Tag Archives: Epic Pictures

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Island Escape” Available Here at Amazon.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Island Escape” Available Here at Amazon.com

EVIL Loves to Clown Around. “The Jester” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Jester” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Days before Halloween, a man hangs himself from off a bridge.  His funeral not only services the wake for his grieving daughter Jocelyn but also brought out his estranged and aggrieved daughter Emma, Jocelyn’s half-sister from a failed marriage their father had abandoned when Emma was very young.  Jocelyn reaches across the aisle to connect and to bond with the peripheral Emma, but the scorned older half-sibling only expresses anger and confliction over feeling grief for man who no longer wanted to be a part of her life until the very end after reaching out a few times to make amends.  Emma and Jocelyn soon discover that a malevolent, supernatural trickster, known as the Jester, was somehow involved with their father’s untimely demise and now, on Halloween night, the Jester is following and toying with them in a playfully sadistic manner, preying on the one thing that bonds and also disconnects the sisters from being content. 

Based on his 2016 three chaptered shorts of the same name, writer-director Colin Krawchuk pulls from the best parts of those shorts, sprinkles a little more sadism on top, and creates his debut into full-length feature film with this titular antagonist, “The Jester,” at the center.  Co-written with longtime collaborate on various shorts as well as “The Jester” shorts is Michael Sheffield, who also brings to life the Jester’s amusing animated animosity and flamboyant cryptic personality from script to screen.   “The Jester” represents a theme of tormenting guilt for this afflicted and those surrounding the person and is symbolized by the absurdity of a clown masked fool in a gaudily colored top-hat and cheap suit with a deviant chip on his shoulder.  Film in and around the Frederick, Maryland area, “The Jester” is a product of Cinematic Productions, based in local Maryland region, and the Dread Central acquiring entertainment company, Epic Productions, under the Dread genre label with Carlo Glorioso, Patrick Ewald, and Katie Page producing with Mary Beth McAndrews and Eduardo Sánchez (director of “Satanic Hispanics”) executive producing.

Through the years of cinema, a plethora of personalities have emerged all vying for our entertainment seeking eye and while most, especially in the indie market, recycle the very idiosyncratic eccentricities of notable characters or extract some inspiration for blatant misappropriation into their own performance, every once and awhile comes a role that can be undeniably fresh, engaging, and unpredictable.  That’s how Michael Sheffield’s Jester presents to me as a versatile villain with broad expressions and precise stratagem that even by not saying a single word in the entire runtime still manages to have us on edge with just what’s up the Jester’s playful, prestidigitate sleeve.  Sheffield’s tall and lanky stature greatly suits the Machiavellian complimented by the outlandish vestments and wooden cane.  As an unceremonious symbol of guilt, the Jester becomes the obstacle between half-sisters from both sides of their father’s railroad tracks.  Delaney White’s introductory feature film begins her off as Jocelyn, a well-liked, sympathetic, and balanced young woman who can’t help but want to connect with an older half-sister she never knew.  Lelia Symington (“Brut Force”) couldn’t portray older sister Emma anymore opposite as a daughter holding onto a rightful grudge against a father who abandoned here at a young age.   That same bitterness extends to the more affable and kept cherished extension of her father, to Jocelyn, but an innate emotion eats at Emma, an inexplicable pang for his death that drives her to pique when she shouldn’t care less about her deadbeat dad and that manifests into deadlier, dastardlier demons, or at least one dressed-up, duplicitous, and dapper demon.  Matt Servitto, Lena Janes, Mia Rae Roberts, Sam Lukowski (“You’re F@#K’n Dead!”), and Cory Okouchi (“Ninjas vs. Zombies”) fill out “The Jester’s” roles.

