Tag Archives: possession

EVIL Says Talk to the Hand. “Talk to Me” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Talk to Me” on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital!

The two-year anniversary of the death is a solemn time for Mia to mourn the hard loss of her beloved mother who took her own life, or at least that is what her father tells her.  Feeling uneasy by her father’s account that circulates doubt uncontrollably, Mia pries her way into her best friend Jade’s family for comfort and becomes equally amiably with Jade’s younger brother, Riley, as like another sister.  When social acquaintances post viral videos of peers supposedly being possessed by an embalmed hand of a psychic for party games, Mia is eager to participate.  All is fun and games with the dead inhabiting and speaking through the hand holder for a limited time until Riley’s spirt takes a violent turn, leaving the boy severely injured and in a comatose state after exhibiting Mia’s mother possessing him.  Obsessed to speak again with late mother, Mia uses the hand to talk to the dead and learns Riley’s soul is stuck on the other side and being tortured by the countless, malign spirits. 

Grief can be so powerfully self-destructive that holding an embalmed hand, becoming connected with the grotesque spirit, and letting the shadow world possess you can be addictive and even as far as a parlor game to pursue answers or a desperate release from suffering.  The 2022, breakout Australian production “Talk to Me” explores that forced hand of grief, literally, with a socially pressuring aspect that can be contagiously engrossing and collaterally harmful if unchecked.  The Southern Australian-born brothers Danny and Michael Philippou come out swinging on their debut feature-length film penned by Danny alongside Bill Hinzman based on a concept by “Bluey” executive producer of all people, Daley Pearson.  “Talk to Me” is a coproduction between The South Australian Corporation, Screen Australia, Head Gear Films, and Causeway Films with Christopher Seeto (“The Flood”), Samantha Jennings (“Cargo”), and Kristina Ceyton (“The Babadook”) producing.  The film is released theatrically by A24.

“Talk to Me” opening with a young, shoulder length haired man desperately searching for his younger brother through a sea of people at a house party.  The scene sets the film’s take-no-prisoners tone with begins with compassion as the older brother comes to the rescue of his disturbed, shirtless kin, trying to display the flashlight gleaming phone camera sharks who smell viral video blood in the water, when in a surprising turn of events the younger brother stabs his sibling before ramming the chef knife into his own skull.  “Talk to Me” segues into the cast of teenage characters, spanning the age spectrum of 14 to 20, letting us know right off the bat that youths are on the chopping block and no one will be safe.  The mostly untried cast pulls through with a trypanosome performance that gets under your skin, festering in its linger.  Sophie Wilde helms being the principal lead Mia still shell shocked by the sudden death of her twinning mother two years after later.  Suspicious of her father’s role in the death, Mia escapes and integrates herself into best friend Jade’s family, a role resting in between two uncomfortable rocks of being the new girl beside Mia’s onetime ex.  Alexandra Jensen as Jade floats carefully portraying Mia’s friend and a pursuant tiptoe toward the relationship with Daniel (Otis Dhanji) that passively irks Mia in the form of playful jokes, side glares, and inner demons becoming fruition ones expressing desires.  Sophie Wilde, on the other hand, spans the gamut with a flip of a switch soul spectrum polarized by spirit madness, grief over loss, and a fallback friendship.  When Wilde turns on the darkest light of possession, when her character lets the spirit into her body, the disheveled whole of Mia lives up to the actress’s surname becoming an uninhibited periapt for the spirit within that lusts over the youngest in the room, Riley (Joe Bird), for his childlike purity and when the spirits have control of over his soul in what is an orgasmic suffering that neither is parlous fun or exciting.  “Talk to Me’s” cast rounds out with Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio, Marcus Johnson, Alexandria Steffensen, Ari McCarthy, and “Homeland’s” Miranda Otto. 

