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Burn While You Got’em. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD home video!
Siblings Nathan and Mirra are reunited at their childhood farm home after their father suddenly passes away from drowning. The self-well-kempt Mirra handles the business end of their father’s farmland estate as the recovering drug addict Nathan struggles with his past urges while also helping with the cleanout of their father’s things. They meet farmhand Alice who still maintains the crops and who is close to her unusual and quieter sister Scarlett. Soon after, Nathan begins experiencing vivid nightmares on drowning and an unknown woman crawling out from the depths of the ocean. He also feels the presence of malevolent forces around him and digs into his father’s past only to find that his ancestors were once witch burners and that the farmhand and her sister’s family lineage had settled from Massachusetts long ago. In the midst of piecing the clues together, the siblings find themselves in the lingering black cloud of darker forces seeking retribution of a fiery ancestral past.
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“The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is the 2022 released, independent horror from writer-director-and-costar Elise Finnerty. The first-time feature film director from Long Island, New York infuses a slow dread of psychological thrills with a painted American folklore maquillage where past imprudence and costly mistakes catch up with the future generations stuck in a rut of their own problems. Filmed in and around Finnerty’s hometown, “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is a family affair film with the filmmaker producing her first film co-produced by the immediate Finnerty family of father Dennis, mother Diana, and brother Sean. Nicolas Alvo and Brett Phillips also co-produce with executive producers lined up with Estelle Girard Parks, Maxine Muster, Shannon Gallagher, and Alec Phillips financially footing the feature under the banner of Red Booth Productions, founded by Estelle Girard Parks and Elise Finnerty.
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With the smaller production comes an intimate cast working in a handful of public locations and only a couple of home interiors and about a third of the cast are also working multiple roles in front and behind the camera, such as Elise Finnerty and Estelle Girard Parks not only the chief governors of “The Ones You Didn’t Burn’s” creative process but also as the inscrutable sisters Alice and Scarlett. In principal roles, you receive exactly what writer-director Finnerty intends with her happy-go-lucky helping hand farm manager that strikes a small odd chord within the adrift Nathan, son of the drowned father who never recalls his father mentioning Alice. Nathan, played by Nathan Wallace, is clearly exhibited and stated as a habitual user attempting sobriety but the more delineated the dreams become and the uneasiness that washes over him, mixed with the sudden, subconscious grief of a lost father and being peer-pressured by an immature, drug-fueled, and degenerate high school buddy Greg (Samuel Dunning), Nathan becomes mentally bombarded to the point of using again and breaking, though ambiguity leads us to believe that some witchery might be subverting his faculties. Wallace shows great range in a downward spiral character arc, complimented by sheer intensity when that strangeness takes hold and shape. Also feeling the pressure, in a different manner, is Nathan’s sister Mirra, sequestered by Jenna Rose Sander to make Mirra go solo sorting all the postmortem to-dos of her father’s belongings, extending out any hope or chance of Nathan and Mirra to reconnect in light of death. In fact, the siblings become even more estranged and tensions simmer, especially when Mirra finds comfort in newfound friends, such as Alice and Scarlett, lending to more loss and disconnect for Nathan and other, again, possibly witchery waywardness to divide and conquer in the name of rancorous retribution.
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“The Ones You Didn’t Burn” certainly is a slow burn filled with more fluff and reoccurring scenes than desired in an intriguing face value premise of a pair witches setting the wheels in motion to rid the land of witch burning descendants. Insidious dreams and ubiquitous tarot card dinner flavor the film’s underlining horror but there’s not a ton of dynamics between characters as progression evolves almost without interactive sway, relying heavily on those dream sequences and Nathan’s zippy scrutiny into his father’s past as he comes up with not a lot, or rather circumstantial, evidence to deduct Alice and Scarlett as witches. Finnerty certainly parallels Nathan’s supernatural trepidation with a more relatable one, drugs, stress, and lack of purpose that could be instigating a false drive to put a stop to the evil at work, affecting the only family he, a money-less addict, has left to rely on. Finnerty provides some lucratively strong visuals with the stark night beach scenes of an unfaced woman crawling from out of the surf toward a bewildered Nathan in only what could be described as psychosexual and ominous. Does Nathan fear beautiful women who have influence or authority over him and his family now that the patriarch is gone? Mirra loaned him money and is successful professionally that initiated a denotation of inferiority only aggressively exaggerated by Alice and Scarlett’s inclusion of Mirra into a trifold takeover that will inevitably exorcize his junkie backside for good. In any case, whether you believe Finnerty’s intention is to ride a fine line between witchcraft payback, and one being cut loose from his threadbare support system, “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” is a character-driven story that needed more character development and story devices but has tuned in performances and some eerie dreamscapes.
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MVD Visual in partnership with Jinga Films and Danse Macabre release “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” on DVD. Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the MPEG2 encoded, single-layered DVD5 settles for mostly natural grading in the exteriors with interiors being hard-lit by the natural light blocking features with the low-lit nightmares casting tenebrous drapes with key lighting techniques to isolate main objects. Compression on here is decent with pleasant detail to show for it and only a few patches of softer nuances around skin layers. The back cover lists a 5.1 stereo audio mix but the sole English language available, per my player technical readings, on the DVD is a 2-channel Dolby Digital stereo and I do believe the latter over the former as there is no singular output from the multi-channels; however, what’s render is par for the course and suits the release well with ample volume in all regards: range, depth, dialogue, and a brooding, melancholic, and, at time, tension building soundtrack from composer Daniel Reguera. Dialogue renders clean and clearly throughout. English subtitles are optionally available. Only other MVD and Jinga Films trailers, along with this feature’s trailer, are listed on the static menu in regard to bonus content with trailers of “After,” “Midnight Son,” and “Gnaw.” On the standard DVD Amaray case front cover is an illustrated and portrait compositional of Elise Finnerty’s Alice character overlapping with yellow and black branches that give it that folklore and woody-witch coating. The disc is pressed a same art but cropped and there is no insert or reversible cover included. The region free DVD has a runtime of 70 minutes and is not rated. “The Ones You Didn’t Burn” debuts Elise Finnerty as a competent filmmaker with a retrained witch tale with payback overtones and dysfunctional family undertones.