Once the end credits started roll, I immediately research “The Jester” like I do with all the films I review to try and go beyond just the film with information, trivia, connections, see other reviews and public opinion, etc.  Why?  Because I’m a hardcore nerd, but what I found in the public comments about the film, especially on Letterboxd, is that many compared “The Jester” as a rip of Art the Clown from “Terrifier.”  Initially, a small voice inside my mind, processing the images from my visual cortex, thought the very same the mass majority did, or does rather.  Quickly, I nipped that fleeting resemblance in the bud because of a couple of reasons: “Terrifier’s” whole gag is gore-drenched for purely shock value as Art the Clown terrorizes and kills those in his path whereas “The Jester” represents more between the lines of guilt, loss, and connecting with what matters between the disfiguration of a dysfunction relations and the other reason is both films nearly sprout at the same time.  Yes, “All Hallows Eve” was released three years prior to Krawchuk’s short films and while it’s unknown whether the director was inspired by Damien Leone’s first pass, “All Hallows Eve” didn’t quite overflow the social media cup like “Terrifier” did a few years later.  Many in the horror community compare “The Jester” to “Terrifier” despite the latter not having been coined until the same year as “The Jester’s” shorts films were released.  Sure, Art the Clown and the Jester share similarities, such as a form of a clown mask and have malevolent supernatural abilities, but the blanket comments are like saying just because Jason Voorhees wears a mask, uses a knife, and doesn’t say a word that he is a clone of Michael Myers.  Overall, “The Jester’s” understated tone with a no holds barred harlequin has decent dark humor due in part to Michael Sheffield’s charade of an act and precision special effect, editing, and camera angles.  Where “The Jester” struggles is where it hurts the film the most and that is with an ending that just drops off the edge of the cliff without a ton of closer that really wraps Jocelyn and Emma’s story neatly nor offers a satisfyingly open-ended dangler for more violent jest.   Perhaps 7-years too late after the release of the shorts, “The Jester” will see push back as a facsimile but I implore you, the readers, to give the Colin Krawchuk feature more than just a bias-gazing once over. 

Epic Pictures’ genre label Dread releases “The Jester” on an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 that’s presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  As much of the film takes place at night, details are heavily reliant on the lighting and the compression encoding.  While “The Jester” is not the epitome of sharp edge delineation and detail with a supercharged color palette, the encoded shingles retain a pullulating scheme of adequate grading and detail keeping artifacts to a reduced level within the slightly softer image. The heavier image compression is fastened to the three shorts in the bonus content with horrendous basins of splotchy patches. Two English Dolby Digital audio tracks come with the release: a 5.1 surround sound and a 2.0 stereo. Each render about the same with the 5.1 slimming down and isolating channels for specific back, front, and center audio assignments. No issues with the clean and clear dialogue through the digital, interference-free registering though most of the conversations are one-sided with the Jester’s mime expressions. English closed caption subtitles are available. The three Colin Krawchuk and Michael Sheffield 2016 shorts, as I said multiple times already, are included in the special features along with the official trailer and other Dread previews. The standard Blu-ray Amary has a hard-lit Jester face to exact ever fold of the mask smack on the front cover with a bare insert pocket and the pressed disc art fanned out with the Jester’s antique playing cards imprinted on top. The region free release has a runtime of 80 minutes and comes not rated. Clever, entertaining, and devilish, “The Jester” acts the whimsical clown of conscience-stricken torment with an indelible joker different from the rest of the villainy pool.

“The Jester” on Blu-ray Home Video!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EVIL Just Casually Swims Along in “The Lake” reviewed! (Dread – Epic Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Take a Dip in “The Lake” on Blu-ray Home Video!

The small Thailand village of Bueng Kan becomes under siege by a monstrous being from out of the depths of near by lake.  Vicious and stealthy, the unknown creature terrorizes the wetland villagers town by town, killing all those in its rampaging path up an inlet river.  The local police commander and his two topnotch detectives are baffled and have no idea what they’re up against or how to exactly handle the situation but with the help of one of the bitten victims, psychically linked to the creature by its bite, the police and vigilant locals manage to capture the creature before it can wreak more havoc.  Concurrently, Police discover a large egg by the originating lake of first creature sightings and as they inspect it, the much larger mother beast emerges.  The mother searches out her children by using vocal sonar to track down her troubled little one, sending her galloping toward the panicky and crowded town in an unstoppable hunt that could lead to chaos and catastrophe. 