“Talk to Me” is an original byproduct stemmed from the cursed fetish genre.  The inexplicable mummified hand with unknown origins, thought to be once the hand of a medium, falls into the hands of a difference kind of representation.  Not to be bestowed conventional tropes like an inanimate object to be feared, the mirror in “Oculus” comes to mind or the cenobite unleashing puzzle box of “Hellraiser,” the persevered curled open hand doesn’t hold that sort of malevolent power, at first.  Despite its powerful connection to the purgatorial other side with frightening results of classic possession cases – levitation, catatonia, dissociative profanity and behavior, etc. –  these more-or-less new generational children treat something they don’t completely understand, such as ancient, mystical artifacts and in this case, human remains to be exact, without respect and humility, using the hand as if an additive drug, parlor game, or write to go viral amongst peers.  Directors Danny and Michael Philippou use the peer-pressuring viral video social commentary of their film as a sensationalized stern warning that has equal cause-and-effect results.  Ostentatiously showcasing more of the adolescent revelry spree rather than the mangled, decaying, and water-bloated entities in front of them or recklessly inhabiting their bodies once let corporeally inside.  For someone like the character Mia who continues to process close loss and has troubling thoughts, or maybe even delusions, regarding her father’s role in her mother’s untimely demise, she yearns for answers and when Mia receives a glimpse into what she believes is her kindred spirit mother through the vessel that is her friend Riely, aching impulses take over already crumbling judgements and she goes down the rabbit hole despite the consequences to herself, to her father, and to her adopted family.

Get a grip and take “Talk to Me’s” hand to experience the possessively powerful Philippou brothers’ debut film on a Lionsgate 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 and the MPEG-2 encoded, upscaled standard definition, DVD are presented in a 2.39:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  What’s achieved out of the Aaron McLisky’s through-the-looking-glass visual vignette is focus driven, claustrophobic, and engaging to be present of a reality teetering the line between two worlds.  Details inarguably shine, casting a great deal of deep shadows within the hard lighting to set the ominous tone.  Skin textures gleam within the light as well as coarse change with the vapid and pale makeup adjustments of the dead-entered body or even when we do brief see a condemned soul, the greatly applied contusions, decay, or bloating is reflected with great care from the infinite image detail.  The release has an English Dolby Atomos output reaching the difficult crevices of the inaudible dark holes and exposing them to immense carousal and haunting zeal that makes the experience more palpable. Dialogue renders nicely through albeit a heavy-handed score that relentlessly attempts to knock down the channel-leveled door and a strong Australian accent on most of the cast may sway those who don’t have a keen and distinct diverse ear away from the film or may find discerning a challenge to channel from beginning-to-end. While most of the camera’s frame stays in medium closeup to closeup, McLisky’s able to find depth where advantageous to bring a creep building dark cloud after Mia’s one minute over willing but felt forced possession participation. English SDH and Spanish subtitles are optionally available. Special features include an audio commentary with brothers Philippou, a featurette with the cast and crew in their experience and thoughts on the film, entitled In the Grip of Terror, deleted scenes, and theatrical trailer. Behind a rigid O-slipcover imaged with the centerpiece un-ensepulchered, plaster anoint, and sanskrit-esque-ladened hand upright and in the forefront with phone flashlights dully lit in the background. The typical Blu-ray snapper houses the same slipcover image slipped in between the plastic sheeting whilst the two discs are held on snapper locks on each side of the interior accompanied by an insert for the digital download. Both discs are pressed with the same font and coloring on in reverse with a baby blue stark against white. The 95-minute minute feature is region A locked and is rated R for strong bloody violence, some sexual material, and language. “Talk to Me” is utterly and terrifyingly fresh and freakish in more so with the naturality toward the touching and the facetious ways with an embalmed hand that’s a one-way personal radio to the dead as a means to be engaged in popular, peer-pressuring social activity and as something to prove with reckless naivety.

“Talk to Me” on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital!

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!

Night Terrors Are Not EVIL Enough. “While We Sleep” reviewed! (VMI Releasing/ DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“While We Sleep” available on DVD home video at Amazon.com!

Neurologist Nina Evanko is perplexed by the unusual CAT scans of 13-year-old Cora whose been suffering from sudden onset sleepwalking after her birthday party.  Believing the CAT scan is going through calibration issue with imaging process, Nina orders another set of scans, but when the scans produce the same result and a death of another patient right in front of Cora sends her home early before Nina’s arrival to study the results, Nina convinces Cora’s parents to an at-home sleep observation to root Cora’s sleepwalking cause.  What Nina finds is far more sinister than night terrors or any other kind of parasomnia as a demon has inhabited Cora’s body with nefarious intentions.  Cora’s only hope to save her soul is her bewildered parents, a rattled neurologist, and a rogue priest but a family secret may consume everything. 

