Michael Kraetzer | It's Bloggin Evil!

“The Long Dark Trail” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com

Set in the idyllic boondocks of Northwestern Pennsylvania, two young brothers plan to escape the abusive grasp of an alcoholic father in search for a better life. Without a plan and nowhere to go, they go around the small town to collect money from the odd jobs the brothers worked in preparation for their abscond. While doing so, they come upon information about their mother, who abandoned them at a younger age, that sparks an desire to track her down in hopes that once she’ll lay eyes on them, she’ll want to rekindle the relationship with her two sons, but the trek deeper into the northern woods would be long and arduous through abandoned aqueducts, pine forests, and numinous burial stones belonging to an inimical cult of women controlled by a sadistic leader. It is the cult where their mother left them to reside and it is there where they are headed on their haunting journey in hopes for a better life.

Tackling impoverished, ill-treated youth haunted by their past and uncertain about their future, directors Kevin Ignatius and Nick Psinakis write-and-direct “The Long Dark Trail” as a tale of resiliency for two close brothers relying on each other to climb out from a pit of despair. Ignatius and Psinakis have collaborated previously together as writer-director and cowriter-actor in the misfortunate happenings comedy “My Best Friend’s Famous.” The 2022 drama-thriller marks the first feature film for the filmmakers who explore coming-of-age through trial by fire, or by the supernatural psychological manipulation of enchanted rocks and by the coarse portents of a blood sacrificing cult. Shot in Ignatius’s birthplace home of Warren County, PA, the two New York filmmakers shoot the low-budget venture under their independent production company, Four Eighteen Films, in association with El Jean Productions and with associate producers Michael Kraetzer (“The Slaughterhouse Killer”) and Nicholas Onetti (“Francesca”) of Black Mandala presenting the film.

“The Long Dark Trail’s” story follows two brothers played by real-life brothers, Brady and Carter O’Donnell, debuting in their first feature film. You can tell the brothers don’t have a ton of acting experience as their dialogue is very mechanical and their movements are bit stiff and hesitant, but since the narrative revolves around their characters, antisocially bred by the abusive father’s impropriety, being socially awkward on screen, even between each other despite their off-screen brotherhood, doesn’t necessarily feel far-fetched. “The Long Dark Trail” isn’t a heavy on the dialogue narrative, leaving much of the plot to unfold with the brothers’ wondering the forest grounds, natural and unnatural visual imagery, and the hypnotic folksy score. From start to finish, Brady and Carter carry the entire storyline from start-to-finish with intermittent spliced in scenes of hooded cult acolytes doing obscure and violent things in what looks to be the upstairs of a vacant barn or with the earlier scenes of the boys visiting and conversing with a purpose with Mr. Barrow as he rambles on about his veteran war stories while the boys take full advantage of his porch sitting to steal food form his cupboards; a role undertook by Kevin Ignatius’s father, Paul “Doc” Ignatius. The O’Donnell siblings shepherd much of the trail journey’s harrowing phantasms to the best of their ability but are also not limited to being just reactionary to the spooky woods. Practical makeup effects and some visual compositions are chartered for divisive inducing dynamics in order to drive a wedge between the brothers’ already contentiousness of wanting to traverse a dark corner of God’s country to see a mother that has already forsaken them once. Trina Campbell plays the indoctrinated mother now embedded into an outskirt cult led by Paul Psinakis’s version of a cult leader in Zeke. Psinakis has the maniacal wild eyes and brooding aura demarcating him as a clear cut bad guy with a bunch of vary-in-age women in tow but the cult is not very clearly defined as a whole or with a purpose and when the boys stumble into their isolated camp, near that aforesaid barn full of now chopped up body parts and hunting game skulls, the exposition to follow is not presented and the real sense of danger is only palpable from Zeke and Zeke alone.