When the first news broke about “The Lake,” there was considerable positive buzz surrounding the big-budgeted, Thailand produced picture for it’s substantial, animatronic creature feature effects.  Yet, I purposefully held back doing any further research into learning more about the film that was released in the latter half of 2022 for reasons that may bias my professional opinion and to not spoil a virginal viewing experience of too much trailer audiovisual that can sometime reveal all the good bits and pieces of a movie.  Retrospectively, I’m starting to think that not absorbing much about the Lee Thongkham’s written-and-directed picture, whether by intentional research or by happenstance, was in due part to its unfavourability amongst global audiences despite the tangibly terrifying and impressive effects.  “The Lake” is produced by Nimit Sattayakul and Nathaporn Siriphakacharath with Dread Central’s production label, Epic Pictures, serving as coproduction company in conglomerate association with Hollywood Thailand, Airspeed Pictures, Five Stars Network, Right Beyond, Creative Motion, and the director’s own Thongkham Films.

“The Lake” is an ensemble cast of well-known Thai and Chinese based actors and actresses brought together to play a variety of characters caught up by a sudden and surprising monster attack.  The cast works well enough to supplement “The Lake’s” overall reactionary state of frantic and heavy browed emotions.  In fact, the performances are terribly melodramatic and only reactionary.  For a Kaiju film, there’s not a lot of chase sequences, monster versus man battling, or even mass destruction; instead, the direction is geared toward the emotional aftermath of experiences, such as watching the monster in terrifying awe, twisted faces of concern over the turmoil, or breaking down in a moment of loss, which graphic death scenes seem very sparse with only a few instances of the humanoid sized beast taking chest bites out of a few village denizens and the only principal character death.  The despairing cast is mostly comprised of Thai actors with a handful of Chinese actors sprinkled in, beginning with Thai leading man Thiraphat Sajakul (“The Maid”) as head inspector James (last names are nonexistent in the cast of characters).  Inspector James not only has to figure out how to outmaneuver the magnitude of the creature pool but also outthink the angsty games of his antagonistic teenage daughter Pam (Supansa Wedkama) who has squared off against him after the death of their mother.  That teeming with bitterness and frustration dynamic barely holds water as the problematic situation is over before it can even began to fester with audiences.  The emotional weight is definitely felt but the emotional worth retains little impact when lake monsters begin to emerge like Russian Matryoshka dolls, or nesting dolls, beginning with the smallest of the set first and working it’s to the larger mother.  “Motel Acacia” and “The Maestro:  A Symphony of Terror” actor Vithaya Pansringarm has a comparatively commanding presence as the Police Commander, but, to be honest, Pansringarm is consistently typecast as law authority throughout his career and has a firm foot on the role’s neck, but one of his subordinator officer is his daughter Fon (Palita Chueasawathee), a fact that we don’t really know until much, much later into the narrative, making the bond essentially not worth knowing, especially since nothing really happens with Fon other than the occasional exposition of events that can be easily interpreted with our own eyes.  Another pairing is wetland farmer Lin (Sushar Manaying) and her drunkard brother Keng (Thanachat Tunyachat, “Yuan ling 2”) who experience the initial attacks of the smaller creature and form a link to it once Keng survives a bite from its tentacle-dangling and squared-shaped jaws.  Like the other two couples, not much of arc is established, even for completion, as the pieces to their character composition feels fragmented and frail to the point of futility.  I was expecting Keng to play up his the drunk indolent and someone who takes for granted his hardworking sister and her daughter that the attack becomes this bonding moment of relationship redemption or salvation, but what unfolds on screen, between the two, harps Keng’s connection with the creature and nothing more.  Wanmai Chatborirak, Su Jack, Zang Jinsheng, and Amorntep Wisetsung round out the supporting cast.