If you’re still looking to support Ukraine during the now 6 plus months Russia invasion of their sovereign neighbor, why not support the Ukrainian-U.S. collaborative cinema?  Why not start more precisely with Andrzej Sekula’s 2021 child-possession thriller “While We Sleep” set in the Ukrainian capital and flagship city of Kiev.  Sekula, known more for his work with Quentin Tarantino as a cinematographer on “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” as well as “American Psycho” and “Hackers,” has quietly and seldomly helmed a handful of films over the two decades with “Cube 2:  Hyperspace” being one of them.  “While We Sleep” returns Sekula to the director’s chair for the first time since 2006 with a script by Rich Bonat and the film’s supporting costar Brian Gross, the first feature script penned by the “Jack Frost 2:  Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman” and remake of “2001 Maniacs” actor.  “While We Sleep” is coproduced by American Brian Gross and Kiev-Los Angeles based CinemAday productions, which include company bigwigs Rich Ronat, Yuriy Karnovsky, and Yuriy Prylypko. 

While much of the story begins with Cora and her parents (real life family of husband Brian Gross, wife Jacy King, and daughter Lyra Irene Gross) cursed by Cora’s acute and disconcerting sleepwalking disorder and moody behavior, the daily battle to understand their predicament is not left in the out of their league but most lovable hands of the parents as the film leads you to believe.  Roughly half hour into the film, the narrative switches from the convincing family perspective, despite building background on their low-band relationship troubles and move it nearly 100% to Nina’s problem-solving perspective with a hint of her own troubled past.  Kiev born and “Stranger” actress Darya Tregubova plays the neurologist too curious to shrug off the mysterious case of Cora’s abnormal scans.  Tregubova is fetching without saying but she doesn’t provide the necessary emotional weight of person who’s going through grief and loss issues from the past.  Tregubova also doesn’t convey the necessary weight toward her strong connection to Cora and Cora’s case with only a few expositional moments that hint at such.  These aspects leave Nina outside the bubble of plot events that make the character stick out as unnecessary even more with the character’s negligent professionalism surrounding the wellbeing of Cora and with the parent interactions.  Once the story butts in randomly the blacklisted priest, Father Andrey (Oliver Trevena, “The Reckoning”), with an intimate familiarity with the demon that possess Cora, we know that the story is lost as it tries to quickly and covertly wrap its grip around how to come to a head with this storyline.  You can’t have a possession film without a priest, right?  Father Andrey feels very much like a leftover thought, but Trevena tries his darnedest to sell a washed-up man of the cloth with desperation pouring from word out his mouth despite looking like an English hooligan in a pop collared leather jacket. 

“While We Sleep” has not-so-brittle bones of demonism and possession albeit lacking its own or established cultural mythos, yet there’s a disjointed nature about the story structure and plot points that just don’t make sense that crumble that coherency faster than Cora descending into the depths of demonic disorder. The opening scene is the most perplexing of all with an elaborate birthday cake that neither mom nor dad had made or bought for Cora’s 13th year. Without a care in the world, mom and dad don’t explore further who could have possibly made such a beautiful cake and little do they know, the cake, or rather the cake’s candles, are a conduit for demonic transmission into the soul. This part is never explained through the rest of the picture and, in fact, Gross or Bonat don’t touch back upon a possibility of explaining the odious presence. Much of everything is taken a face value, such as the fact Cora cuts her long hair to a pixie style without an eyelash being bat or in what’s more crtical to the plot is with Cora’s real and darkly unholy father backstory. Those facts are a shot to the brain and we’re still not understanding where Cora’s biological father fits into Cora’s space, into her mother’s space, or even into Father Andrey’s space, but you would think as important as this twist was suddenly deluged in a quick spit of point-blank honesty, the edges would be smoothed over and the picture would become clear as the holy water that was cross was spritzed with; yet, that the aggregation of aggravation of little-to-no details continues to carry out as if everything is perfectly peachy and comprehendible within the story context.

