the seas with their latest indie schlocker, “Motorboat.”  The “Splatter Farm” and “Hellspawn” director Mark Polonia and his son Anthony team up for their fifth rudimentary, lowbrow lunge at hyper-micro budget horror, crowdfunded on Indiegogo for around $5,000, and shot in the fall of October ‘22 in and around Tioga county, such as one location being Hills Creek State Park Lake to be one of three locations in creating a larger lake setting.  “Motorboat” is created by Polonia Brothers Entertainment, executively produced by SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk, through Indiegogo, and John Dagostino with Mark Polonia producing, and Elliott Monroe (“Evil Bong 666”) and Previn Wong (“Yule Log”) set as associate producers. 

Like many of the Polonia Brothers Entertainment, a cast of regulars return to indulge in the tightknit production family and to give their all in providing their best performances to make micro budgets like “Motorboat” come to filmic fruition.  In the roles of Priest and Harbor Patrolman are Tim Hatch (“Shark Encounters of the Third Kind”) and Jeff Kirkendall (“Sharkula”) who have once again found themselves working side-by-side on a Mark Polonia production.  Cemented more into exposition than action, Hatch and Kirkendall essentially get the job done with their extensive rapport and long history working together but as developing their characters, a Priest and a Harbor Patrolman could have well been a Lake Fisherman and  Pizza Delivery Man as the professions are laid waste to the script’s lesser defining ideals that are more clearly evident, such as a demon possessed motor boat offing people on and off shore.  Also, Hatch and Kirkendall, as well as much of “Motorboat’s” cast, aren’t very expressive, use little gesturing, and corner themselves with monotone deliveries, taking what should be shocking scenes or jump into actions with little reactionary energy and intensity.  That fairly sums up “Motoboat’s” cast as Messiah Ward is more like the 1958 Plymouth Fury in “Christine,” a motorized machine on a killing spree, with Michael Korotitsch briefly playing the character under a black or rubber mask during his corporeal scenes.  The remaining cast are essentially the racked up body count boat fodder with Polonia regulars Jamie Morgan (“House Shark”), Ken Van Sant (“Sharkenstein”), Dave Fife (“Doll Shark”), and Noyes J. Lawton (“Virus Shark”).

As you can obviously see by the cast’s previous film credits, which all involved Mark Polonia, the director has a healthy fascination with the predators of the ocean, augmenting and exploiting sharksploitation from a limitless thought-bubble of narrative concepts.  Surprisingly, “Motorboat” does not contain one single dorsal fin or rows of razor-sharp visual effects teeth.  Polonia may have deviated from sharksploitation but never got out of the water by keeping the tide still infused with blood.  Post-production blood effects, rain, and layered energy spirals are not the most skillfully composited integration but what Polonia always strives for is to make an entertaining film, to keep the viewers engaged, and could only hope that the his microbudget efforted effects, such as using a 1/16 scale RC boat as the Messiah Ward’s ship of slaughter, afforded him enough production value to eke by but how Mark Polonia, and I’m sure son Anthony also, very masterfully retains engagement for his microbudget movies is to not linger on a shot that can make the scene stale or monotonous.  Granted, you may roll your eyes on lower shelf quality, but you’ll still find yourself connected to the screen as cuts are made for different camera angles, such as over-the-shoulder, behind-the-back, master shots, closeups, mediums, there’s never a single take for a long period of time to avoid idle eyes and unstimulated neuron firings.  The story itself cruises along as combination of films like “The Devil’s Rain” and “The Car” leaving a fair amount of demonic or possessed destruction in its wake but can be trying at times piecing together the whole story behind Messiah Ward’s purpose and transition into either a speedboat or a demon driving a speedboat, an unclear specific of the antagonistic character, and this undercuts Father Thomas and Harbor Patrol Rayl endgame goal because we’re not exactly sure who or what they’re up against.  An innuendo term like “Motorboat” suggests lighter, more in a foreplay of intentions, but SRS Cinema and Mark Polonia are abreast in another way to turn the tide toward something far more terrifying on the waters!