Impressive as “The Lake” may be with the creature effects, using a near seamless blend of phenomenal computer generated imagery and the same animatronic technology as in “Jurassic Park” that brought life back from 65 million years of extinction with the T-Rex, a greater amount of depression mounds over the head of director Lee Thongkham like a black rain cloud.  “The Lake’s” creature derivativity, based off the “Jurassic Park,” “Godzilla,” and maybe even borrowing a trifle sum from “Cloverfield” in what is supposed to be a genetic combination of a crocodile, snake, and catfish(?), never weakens the narrative as audiences will always be curious to experience the larger-than-life animatronic head that miniaturizes the cast effectively.  Gen-pop will continue to gobble up a good-lookin’ monster on any day.  Where “The Lake” fatigues is with a poorly progressing script, flat characters, and misaligned directional continuity.  That latter is big – bigger than the monster itself – when one character with the camera perspective facing the framed character and the framed character begins looking slowly up to his right to eye-point the monster out and the next spliced in scene is facing the then camera perspective character from the right side and he also turns his head right to look at the monster.  They both turn their heads to the right, so which side is the monster on?  The same could be said about the omnipresent, big momma monster whose head is seemingly everything, everywhere all at once – by the sound of it, the creature should have starred in that famous multi-verse movie that won all those Academy Awards.  ‘The Lake” is drenched – excuse the pun – in overused scenes where a foreground man squares off against the blurred background monster as well as scenes of the ginormous, scaly head creeping in from either stage left or stage right to interact with the cast.  The moments lose their usually high and sizeable satisfaction rate with Thongkham’s repetitive saturation to create the first Thai, larger-than-life, monster movie because of his inability to showcase other scenes of Kaiju creature carnage.

“The Lake” arrives onto hi-def Blu-ray home video courtesy of Dread’s exclusive distribution label Epic Pictures.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, single layer Blu-ray is presented in the 1.77:1 widescreen aspect ratio, looking stunning and marvelous with the absent of natural lighting.  Most scenes are dark or overcast with rain, graded with a subtle increase of the cyan hue to reign with a ominous lurking in the dark fist.  The middle depth focus with streaking blur, like being concussed, runs as a shell-shocked induced motif throughout.  Thongkham plays with the blur feature a lot, switching back and forth between foreground and background as well as the centric focused blur with streaking.  Surprising, there are no issues with compression, despite the dark shoots against high and vibrant key lighting and the blur features which is well-sustained on the format disc.  The release comes with four dialogue tracks:  A Thai Dolby Digital 5.1, an English Dub Dolby Digital 5.1, a Thai Dolby Digital 2.0, and an English Dub Dolby Digital 2.0.  For about half the film, many of the scenes are done in the rain which don’t translate with vigor over the Thai 5.1, especially during the downpours.  Instead, “The Lake” is more focused on its epically scored soundtrack by composer Bruno Brugnano who has composed a string of horror of the last decade and half, including “The Coffin,” “She Devil”, and Thongkham’s “The Maid.”  Dialogue renders clean and clear with a fine simultaneous English subtitle, but the translation feels coarsely oversimplified to the point of covering just the basic generalities of plans, actions, and explanations, such as the environmental and global warming changes hinted earlier between the two Chinese scientists, that make the intellect of “The Lake” severely less than substantial.  The translated captions render the characters seemingly inexperienced on the simplest of tasks when I suspect that’s not entirely the case.  Spanish subtitles are also an available option.  Bonus features include a promotional behind-the-scenes advert, the official trailer, the Dread trailer, and a handful of raw deleted scenes that provide a better and extended insight into the ending rather than the wrap-it-up ending we’re left with in the final product. The physical attributes sport the monster in full roar bursting the surface of the lake on the front cover of the traditional Blu-ray snapper while the disc art plants a sandy monstrous footprint with the push lock right in the palm. There is no insert included. The region free release comes not rated and has a runtime of 93 minutes. Sold just on special effects alone, director Lee Thongkham rises the leviathan for Thailand’s movie industry, but “The Lake” is drained of box-office depth in every other element.

Take a Dip in “The Lake” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Survival Doesn’t Always Rely on the Obvious EVIL. “Among the Living” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Among the Living” on Blu-ray home video at Amazon.com.  Click the Blu-ray Cover to Purchase!