From the at-home release distributor that delivered John Travolta as “The Fanatic,” VMI Releasing, a subsidiary of VMI WorldWide, releases “While We Sleep” on DVD home video. The clear snapper cased DVD, a MPEG-2 formatted DVD5, is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio with an average speed bitrate of 4-5 Mbps. You can see noticeable banding issues in the darker bedroom scenes sporadically throughout. Aside from that, the picture result is fair with more than enough detail for viewing. The English-Ukranian soundtrack is not listed on the back cover, but my SEIKI player reads two audio options: a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Digital dual channel 2.0. Discerning the difference between two is not worth the effort as there’s only subtleties in the output. The 5.1 surround sound has obvious better capacity for multi-channeling. Optional English subtitles are available but neither one of the audio tracks available nor the subtitles offer English captioning for the Ukranian dialogue and often times, there are back and forth exchanges that are intended to carry worth behind the exchange. The subtitles just state foreign language speaking which doesn’t help at all so there’s a bit of lost in translation in the dialogue unless you happen to speak or understand East Slavic languages. The 92-minute film comes unrated but doesn’t come with any bonus material as a feature only release. “While We Sleep” only nips at attempting to be a better than average “Exorcist” akin contemporary but remains on the haphazard course of shaky character building and bumpy, unpaved developments that make only for a rocky portrait of possession.

“While We Sleep” available on DVD home video at Amazon.com!

 

When Marriage Sours, EVIL From Within Manifests. “Possession” reviewed (Umbrella Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

After his return from a lengthy time abroad, Mark finds himself in a contentious and spiteful relationship with his skittish wife Anna unveils her infidelity.  Unable to pry any kind of information from her before her sudden disappearance, Mark results to all the stages of grief and heartache:  denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.   Anna comes-and-goes from Mark and their son’s life, but their spats continue, increasing in anger and violence which each encounter.  Mark hires private investigators to track down Anna’s whereabouts.  He evens confronts her flamboyant and Zen-mastering lover.  But when Mark comes face-to-face with Anna’s sinister secret, a sub rosa affair unlike anything Mark has ever seen, he will go to unimaginable lengths to protect the wife he obsessively loves. 

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski’s “Possession” spans over a number of parallels that, in abstract theory, reflect social political matters of a post-war, Berlin wall divided Germany and the personal matters of Zulawski as a mirror of his ugly and bitter divorce from actress Malgorzata Braunek.  The 1981, Berlin shot, inimitable horror is a speeding melodramatic bullet train racing down a tracklayer of surreal rails and planks, ripping toward destruction with two turbulent people who about to slam, engine first, into an unforeseen mountain façade of towering despondency. That unforeseen mountain takes form from the tug-a-war of within, materializing duplicity, in every sense of the word, unnaturally. Frederic Tuten cowrote the emotionally florid and easily post-grad thesis dissecting film with Zulawski that was French mounted by Gaumont Film Company under producer Marie-Laure Reyre. Two other French companies, Oliane Productions and Soma Films, co-produced.

Watching Mark (“Jurassic Park” and “Event Horizon’s” Sam Neill), and Anna (“The Tenant” and “Diabolique’s” Isabelle Adjani) go at each other’s throat in a vicious cycle of matrimony madness can be in itself, maddening. Neill and Adjani radiate such loathing and desperation that’s seeing the two interact could possibly ignite World War III right there in the heart of Germany. What makes the contentious and hyperventilating scenes more interesting and alluring are the actors’ stage-like, full of hyperbolic melodrama, performances that somehow don’t quite register as the feisty interactions playout in what can only be concluded being pinpoint precision. Even Heinrich (“A Young Emmanuelle’s” Heinz Bennent”) is blatantly over-the-top with erratically wild movements of his body during scenes of emotional and physical struggle. Zulawski and “Possession” embraces the international cast with individual methodology on acting from Britain, France, Germany, and with even Zulawski who’s Polish and though you know the film is set in a divided Berlin between East and West Germany, there’s never this sense that “Possession” is strictly locked down to be anything but German. Aside from the Berlin Wall and some signage, maybe even the architecture, the multinational cast thins out the inklings of thinking, “oh yeah, this is filed in Germany!” “Possession” cast concludes with Margit Carstensen, Shaun Lawton, Johanna Hofner, Michael Hogben and Carl Duering.

