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Earth’s Greatest Threat of Destruction is an EVIL Extraterrestrial Slug! “Slither” reviewed! (Visions Home Video / 2-Disc Steelbook 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Slither” Steelbook Can Be Yours! Buy it Here Today!

Wheelsy, South Carolina is a small town where the biggest event of the year is the countdown to deer hunting season.  On the eve to the start of the great hunt, an aggressive, parasitic alien entrenches itself inside a human host.  It impregnates a young woman to gestate thousands of its spawn, slug-like creatures that form telepathic link to the host and undertake its bidding.  Newly appointed Sheriff Bill Pardy, alongside his deputies, the eccentric town mayor, and longtime high school crush, Starla Grant, who’s husband was first infected by the invading extraterrestrial creature, must fight through the zombified hordes of alien controlled friends and neighbors townsfolk to stop the source from spreading and taking over the world but with their force numbers dwindling and the alien growing bigger and uglier by the second, Pardy must himself avoid being a host to the meat-hungry creature that has come to plague his small town community.

James Gunn, who has taken the MCU and DCU by storm with his creative involvement directing all of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, and upending the David Ayer and Zack Synder-universes with his divergent take on “Suicide Squad, and “Superman,” while also producing the just released “Supergirl,” use to bask in horror with “Slither,” a creature feature that captured the appreciation of 80’s monster movies and body horror with a zombie chaser and plenty of practical, tangible effects.  Gunn wrote and directed the now 20-year-old, 2006 movie filmed in a collective of portions of British Columbia, Canada doubling as a backwater town in South Carolina.  Brightlight pictures and Strike Entertainment produce the Gold Circle films presented movie with Paul Brooks (“White Noise,” “The Fourth Kind”), Eric Newman (“Dawn of the Dead” ’04, “The Thing” ’11), and Jeff Levine (“Shadow of the Vampire,” “ATM”) serving as producers. 

An established cast of talent comprises “Slither’s” eclectic character pool of townies being invaded by an outer space slug with a bad attitude.  “Firefly’s” Nathan Fillion is in the newly appointed Sheriff Bill Pardy and Fillion adds his usual spaceship captain comedic charm and swagger in the more grounded role as he stumbles into a world of slithering extraterrestrials that infest, digest, and gestate inside organic organisms.    Fillion’s hung up projection is for Elizabeth Banks’s Starla Grant, perhaps the most beautiful, and nicest, woman in all of Wheelsy, South Carolina,  The “Uninvited” actress adds pleasantries that are a compliment to Starla Grant but also a detriment as she’s unable to express how she really feels about her much older, well-off husband Grant Grant, played by “Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer” Michael Rooker.  Effectively, a love triangle ensues between the three with themes of true happiness, dissolution of a marriage, saving a marriage, love, and heartache coming into play amongst a body transformative horror that exceeds our solar system.  Rooker’s the rich Wheelsy resident who’s very protective of his trophy wife and is starting to feel the pangs of his wife pulling away from his advances but still loves her.  The fourth principal character in this quartet “The Darkling’” Tania Saulnier in what is essentially her debut protagonist role as a teen touched by the shared collective of the slugs and with her insight, provides pivotal information for the survivals to work against.  Each play their respective roles to perfection inside the chaos and mayhem of a more dominant species quickly spreading, even Gregg Henry (“Bodily Harm”) and his jaggedly crude role of town mayor fields a certain level of entertaining value to the frantic fray to keep “Slither” a light-hearted Hard-R creature feature.  The remaining cast includes Brenda Gutierrez (“Stone Cold”), Haig Sutherland (“Halloween:  Resurrection”), Jenna Fisher (“The Office”), and Don Thompson (“Horns”).

“Slither” is one of those seminal movies of the creature feature that could, or more accurately did, being a small fry horror movie that made a positive profit financially and amongst the audiences.  Of course, James Gunn found influence in his favorite horror works and borrowed, to an extent, key elements to spin his own craft that works to stand on its own two feet told mostly by its fine performances of the cast.  The down-to-Earth sci-fi action and gore is palpable and designed well in its composition of practical and computer-generated effects, especially for a mid-2000’s horror.  Gunn’s knack for black comedy works to the advantage of his brand of small-town satire and eccentric characters who can range from being charismatic and likeable to crude and inimitable.  Seeing the influences from John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” and Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and Russell S. Doughten Jr.’s “The Blob,” or maybe more so closer to  Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of “The Blob,” won’t create a rift between the film and audiences as there’s too much to like and laugh about “Slither’s” slimy infiltration and invasion concept without it feeling hackneyed and reaching to strive to be something it’s not in its hark of a classic creature feature and science fiction monster movie.