In a post-viral outbreak world, Harry and his little sister Lily backpack from their mother’s house to the father’s rural home.  The journey requires a long hike through the English countryside and mountainous terrain, avoiding marauding thugs and the savage infected who have a keen sense for sniffing out a single drop of blood.  Pitching a tent every night becomes their only way of shielding them from the hungry eyes of both sides of the outbreak spectrum.  When Lily becomes injured, they bump into the rigid survivalist Karl and boy Tom who provide them refuge for a few days.  Harry can’t scratch the itch that Karl isn’t a good man and pursues out into the woods looking for a new place to take shelf with Lily.  Harry has various run-ins with the infected and the unaffected that possibly clue him into who Karl really is and why the man with the hammer has been terribly obstinate and hardnosed.  Suspicions and tensions spill out between them that leave Harry no choice but to take matters into his own hands and save Lily and Tom from a suspected killer. 

Let’s preface this review by saying “Among the Living” is one of the bordering maybe undead, maybe not genre flicks that will continue the polarizing debate amongst fans on whether the infected are just that, infected and crazed, or are akin to the sprinting-zombie-like flesh-eating thing that Danny Boyle has put on the table ever since “28 Days Later.”  “Among the Living” is very similar to the successful 2002 film that is also bred from the United Kingdom and began, or at least put in high gear, the running zombie revolution that continues to this day.  Writer-director Rob Worsey, who was approx. 8 years of age when “28 Days Later” was released theatrically, channels his best Danny Boyle energy while on a budget with the first feature film released last year.  As the short film cinematographer transitions into his first feature directorial, Worsey challenges himself to on a large-scale story done on a minimalist level of one brother and sister’s perilous venture to dad’s house and still sustain, to the viewer, that world-ending impression without a ton of background actors, a handful of principal characters, and a wooded, rural location away from large cities or even small municipalities or villages.  “Among the Living” is also the first full-length producing credit for Worsey along with fellow producers Oliver Mitchell and Kate Humphries, Worsey’s Wife, under Worsey and Mitchell’s cofounded Relic Films production company.

“Among the Living’s” cast is centered around four characters in an intimate show of dichotomous dynamics between the age differences. Dean Michael Gregory and Melissa Worsey perform in their introductory feature film roles as on the younger side brother and sister, Harry and Lily, who have departed home in search for their dad living in the English countryside. Melissa Worsey, along with Leon Worsey, as the boy Tom, are director Rob Worsey’s younger siblings who both have had roles in their older brother’s short films. The fourth amongst the living is the acting veteran of the bunch by the name of George Newton. “The Slayers” and “Tales of Creeping Death” actor brings forth Karl’s harden chops to be a wary survivalist, especially when coming across Harry who immediately is dishonest with Karl about his own situation. A triggered defense mechanism activated by his inexperience to survive outside the comforts of routine, Harry must use what’s at his disposal in order to protect his younger sibling, Lily, from the horrors she’s seemingly insouciant to, but with Lily’s hurt leg and Karl’s seasoned ability to see through lies, Harry has no choice but to bunk with Karl and Tom, a pair we don’t initially know yet if related or otherwise. Like most older brothers, Harry has something to prove not only to Karl but to himself when it comes to protecting his family and that leads to the constant suspicion of Karl with his ability to setup minor, debilitating traps, handle himself in combat against the infected, and modestly peacock his confidence and surety to handle what’s thrown at him. George Newton’s style is perfect for this type of resolute survivalist and Dean Michael Gregory pairs well the lesser, inferior model of protection perfection as he struggles, mentally and physically, to care of what needs to be done. Lily and Tom often feel like a waste of value story space as their teenage antics are not mischievous or even hormonally driven but the way the characters are written and the way Melissa and Leon Worsey address the minor half can only be described is innocently nonchalant. Instead of sheltering in place, staying safe from the infected, or being curious about the cataclysmic change that is happening all around them, Lily and Tom throw the ball around in broad daylight, sneak out at night to check out a beautiful light display, or just dawdle around the forest in a contrary manner until something bad comes their way. “Among the Living” rounds out the supporting cast with Alexander King (“Chesterberg”), Rob Humphries, Gary Stead, Emily Rose Holt, and Emma Wise.