Being that this was my second sit down with Andrzej Zulaski’s “Possession,” the first being Second Sight Films’ DVD release over 10 years ago, you begin to fathom the pattern of surrealism Zulaski aims to bombard viewers with through incessant bickering and an unspoken love-and-hate undertone. The doppelganger theory that’s attached itself to “Possession” from over the years warrants merit because those in a relationship on the precipice of implosion always wish the other person to be a better version of themselves, of who they want them to be, or of who they fell in love with in the first place. One can’t go deep into the doppelganger theory without totally exposing all of “Possession’s” secrets, surreal or not, and that infestation of preference takes shape for Zulaski as, ironically enough, a shapeless creature. The desire is tremendously powerful for Anna she can’t avoid being away from it for long stretches of a time, popping in to her and Mark’s old apartment for just enough time to have Mark stir the pot with his own manifested infernal creature, himself. Anna, an extremely passive woman, rarely confronts Mark about her infidelity and is always Mark who has to extract that information with every tooth and nail. “Possession” will forever be hailed a film that can analyzed over and over again without ever finding a concrete interpretation and, you know what, we can live with that.

As I said, last time “Possession” was visited by these aging eyes was over a decade ago on a UK DVD. Now, I had the fortunate opportunity to sit down with a new Blu-ray release from Australia. Umbrella Entertainment, in conjunction with The Film Institute (TFI) Films Production, releases a single disc, full 1080p Blu-ray, registered as their volume #11 on the spine, as part of the banner’s Beyond Genres collection. Presented in European widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio, this “Possession” release has a giant leap of negative exposure in comparison to Second Sight’s DVD, retreating away from a more natural and textural palpable transfer, full of detail and good amount of grain, to a blue-tinged headscratcher with a higher contrast that renders details and shadows nearly wiped out. The transfer is also conveyed with slight damage seen in approx. minute 14 with a vertical scratch and some image destabilization that makes discernability dematerialize right before your eyes near minute 44 and 57. The English language DTS-HD 2.0 master audio renders better with cleaner tracks seeing little-to-none hissing or static. The dialogue’s apparent and unobstructed thought slightly isolating without much depth. Despite some limited capacity with the dual channels, “Possession’s” more adrenalized scenes/ranges – i.e., speeding car flip, shoot outs, apartment explosion – sound effective and robust. Special features include an archival audio commentary with director Andrzej Zulawski and co-writer Frederic Tuten, an archival interview with the late Zulawski The Other Side of the Wall: The Making of Possession from 2011, a U.S. Cut of the film with a following featurette Repossessed, a location featurette A Divided City, the musical compositions in an interview with composer Andrej Korzynski The Sounds of Possession, an interview with producer Christian Ferry Our Friend in the West, a poster analysis, and the international and U.S. theatrical trailer. What’s presented by Umbrella is the fully uncut 123-minute version in a region B-code format though, weirdly enough, rated 18. Another weird note about the release is the back cover credits are displayed in French on the cardboard slipcover housing the reversible DVD artwork featuring a new illustrated snapcase cover art by Simon Sherry. I’m a clear fan of “Possession’s” clear ambiguity despite being not sure positive about the new Blu-ray release. Zulawski’s tale of corrosive dissolving of wedlock definitely fits the Beyond Genres banner and is a fine edition to Umbrella’s celebratory bank of classic horror.


Possess Your Own Copy of Umbrella Entertainment’s Blu-ray Release of “Possession” Today!

Believe the Bruja When She Says There’s an EVIL Demon Inside You! “The Old Ways” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Dark Star Pictures)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Drug-addicted and depressed American journalist, Cristina, travels to her ancestral home of Veracruz, Mexico to investigate local folklore and shamanism.  Upon visiting the local feared and shunned caves of La Boca, the next thing Cristina knows she awake locked up in and chained inside a makeshift cell and is told a demon is inside her by an elder Bruja and her assistant who still practice the old ways of exorcism.  Skeptical and scared, Cristina endures the primitive, and sometimes painful, religious rituals to extract the demon out from her soul, hoping they would eventually let her go if she feigns the demons release from her body, but when plagued by strange visions and unexplainable occurrences, Cristina comes to realize the real danger is actually from within.    

Shot on location in Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico, “The Old Ways” clashes good versus evil in one small corner of the world while also enhancing the already enriched central American state known for its cultural brujo, or sorcery, celebrations and activity.  “The Old Ways,” which aims to symbolize spiritual demons to confront personal ones, is the first feature length venture from director Christopher Alender over 20-years since his first feature that was also, too, a horror, an off brand federal holiday themed slasher from 1999 entitled “Memorial Day.”  The 2020 demonic possession thriller reteams the “Memorial Day” writer and director as Marcos Gabriel pens the script that has become a miniscule reflection of himself being a Puerto Rician expat losing his own sense of heritage and culture of his ancestral land.  Full pin drop scares and profound depth of personal complexities, “The Old Ways” is a production of Soapbox Films (“The Wind,” “Southbound”) from Alender and Gabriel as executive producers along with Christa Boarini (“Spree”), David Grove Churchill Viste (“The Voyeurs”), and T. Justin Ross producing.