The one thing you can always count on Ron Bonk and SRS Cinema to pull off are immaculately enticing cover arts to catch one’s eye and that is what we have here with “Motorboat” on DVD home video.  The 16×9 widescreen presented film is a MPEG-2 encoded DVD5 shot digitally with an overall clean finish. However, compressions issues do appear with minor jittery picture noise and minor banding with skin tones ungraded and appearing sometimes orange in the shot. Thrifty visual effects are you get what you pay for but doesn’t necessarily affect the watch if going in, understanding, and if a fan of the Mark Polonia fast and dirty chugalug of filmmaking. An English stereo 2.0 is wangled by the built-in camera mic that more than most the time doesn’t have too many issues with playback aside the varying and inconsistent dialogue levels despite being in the same scene as well as unable to filter an overwhelming lakeside ambiance. Post ADR was used to overlay a couple of scene dialogue tracks due to the crashing, wind-driven waves of lakeside conversing. As a whole, dialogue sums up pretty clear without serious hurdles. The two-channel speaker relays a punchy boat-toot audio byte that sounds like a Mac truck blaring its horn whenever Messiah Ward the “Motorboat” is cruising the waters and killing the people. There were no English subtitles available. Extras include an audio commentary track with director Mark Polonia who half the time soapboxes his trials and tribulations as well as champions micro-indie filmmaking while also diving shallowly into “Motorboat’s” background waters. The official trailer and other SRS trailers are also present. I’m always impressed with SRS Cinema front cover artwork as it’s very appealing, alluring, and is sometimes not truly accurate and for “Motorboat,” we have a half-submerged woman in distressed and reaching out for help in the foreground as a minacious boat barrel toward her from behind. Not insert inside and the DVD art is the same front cover image but cropped to just show the woman’s frightened, eyeshadow-streaked face. Region free with a rum-runner runtime of 75 minutes, SRS Cinema’s DVD comes unrated. “Motorboat” is pure Mark Polonia and if you’re expecting high-caliber horror, you’re going to need more than a life preserver to survive these chopping waters.

As Chief Brody Always Said, This Isn’t a Boat Accident!  “Motorboat” on DVD today!

When There is EVIL in the Seoul! “Gangnam Zombie” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Well Go USA’s “Gangnam Zombie” on Blu-ray Hi-Def!

In the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea, former backup to the national taekwondo team Hyeon-seok works underpaid and unhappily for a smalltime viral video streaming company.  His colleague and crush, Min-jeong, is a content editor constantly being hit on by the knavish company owner.  Unhappy at their jobs, the two miserably plug away while avoiding the elephants in the room until an infected, flesh-eating man walks into their office rental building, biting and infected the surrounding professionals that turn the place of business into a place of horror and survival.  With the doors chained shut and no way to call for help, Hyeon-seok, Min-jeong, their small band of coworkers, and the building’s landlady react antagonistically against the quickly devolving situation that seeks to sink its teeth into them.  The upstanding Hyeon-seok does the only thing he knows how, to fight his way out while protecting Min-jeong from a mass army of blood-stained teeth.

In the wake of the popular successful running and rampaging outbreak spread of zombie-madness in “Train to Busan,” the 2016 all-aboard the zombie train thriller not only blazed the rails with a hyper-intense, body-over-body, dog-eat-dog infected film confined to the cramped aisles of linked train cars but it also set the tone for years to come with imitators to rake in the cash of the outbreak breakout success.  Though the concept is nothing new, South Korea has adopted the fast-running infected flesh-eater and shaped it with mass affect with newer entries being submitted every year since the release of “Train to Busan.”  “Rodeukil” director Soon Sung Lee has helmed one of those new entries with “Gangnam Zombie,” a far more contained zombie burst confined to a mall-like office building set in the heart of the Gangnam district, hence the title.  “Gangnam Zombie” is a self-produced production of Soon Sung Lee in association with JNC Media Group and Joy N Cinema with co-producer Choe Gwang-rae.