While cast and story struggle to make ends meet with relative clarity, what Ignatius and Psinaki do really well in fashioning for effect is depicting the rural folk horror elements of vast natural landscapes that can turn looming and inescapable. As a resident of Southeastern Pennsylvania, convenience and concrete genetically makeup my quasi suburban-urban scenery, but I can appreciate the opposite side of the state with greenery up to your neck and beyond, the solitude of a different way of life, and how one could also appreciate how menacingly engulfing that can all feel as well. We’re also not completely stuck to the forest setting as the directors’ use riverbeds and lakeshores, sprawling grasslands, and the quaint town structures to enlarge the presence of a smaller shoot. Kevin Ignatius isn’t just the co-director of “The Long Dark Trail,” he’s also the film’s composer, another aspect of highlight, amongst other hat wearing titles. The catchy and mesmeric folk/bluegrass score is a real tribute to Ignatius’s musical background, having formed a band, Das Tapes, with brother Mark, by adding a layering combination of vocal sounds and banjo strumming. The latter banjo reminisces a little bit of “Deliverance” but with an elongated cadence integrated into the brothers’ long road tour, becoming a mainstay importance to the overall lingering feel of backwater chills. Where “The Long Dark Trail” fumbles is at the heart of project – the story. Never really tying the elements all together, the narrative often feels abstract and unhinged in a series of randomized events between the cursed rocks, vivid hallucinations, the boys’ trauma, the women stuck in a cult of a madman, and the message on blood ties. Was the father’s verbal and physical abuse the root cause of psychological and family brokenness? Are the brothers’ bond and endurance being tested on the trial trail toward their last form of hope, their abandoning mother? “The Long Dark Trail” is in a long, dark well of questions without any return of answers in a conclusion that can’t be roughly swallowed along the course of an exceptionally scored and formidable atmospheric thriller.

“The Long Dark Trail” path leads to at home Blu-ray release from Cleopatra Entertainment, the film banner of Cleopatra Records, and MVD Visual. The AVC encoded BD25 provides high-def resolution in 1080p of a widescreen presentation. The Cleopatra Blu-ray does not list the aspect ratio and IMDB.com lists the film at 2.39:1 which is accurate in accordance to the release. A combination blend of natural and lowkey lighting doesn’t appear to present too many issues with the format storage. A few signs of pixilation in deeper negative spaces cease to only a handful of decoded moments stark contrast. For a digital recorded film that’s churning out an average of 25Mpbs, par for the course for Hi-Def, the details don’t display to the fullest sharp potential but are certainly on the edge of so. You can get better visuals from the brightly lit of primarily color contrasting scenes for a film that’s remains in natural grading. Also not listed on the Blu-ray back cover is the audio specifications, but according to my player, the release comes with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and an English LPCM stereo. The five-point multi-channel audio mix studs the soundtrack with piquant notes, harmonies, and twanging banjo chords. Dialogue is pleasantly defined through the robust soundtrack and the ambience has a nice range of rustle and depth. I’m quite surprised by this Cleopatra Entertainment release that doesn’t come with a second disc, a CD, of the soundtrack, likely due to the score not produced by the parent record label. English subtitles are optionally available. The bonus features include blooper outtakes and behind the scenes footage, an image slideshow, and the original trailer. The back cover also notes an interview with the director, but what’s on the disc is a featurette surrounding artist R.L. Black’s graphic novel artwork for the film and for the forthcoming comic based off the film. There is no interview with the director. The rest of the bonus material rounds out with Cleopatra Entertainment trailers of “The Ghosts of Monday,” “Frost,” “A Taste of Blood,” “Escape from Area 51,” Baphomet,” and “Scavenger.” The film is housed in a traditional Blu-ray snapper with a rough and ready composite of a skull looking to swallow the bicycling boys on the dark path with a dark lit moon overhead; a missed opportunity in my opinion as there’s a better poster out there for the film, a more graphic poster, of one brother’s bloody head split down the middle and opening for the other’s brothers face to show. The Blu-ray is region free, unrated, and has well-paced runtime of 78-minutes. Likely not to please by or understand by most, “The Long Dark Trail’s” coming-of-age narrative wrangles with what’s most important for a folk horror film of its kind – either to be an apparatus for breathtaking countryside imagery or of trauma that is tense-laden and tearing families to pieces – and unfortunately, the feature couldn’t be both.

“The Long Dark Trail” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com

In Milan 1951, a prestigious magician, Dante the Great, is tragically killed when a deadly trick goes wrong. Fast forward 30 years later, the magician’s son, Lorenzo Manzini, has trouble finding his own success following his father’s footsteps as a struggling magician. The night before his grand debut, a woman has been gruesomely murdered on the very stage his father had died. As a compulsive gambler and an excessive drinker in over his head in debt, Manzini goes on with the show, but the events following his performance inspire a grisly, sadistic murderer to uses magic tricks to kill and point all evidence toward him. Hounded by a mysterious, chain-smoking detective, a frantic Manzini must split his efforts toward his own investigation into the murders, but as the bodies start to pile up and the evidence grows even more against him, there may not be anything left in Manzini’s bag of tricks to prove his innocence.