The lean characters keeps the story intimate and personal, rarely straying away from the rough-and-ready holding cell single location.  Only in Cristina’s backflashes of her Stateside office or the caves of La Boca do we dip into non-linear fractions of the what, when, why, where and how she became a befuddled prisoner to her Bruja host. No white washing here as the main cast is comprised of Latin-American actors and at the lead is “Fear the Walking Dead’s” Brigitte Kali Canales as the journalist with a death wish. You see, when Cristina embarks on her journey down to the La Boca caves of Veracruz, the troubled druggie searches for relief against an emptiness she can’t shake. Most of this narrative is backlogged backstory eventually worked on and worked out through flashbacks and through the excavation by her national residing cousin Miranda (Andrea Cortés). Canales really leans into her Americanized impediment delivering impatience, ignorance, patronization, and scoffing at Miranda and the Bruja teams’ beliefs and cultural responsibilities. The Bruja team, what I like to call it, is comprised of Julia Vera (“All Souls Day”) and Sal Lopez (“Return of the Living Dead III” ) as the last practitioner of primordial exorcism techniques, aka the old ways, and her assisting son, Javi, and the mother-son dynamic teeters of the customs and exercises of combating evil, a task that has been long withstanding against a beaten down and weary Javi. AJ Bowen (“The House of the Devil”), Julian Lerma, Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez, and Weston Meredith as the demon Postehki.

Now, Postehki is not a real demon from any culture’s cache of fiends. In fact, the whole mythos of “The Old Ways” is entirely fabricated for the sole sake of the story and I find that to be thrilling. Anything is possible with new folklore if done soberly without ostentatiousness and if mixed with some realism of the surrounding area, such as the Bruja element, that grounds the story with that much more of a terrifying blueprint. Plus, the allegories give the story tremendous depth with the demon inside Cristina that mirrors her addiction with drugs that initially obscure the audience from knowing if the evil within is real or is the drug effects the underlining culprit. Cristina’s addiction also plays into her immense sadness after her mother, the last connection to her heritage identity, dies and that melancholy she suffers forms a device that motivates her to return home looking to die herself. Cristina situation resembles being a satellite vessel cut off from the mothership and is lost and alone, leaving it up to Miranda to be that beacon of reconnection with not only her heritage but also her family. The third theme is the carryover of traditions from an older generation to a younger one that becomes very prominent between the Bruja, Luz, and Cristina to come to way of understanding the importance of keeping with the tried and true no matter how beyond crazy it may seem. The first two acts set up perfectly the puzzling nature of Cristina’s imprisonment and unraveling while touching upon subtopics and crowd pulling moments of breath holding terror, but the third act begins to spoil the salivating juiciness of what’s next behind each layer after a couple of false endings, a cheesy transition of character, and an eye-rolling one-liners essentially kill the visceral vibe.

Old habits, old feelings, and old origins pry open the emotional armor to a pervading and harbor-seeking evil in “The Old Ways” now on Blu-ray home video from Dark Star Pictures.  The not rated, dual-layer, region A BD25 is a presented in 1080p High-Definition with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen.  Cinematographer Adam Lee shoots a terrene-cladded and flat color incubus with strategically placed shots that trigger strong reactions that go toe-to-toe with a thumping tribal score and piercing ambient track from the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track in the English and Spanish language.  Robust and formidable, the score packs a punch with a pulsating drum and pan flute score by “The Wolf of Snow Hollow” composer, Ben Lovett. Dialogue is clean and clear and the errorless subtitles align nicely with the vocals. English SDH subtitles are also optional. Special features include over 2 hours of bonus content with a feature length behind-the-scenes documentary The Old Ways: A Look Beyond that provides cast and crew opinions, history, and everything else in between about “The Old Ways” origins and reactions, a commentary track with director Christopher Alender and writer Nicholas Gabriel, deleted and extended scenes, and storyboards. “The Old Ways” is old world horror for the modern age, poised rightfully so to be a part of the possession genre canon even if coming off the tracks just a tad.