The aphorism less is more can be applied to many things and many situations, often generally true, much like overthinking a simple problem.  For the cast buildup of Soon Sung Lee’s “Gangnam Zombie,” the saying torpedoes any kind of chance connecting with the chaos-engrossed characters.  Opening to Cho Kyoung-hoon and his partner’s breaking and entering of a shipping container full of boxes of I-don’t-know-what, objectively were lost to the here and why this crime becomes not only ground zero for the epidemic, Cho Kyoung-hoon’s Wang-I is attacked by a container-hitching infected cat of all things, but also the motivation for their transgressions of thievery.  I honestly could not tell you what was being hijacked from the container boxes; to me, the contents appeared to be COVID-19 test kits which would make sense since “Gangnam Zombie” forces the paralleling global epidemic done our visual esophagus with a cat instead of a bat.  After dispatching his partner with a bite to the neck, in what is a very vampiric method I might add, Wang-I wanders his dazed self into the city of Seoul, especially the Gangnam district, where he steals red meat from a grocer and stumbles with a self-image conflict into Hyeon-seok and Min-jeong’s office building.  Indiscriminately unhappy with their jobs with a mild sense of attraction between them, the characters are played by Ji Il-ju and Park Ji-yeon who can’t really get into the tumultuously thrown together chemistry needed to make their emotionally pulling tug work with viewers.  The supposed coupling actors’ scenes feel one-sided with Park Ji-yeon in a defensively scared and uncertain shoes but very much guarded against Ji Il-ju who can wear his heart on his sleeve as he roundhouses zombie extras left and right.  Cho Kyoung-hoon feels more enthused in his black-eyed, rabid-smile zombie mode while still able to grasp his humanity with close-quarters hand-to-hand, an enthusiasm not really shared by the others when faced with ground zero apocalypse that doesn’t quiver under one-liners and vapid, vacuous vernacular and vigor.  Min Choi, Tu-in Tak, and Yi-joo Jung round out the cast.

“Gangnam Zombie” falls into the cheap-thrills trap of comparing itself the deadly strain of COVID-19 not because of the cat and bat reference above but because the opening title sequence hammers in a quick recap of the epidemic era in massive overload of visuals with the occasional infected person flashing into frame.  Though not mentioned once of COVID into the dialogue, a tumbling of slowly progressing confusion settles itself inside the narrative of what director Soon Sung Lee is trying to convey comparing COVID to chaotic cannibalism.  The exploit is egregiously akin to Full Moon’s capitalizing indecorous “Corona Zombies.”  The two not only share germs but also share essentially the same title and are both more comedic and lighter, shadowing over and taking away any intensity it intended in this more comedy-horror than horror-comedy.  Zombie carnage is laid waste to bad continuity editing as we see some of the same zombies looking down one hallway and then in the next scene and in a different hallway there is the same infected head, zombies inexplicably rolling on the floor into frame, zombies sneaking up behind people only to hesitate an attack with more of an intent to scare them when the chased turns around, and the infected are not brainlessly dulled and have the ability, or at least only one of them has the ability, to fight back with blocks and other defensive and offensive moves.  “Gangnam Zombie” milks the stouter predecessors with a haphazardly duck taped lesser vessel to slog forward what other South Korean filmmakers have previously perpetuated so well in the subgenre.