The first time transferred in 4K, Visions Home Video, a subsidiary label of Vertigo Entertainment, releases “Slither” onto a new 2-disc, steelbook 4K UHD and Blu-ray set.  Disc specs include a 4K UHD HVEC encoded with 2160p resolution on a BD100 and a Hi-Def Blu-ray that’s AVC encoded with 1080p resolution on a BD50, and both films are presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Image quality has been greatly found immersion with an image that pops off of the screen in the 4K option with the additional pixel count.  The Blu-ray holds its own and is also a fine presentation but in UHD, we’re treated to a little extra texture and a little extra clarity from the DolbyVision that can’t be achieved on the standard Blu-ray, especially around night sequences which most of the chaos and action takes place.  This is not to say the Blu-ray is unclear or obstructed as too has plenty of clarity and detail but what it doesn’t have is that deep sensory engagement of picture.  Coloring and grading are equal on both presentations that involve a more organic approach during the date and a bluish grading during night sequences to work in against the lighting.  No issues with the original 35mm elements as it’s kept clean and persevered well last 20 years, contributing to the natural resolution enhancement of the 4K transfer while also maintaining a healty but subtle grain.  The lossless English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio has no suppressive issues with fidelity and is just as immersive as the picture quality with distinctive directionals of the back and side channels and a balanced output of stereo, LFE, and central action.  Dialogue has no issues with clarity and is prominent above the audio layering.  The effects, such as slithering slugs sounds and gunfire, offer a good amount of bang for the cinematic budget and the overall main creature sound production eclectically engineered to be funny, in its whipping tentacles with that distinctive whip crack, as it’s scary and gross with its guttural growls and slimy trails.  English SDH subtitles are available for selection.  There’s also an uncompressed Stereo 2.0 audio format available.  Special features include an audio commentary with writer/director James Gunn and actors Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker, featurettes The Sick Minds and Slimy Days of Slither and Bringing Slither’s Creatures to Life, Gunn discussions The Genesis of Slither in an interview with the writer/director, an interview with director of photography Gregory Middleton We’ve Got Worms, an interview with editor John Axelrad Feed the Fear, an interview with special make-up effects designer Todd Masters Just a Bee Sting, an interview with composer Tyler Bates What’s Gotten Into You, a location and set tour with actor Nathan Fillion, deleted and extended scenes, a blooper reel, and trailers for film.  The Visions Home Video set case comes in a steelbook with metallic luster and an exclusive, and uncredited from what I can tell, illustrated artwork of survivors in the throes of tentacle mayhem.  The backside also includes additional artwork that has the semblance of a veiny, Resident Evil-like giant eyeball.  Both sides are primarily colored in reddish orange with blue slithering in on the front cover.  Inserted inside is a dual-sided mini folded poster with the same front cover artwork plus alternative compositional artwork on the opposite side on its rigid heavyweight construction paperwork.  The 4K UHD is region free while the Blu-ray is region locked B as it’s a UK release.  The 95-minute film is certified 15 for strong gory violence and language.

Last Rites: An early 2000s oldie but a goodie, “Slither” gives a glimpse of James Gunn’s caliber of losers become winners and to not hold back much of the violence, gore, and rough dispositions of uncouth, unsavory, and unsophisticated characters. This new 4K UHD and Blu-ray release from Visions Home Video re-invades “Slither” into our lives, taking over our brains, and becoming part of our physical media collective.

“Slither” Steelbook Can Be Yours! Buy it Here Today!

EVIL Gets Loopy in “Welcome to The Circle” reviewed! (Artsploitation Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Greg and his young daughter Samantha are turning out the lights on a camping trip in the woods.  When a bear attacks in the middle of the night, Greg awakens in the care of a commune-like camp.  Injured but alive, Greg is given the grand tour of the encampment of a cult known as The Circle where he rejoins with his happy-go-lucky daughter and meets a few other strange and unusual members who worship the legacy and the omnipotent existentialism of The Circle’s creator, Percy Stephens.  What the father-daughter combo don’t realize is that The Circle is a demon worshipping cult bidding on the whimsical demands of Percy Stephen’s rancor and malice.  A group of outsiders led by Grady, a former cult member in his youth, are determined to rescue and reprogram one of the followers close to them, but step into an upside-down world, demonized with smoke and mirrors, set on swallowing their souls for the sake of Percy Stephens delight. 

A diabolical drip of disorienting deception, “Welcome to The Circle” is a roundabout from Hell, cordially ostracizing the love and blessings ideology for more sinister, soul-sucking profit of an unconventional demon film.  “Welcome to the Circle” is a Canadian-made debut independent feature from write-director David Fowler and Fowler, better known for his work on documentaries, knocks on the door of insanity with a tailspin narrative that collides John Carpenter’s “In the Mouth of Madness” with Clive Barker’s “Lord of Illusions” with Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s “The Endless” rapping at the door and the results are an enigmatic nightmare full of stone faced mannequins, body inhabiting occupations, a series of blackhole peculiarities, and being eaten alive by crazed acolytes.  The Vancouver, British Columbia based Canadian company, High Deaf Productions, embarks into the feature film bazaar, with Mack Benz and Michael Khazen serving as company producers, with co-production association from Corvid Arts and Upfront Films.