In the old traditions of an Italian murder-mystery, “Abrakadabra” is the 2018 released giallo inspired film from the Argentinian filmmaking brothers, Luciano and Nicolas Onetti, along with Carlos Goitia serving as the third wheel scriber on the script. The trio have worked previously on one other project from 2017, another horror of course, with the haunted ruins premised, “What the Waters Left Behind.” With the Onetti’s being brothers, their collaboration runs deeper, sharing an affinity for the genre that has inspired the duo to collaborate on another giallo thriller, “Francesca” in 2015 and “Deep Sleep,” where Nicolas served as producer to Luciano’s writing and directing duties. “Abrakadabra,” as well as “Francesca,” are not only far cries from the haunting and terrifying reminiscence of the ruins in “What the Waters Left Behind,” but also varies in direction, cinematography, and production design that more in lines with giallo hallmarks, such as extreme closeups, awkward camera angles, and posh interiors. “Abrakadabra” is a production of the Nicholas Onetti and Michael Kraetzer New Zealand founded company, Black Mandala, and another Nicholas production company on a more localized level with Guante Negro (Black Glove) Films co-founded with brother, Luciano.

Despite being dubbed in a fine-tuned homage of an Italian overlay track, the actors involved are hail from South America, as where the film is shot. The story centers around Lorenzo Manzini, played by German Baudino (“2/11: Day of the Dead”), and Baudino shepherds Manzini toward the brink of desperation, spinning out of control from the malevolent forces that seem to be binding his hands to gruesome murders. Baudino captures the marks of the giallo fervor in his animated performance, especially when running through a memorial park with arms flailing and a streak of fear across his face, but since it’s a murder mystery swarming around Manzini, the magician’s encounters with other rich characters comes key to unravelling Manzini’s dubious circumstances. His lovely assistant Antonella (Eugenia Rigon), the lurking chain-smoking detective (Gustavo Dalessanro), and a hospice-housed convicted murderer (Abel Giannoni) become cryptic pawns that turns “Abrakadabra’s” into a deadly game of chess soused deep into the thralls of a calculated whodunit. The remaining cast, including Clara Kovacic (“Jazmin”), Ivi Brickell, Raul Gederlini (“Francesca”), Pablo Vilela, Alejandro Troman, and Luz Champane, are perhaps the weakest link in the chain to hold “Abrakadabra” back from being a well-rounded giallo. There presence seemingly come into the fold without much creditability to their substance toward the story are, some of them, are easily dispatched with the same loosy-goosiness that firmly dilute their characters.

You have to give the Onetti brothers tremendous credit. Their attention to detail techniques, production design, and overall wardrobe schemes accomplished a toppling feat in taking the natural aesthetics, textures, and sounds of an Argentinian setting shot film and transformed all the blatant aspects to resemble an Italian giallo filmed in Italy from the 70’s or 80’s. Yet, does the veneer alone make “Abrakadabra” a good giallo film or just an immaculate carbon copy? The Onetti’s certainly know enough to exact a perfect replica as seen in “Francesca,” which was my first experience with the Onetti brothers, but “Abrakadabra” is a step backwards form “Francesca” from a story standpoint with some mishmash editing and character underdevelopment around the midsection of the second act that immobilizes the story from going forward properly, leaving the lead character Manzini in a circular rut rather than a tailspin to the climax. The prologue of Dante the Great’s accident and the twist ending that harks back to a opening Harry Houdini quote, “What the eyes see and the ears here…the mind believes,” solidifies as the best riveting acts of the Onettis’ film that becomes equalized negatively by a drab dynamic interior. In any case and though an Argentinian production “Abrakadabra” is an invigorating slice of Italian cinema with razor-sharp characteristics and a well shrouded and gloved killer.

Open sesame on the inaugural, limited edition Blu-ray, release of “Abrakadabra” from the new genre distributor on the block, Cauldron Films, who plans to release a full slate of cult films from 70s and 80s in the coming months. Limited to only 1000 copies, the Blu-ray release will include inserts of promotional artwork, a limited edition high quality slipcase with original poster art, and a CD soundtrack with music by Luciano Onetti. However, I won’t be able to review in full the finished package or the audio and video qualities as this review is based off a disc screener, but I can tell you reaffirm that DP Carlos Goitia’s scenes are amazing well established, lit, and a glimpse into the past. The Luciano Onetti score can be invasive at times, but a pure product of the electro-synth rock that goes hand-in-hand with the giallo cinematography. Audio options include an Italian 5.1 surround sound, and an Italian and English 2.0 stereo that come with optional English and Spanish subtitles. Accompanying the unrated 70 minute film is the theatrical trailer and raw behind-the-scenes footage without subtitles. As Cauldron Film’s maiden release, “Abrakadabra” is anything but hocus-pocus with a bloody homage to Italian giallo films complete with a vital synthesizing soundtrack and a shocking twist finale.