On Blu-ray now from Well Go USA Entertainment is “Gangnam Zombie” with an AVC encoded, 1080 hi-def, BD25, presented in a listed widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio that works well in the compressed environment of the office building. Exterior scenes of the city, overall general landscape, suggest a wider aspect ratio, perhaps a 2.35:1 to capture more the of the urban landscape. Speaking of the office building, the well-lit environment provides less complexities on the digital image with the same gray, steel, and translucent facing in most of the scenes. Varying saturations of red diverse the blood shading around the body and face with darker tints often looking like motor oil to match the midnight irises. Details in the digital age rarely see a loss of face with natural skin tones, to the minute details of reflective surfaces, and a properly sterile office space. The only audio track built into the release is a Korean DTS-HD 5.1 master audio that’s balanced appropriately with forefront dialogue and a backseat generic soundtrack mix of heavy metal and crescendo builds. The zombie grunts, groans, and roars tear into the channels, nicely through the backend channels, but with cacophonous irritation at times. There’s decent secondary sound design with the baseball bat being hit across infected faces and the floor, despite revealing its rubbery bounce, and Ji Il-joo kick and punch melodies. Sometimes a hit-or-miss with bonus features on the international releases, this particular Well Go USA release comes bare bones with no special features on the software. The hardware, aka physical features, is also not terribly spectacular with a standard Blu-ray casing with a sketch and paint cover that’s slightly misleading where our protagonist will be when the outbreak breaks. Unlatching the case reveals an advert insert for three Well Go USA distributed films, likely rotational with different features, with a unique fascination disc press art of rope tied radio with outstand hands and fingers appearing to grab the bottom of it. It’s a Blu-ray opening enigma viewers will have watch the feature to understand. Clocking in at 82 minutes, “Gangnam Zombie” is region A locked and is not rated. The bite marks of “Gangnam Zombie” are a familiar pang and now nearly a decade after a formidable Korean zombie subgenre began, we’ve become too desensitized for hackneyed carbon copies.

Well Go USA’s “Gangnam Zombie” on Blu-ray Hi-Def!

Breathtaking, Private, and Full of Blood-Hungry, EVIL Amphibians! “The Tank” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Tank” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

A financially struggling San Franscisco family of three learn their recently deceased grandmother had a large, secluded property on the oceanic foothills of Oregan. The coastal property was kept a secret for 30 years from the mentally unstable woman’s youngest child, the father, for reasons unknown. Rundown and off the beaten path, the vast acreage promises lucrative income from interested land developers at a time when the family needs the money the most. Included with the home is a water tank system built into the cliffside that can house thousands of gallons of fresh water underground from a nearby spring. Activating the system awakens a sinister breed of anophthalmia creatures, revealed to have plagued the family for generations and answers a number of troublesome family secrets that now terrorize the current inhabitants.

Initially beginning the backstory of a vital family turning point stemmed in the 1940s, “The Tank” succeeds 30 years later in the 1970’s with an execrable house understanding with a loving but desperately coursed family walks into its deadly den and sharp-teethed, subterranean dwelling. The creature feature thriller is the sophomore feature written-and-directed by New Zealand filmmaker Scott Walker, ten years after the director’s debut full-length biographical drama “The Frozen Ground,” starring John Cusack and Nicholas Cage. “The Tank’s theme toils with the troubling idiom, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, as opportunity turns oppressive when ignoring red flag secrets and throwing caution to the wind when taking chances for the love of your family to relieve financial troubles. The looming debt and inevitable curiosity, who we all know killed the cat, sends a family into the fire, produced by Walker, wife Minna, and Lesley Hansen and is a coproduction from Ajax Pictures, General Film Corporation, and Happy Dog Entertainment with Ingenious Media presenting.

“The Tank” contains a slim six characters: three principals and a handful of support. However, another can be added to the list but in a non-speaking role, unless you consider Regina Hegemann and her contortionist craft as an articulate performance with her hands, feet, arms, legs, and, well, her entire body. In fact, I do consider those crooked twists and bends of a slender anatomy to be able to speak louder than words sometimes – think the archetypical Doug Jones. Hegemann’s debut film role builds a gap in between the contortionist’s regular vocational circus acts and instructions of physical sinuous spiraling of the human body to bring practical effects to slithering, vicious life in “The Tank’s” underground dwelling monsters – yes, she plays more than just one creature. Hegemann’s innumerable creatures are pitted up against a nuclear family made up of a strictly New Zealand cast beginning with Matt Whelan as Ben, the father and inheritor of the secluded cliffside cabin whose drowning in family closet skeletons and ambiguity, Luciane Buchanan as Ben’s wife Jules who drowns in a different way with debt as she tries to earn her degree in zoology while raising a family and running a pet shop, and Zara Nausbaum as daughter Reia caught in the middle of her parent’s woes and in the clutches of the undiscovered and eyeless salamander never imagined to be extant. With a secret home laid out in Ben’s mother’s postmortem belongings, an opportunity to dig themselves out of debt seems now feasible for a family treading profusely to keep their head above water, but the script only nibbles at what the family is doing at the cottage. Sure, a real estate agent comes a-knocking to offer them an interested buyer’s more than generous offer to build upon the land, but that doesn’t keep the family from loafing about the property, reissuing a there’s always tomorrow stance even when all their current problems can be obliterated with a firm yes. Instead, thinking about the supposedly large offer doesn’t quite kickstart negotiates but rather belays the inevitable, a family’s forgotten dark and dastardly secret is now gnawing on them – literally. Ascia Maybury, Graham Vincent, Mark Mitchinson, Holly Shervie, and Jack Barry fill “The Tank’s” cast list up.