Broken into two parts, the narrative opens the first portion up to familiarize with the cultist sheep in the stark white attire of wolves’ clothing that throws Greg and his daughter Samantha’s kismet into the uncertain pit of a demon’s impish thirst for souls.  When introduced to Greg (“Dragged Against Concrete’s” Matthew MacCaull), much of the character falls below the waist side as a single father detached from his own child and surrounded by conniving zealots that funnels into becoming weak, if not also immaterial when MacCaull is unable to explore Greg more in depth.  Nothing against MacCaull who performs well enough with an unsympathetic character that has a cold shoulder connection with his insubordinate child and no real background fuel a feed into Greg’s worth as one of the mainstay roles.  I also thought a little more on The Circle’s followers would be constructive to The Circle’s reason for fervor and appeal, but instead, Sky (“Supergirl” television series’” Andrea Brooks), Lotus Cloud (“Pacific Rim’s” Heather Doerksen), Rebekah (“The Wrong Daughter’s” Cindy Busby), and Matthew (“The Unspoken’s” Michael J. Rogers) are members developed only inside a crumbling hierarchy structure obtaining cryptic messages from a demon, Percy Stephens, from beyond their plane of existence.  Percy Stephens is perhaps the best complex character in the fold without having a stable foundational actor in his shoes and is played by various faces of the film’s cast able to reach back toward an immense and mysterious backstory that involves a slew of daring and impressive accomplishments and a demonic tiger shark that may or may not be Stephen’s aquatic damnation to Hell.  The second portion moves greatly away from Greg and his daughter and into a rescue operation, led by the unfiltered and unorthodox Grady, a former The Circle youth who landed in a psyche ward only to be hired to infiltrate the cult to extract Rebekah, paralleling his motives to understand the mechanics of the cult that led to the disappearance of his mother.  “Stan Helsing’s” Ben Cotton delivers a performance that is anything but vanilla as the sharp wit and cool as a cucumber Grady, dominating each and every scene in a disheveled and aloof veneer that becomes Grady’s best defense against Percy Stephen’s engaging entanglements.  The cast rounds out with Taylor Dianne Robinson (The Twilight Saga:  Breaking Dawn Part 2), Hilary Jardine (“Teen Lust”), Matt Bellefleur (“In Their Skin”), Christian Tessier (“Night of the Demons III”) and Jordana Largy (“Rememory”). 

It suffices to say that David Fowler’s topsy-turvy and boundless the fake-fake, a descriptor of the story’s in-between existences, is an alternate universe complete with hope chest portals and wraith approaches that will disrupt the audio and visual perceptions, disconnecting the straightforward wiring only to cross the stepping stones of normalized story structures to fissure what we know into a fractured reality.  The foyer to oblivion, the fake-fake, isn’t an easy one to digest and Fowler is very much aware of the real-real consequences of traversing into the world of the fake-fake.  Fowler forces you to pay a penance for crossing the threshold that will cause dizziness and nausea, the same affects the characters sometimes experience through the compressed spaces of time and planes of The Circle, soldering an unintentionally immersive experience with the combination of simple and natural cinematography infused effects that spun, tilted, and corralled acute fear and isolation from under the DP supervision of Sterling Bancroft. In regards to Fowler’s darkly imaginative story, the script a lively progression of diverse ideas and concepts that construct a little world within a bigger world, especially on a modestly tight budget that can’t afford mind-blowing special effects, but the cohesiveness is heavily reliant on the character’s to explain the actions that are occurring to progress an outline and much of that explanation falls into poetic prose and riddles. Characters Percy Stephens and Grady to much of the grunt work in vocalizing the visuals, but the course is a rocky road and with every bump there’s a meaning within a meaning and to know the meaning is to meaning to know. See what I mean? “Welcome to the Circle” chips away the substantial concrete barrier with a bombardment of incorporeal flak that comes in wave-after-wave of full blown auteur creativity.

 

To get caught in the loop is to loop in getting caught and that’s what Artsploitation Films has done by acquiring and distributing “Welcome to The Circle” on a Blu-ray home entertainment release. Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the digitally recorded picture is about as immaculate as they come nowadays with tactile textures of grainy log of the cabins, the floral of the forest, and the scruff of Matthew’s bristly beard all looking particular sharply detailed albeit some minor fluctuations of softness seeping into the brush and into more dreamlike sequences and though flat, the colors due run unbridled with the forestry green and the eggshell color of mannequin “skin” that renders subtle differences more distinct. Darker scenes render nicely and smoothly without as much of a flicker of interference and Bancroft’s use of depth forces audiences to focus only on what’s extremely close up or what’s faraway by way of adjusting the focal length. The English language 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio also has little-to-no complains with a well rounded discernible platter of clear, forefront dialogue, depth and range of vocals and ambience, and a combination score and soundtrack by Reid Hendry with original and haunting folk tracks by Jo Krasevich do an insidious one-two punch that bruises the soul. The not rated, 93-minute film comes with only a theatrical trailer in the bonus features. Despite the dense ambiguity that surrounds the film, the demonic ensnaring doom that accompanies “Welcome to The Circle” is, simply put, psychosis in a bottle that director David Fowler just effortlessly uncorked.

Own “Welcome to the Circle” on Blu-ray!