Much like the shark with their rapierlike olfactory, Rob Worsey’s infected can smell a droplet of blood from a faraway distance.  The scent sends a guttural roar of excitement into the air before they run full speed to track down the injured prey, but this doesn’t mean the infected are incapable of seeing or hearing the unaffected; the blood scent is an additional hunt tactic Worsey supplements one of the more frightening genre creatures to existed – a wild-eyed, running and rampaging, flesh-eater.  For Worsey’s world where chaos reigns with savagery from all sides, there didn’t appear to be a significant threat from the infected as Harry and Lily, as well as Lily and Tom, tramps through less-thicket forests, setup their flimsy camping tent in conspicuous places, and the infected a scarce despite their instant presence as soon as blood is spilled.  To the viewer, survival seems easy-enough as there is no sense of a Darwinian theory or a predatory hierarchy to warrant concern – just don’t scrape your knee and everything will be dandy.  Of course, scraping the knee comes easy to accident prone Lily as she becomes the device to ring the dinner bell and put her and her brother into constant danger.  Where Worsey succeeds better is within the interactive drama between young, green-horned survivalist Harry and older, saltier survivalist Karl as Worsey’s able to delineate suspicion and misdirect assumptions to create a barrier that Harry can’t climb over in order to befriend Karl to the fullest and like a new to the force detective trying to solve his first case, Harry eager wants the pieces to fit despite not completing before his due diligence of gathering facts, truths, and evidence.  A dubious Harry keeps the viewers on the edge until the very end when the revelation is known what kind of man Karl really is among the living.  As far as zombie/infected films go, “Among the Living” doesn’t offer much in the way of something new, especially with the same adult man and teen girl narrative we’ve seen before but is only the backdrop to the bigger picture of trust and betrayal when faced with desperation and we get more of the latter from Rob Worsey’s debut film than really anything else. 

Dread Central presents an Epic Pictures’ Blu-ray release of “Among the Living.”  The AVC encoded, 1080p, high-definition BD50 carries with it an IMAX extended widescreen 1.90.1 extended aspect ratio and the image is lush with foliage bursts, leaving the contours of the terrain clearly visible as much of the narrative takes place in the forest or the picturesque rolling hills of the English countryside.  Muted colors often run the show to convey a darker toned theme but are graded naturally.  Jordan Lee’s cinematography isn’t exactly exciting but delivers a balance of contrast between brilliant lighting and keeping the black voids nice and inky, leading to note no obvious compression issues on the disc as well.  The Blu-ray comes with two audio options – a UK English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a Dolby Stereo 2.0. I couldn’t really distinguish between the two channels suggest that the girth of soundtrack, ambience, and dialogue are primary funneling through a two-channel output, leaving depth confined to the same space, and there’s hardly any range to speak of when it’s just characters in the woods for the length of the film with only their wits about them. Dialogue is clean and clear despite some hard to follow regional dialect, but there are English SDH, as well as Spanish subtitles, available. Special features include a director’s commentary, a behind-the-scenes featurette with cast and crew interviews, Rob Worsey’s “Bee Sting” short film horror, the theatrical trailer, and Dread trailers for “Tiny Cinema,” “Midnight,” “Bad Candy,” and “Tin Can.” The physical release comes in a standard Blu-ray snapper with a composite cover art of characters in mute greys, blacks, and blues. The region free release comes not rated and has an 85-minute runtime. Rob Worsey’s bland, derived horror doesn’t impede the complexities of social disorder during a state of anarchy as the filmmaker seeks to subtly show the world crash and burn and those unwittingly turning a blind eye to the unconventional compassion until it’s too late.

“Among the Living” on Blu-ray home video at Amazon.com.  Click the Blu-ray Cover to Purchase!