Following up on “The Tank’s” main theme of some family secrets should never be explored, investigated, dug up, analyzed, or even the slightest looked for its potential value because the secret is secret for a reason. Usually, those grounds are odiously detrimental and, in this case, the grounds have hidden a longstanding life form unbeknownst to man. “The Tank” has a hard time selling the message with the one most affected by the family’s history, with a father and sister having perished under mysterious circumstances and a mother committed to a mental institute, having little interest in unravelling the truth. Instead, the reverse happens when Jules immerses herself into Ben’s past, unable to shake the freaky feeling of the cabin’s ominous atmosphere and checkered past around the land that had claimed the lives of her husband’s father and sister. Jules continues to surpass her husband’s faults and failings with a reminiscent climatic “Aliens” strap up for battle when her child is snatched by the insidious creatures, with attributes and coloring very similar to the xenomorph but on a smaller scale and telluric, and to their water-filled, underground tank-habitat. Using an aerosol flamethrower, we again get that Ellen Ripley vibe as she uses her motherly strength to go toe-to-toe with a terrestrial creature who took down a well-built cop with a gun. All the while Jules wades through multiple encounters with the slippery salamander with razor sharp teeth, her husband Ben, who had previously failed in collapsing the cavern with explosives, becomes invalid with injury and so she stands alone up into the final act of one-lining a car creeping-in creature with, “Get out of my car!,” before shooting it’s head off with the dead cop’s sidearm. Comparably not as influential or heavy-duty with force and violence as “Aliens,” “The Tank” still manages to hold water with a strong, female heroine willing to jump into the jaws of death to fight for her child without backup.

“The Tank” doesn’t run empty with a solid Blu-ray release from Well Go USA Entertainment. The AVC encoded BD50 is presented in 1080p, high-definition, in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Faced with a lot of low-lighting scenes, the digitally captured picture offers up good detail levels with spotty compression banding when introducing light into darker scenes. The larger format storage leans to non-compromised video quality that provides enough storage to maintain consistent grading stability and pixel sharpness all along the way. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix provides a wide-berth of sound elements that hit in the right audio channels. I found dialogue to be quite soft, especially against the prehistoric boom-roar of the creature resonating across the channel board, but the overall dialogue track is clean and clear despite its lack of boost. “The Tank” features fair range elements involving the slinking creatures, cabin creakiness, and outdoor ambience; this also includes a well-rounded depth to create space albeit the creature’s ferocious roar that doesn’t have any directional positioning and swallows output space. Bonus features include A Look into the Tank – a compositional cut of cast and director interviews regarding their experiences in the making of the film, Making the Creature is a full-blown look from spark idea to complete realization of the creature-look and design to fit the outward and physical capabilities of Regina Hegemann’s contortionist craft, and the original Well Go USA trailer to bring up the rear. The Blu-ray comes in traditional casing with latch with an advert insert on the inside for three other Well Go USA Entertainment titles. Though not as sexy as some other covers, the still highly effective front cover embodies the mysterious circumstance of looking into the belly of a dark-laden tank. The region A encoded Blu is rated R and has a runtime of approx. 100 minutes. A salamandroid reservoir that supplies a deluge dose of devilish, aquatic quadrupeds, “The Tank” is yet another title of alternative, out-of-the-box horror courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment!

“The Tank” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!