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Four Kids to Stop EVIL From Wiping Out The Rest of Mankind. “The Walking Dead: World Beyond” final Season reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The last time we saw the four Colony Campus travelers trekking across country, Hope and Huck were helicoptering back to the Civic Republic Military, Iris and Felix find Will to learn their home has been wiped out, Silas sacrifices himself up to the CRM for his friends to get away, and Elton discovers Percy alive but severely injured after uncovering Huck’s deceit.  Separated and deeply rooted into their own difficulties and dilemmas, the long-term goal is to survive and find each other again while unearthing clarity around the CRM’s true top-secret military operations – wiping out neighboring alliance colonies with lethal gas.  Hope reunites with her father to assist in how to quickly eradicate the dead but the advancement in their works comes across CRM immoral hurdles that force the group into radical action against the most powerful and well-organized military faction known to what remains of mankind. 

“The Walking Dead” spinoff series, “World Beyond,” comes to a close on the two-season arc that aims to die up bits and pieces of connective elements into the ever-expanding universe that is “The Walking Dead.” Showrunners Scott Gimple and Matthew Negrete return to season two with a drive to give fans a broader sense of the enigmatic Civic Republic Military (aka CRM), to supplement a main series character’s hand in the fate of the human race, and to take continue to reach across the domestic planes to show that there’s more than just Georgia-Virginia heat and TexMex dead and drama. Gimple and Negrete’s “World Beyond” is the little brother of the series two predecessors but offers same amount of drama under a blanket of undead gore. Friendships will be tested, moralities will be checked, and the dead will still walk in this ancillary limited series that runs from 2020 to 2021, totaling 20 episodes. David Alpert, Brian Bockrath, Maya Goldsmith, Gale Anne Hurd, Ben Sokolowski, and also across the TWD universe and graphic novelist co-creator Robert Kirkman return to season two as executive producers under the presentation of American Movie Classics (AMC) with Idiot Box, Circle of Confusion, Skybound Entertainment, and Valhalla Entertainment serving as production studios.

Season one regulars Aliyah Royale, Alexa Mansour, Hal Crumpston, Nicholas Cantu, Nico Tortorella, and Annet Mahendru return to see their characters through the waves of the flesh-biting undead and the unbridled, unchecked power trips to the bitter end. Performances from season one into season two two retain individual natural orders of progression within the slogging imbroglio surrounding one ultimate thematic goal – to survive without sacrifice. From the regular cast, Aliyah Royale, Alexa Mansour, and Nico Tortortella step up in the rapid-fire series of blistering complexions based on the known and unknown facts of the environments or colonies that influence them. Tortorella actually showcases some of his fighting choreography unlike what we’ve experienced in the first season, making his Felix character that much more bad ass. Hal Crumpston, Nicholas Cantu, and Annet Mahendru don’t necessarily provide inedible takes of their equally thrust in turmoil characters but also don’t take their themselves to the next level. I still find Huck, played by Mahendru, to be average in a key role of double-edged duplicity. Plus, that forced deep Southern accent doesn’t do Huck justice, forged to contend with her military trained and tough cozenage. Crumpton remains flatlined with Silas’ two-toned solo-pot of emotions and Nicholas Cantu, who I consider the philosophical voice of reason for the group, isn’t provided enough screen time substance in season two to make an impact as his personal tribulations, such as learning Hope killed his mother during day one of zombie fallout, are dropped with barely a mention. New series regulars come aboard stemmed from their provisional season one stints. Joe Holt becomes more involved as Iris and Hope’s scientist father, Ted Sutherland reoccurs as Percy being found injured and is nursed back to health to seek revenge on Huck as well as become Iris’s love interest, Jelani Alladin returns with a fulltime status as Felix’s partner and has more of security role pivotal to the rebellious efforts against the CRM, and Julia Ormond returns as Huck’s mother and as Lt. Colonel Kubleck aimed to do what must be done in order to achieve mankind’s longevity. The new regulars, with the addition of new newcomer Maxmillian Osinski, breathe new life and new complexities of a narrative’s David and Goliath’s approach with added poignant distress as well as subdued hope. The cast rounds out with Natalie Gold, Anna Khaja, Will Meyers, Madelyn Kientz, Robert Palmer Watkins, Gissette Valentin, and “The Walking Dead” crossover Pollyanne McIntosh as Jadis filling in as a CRM head honcho with a new and approved queerish haircut.

The second season promises a whole new set of perils through the world of the undead and, to be more specific, “World Beyond” pivots the focus from the dead to the cruelty of man, keeping up with the “TWD” universe’s majority themes of staggering scruples and survival barbarity.  “World Beyond” trades decaying dentures for military might as Hope, Iris, Elton, Silas, Felix and Huck exhaust their trek to a divisive end after season one’s from West to East’s coming-of-age, growing-in-ghouls expedition that leads them to step outside their comfort zones and into the real world from the safety of the Campus Colony.  We learn early in season one that going back home is not an option as the Campus Colony has been wiped off the map by the CRM, but that hidden truth runs deep into the new season’s storyline and becomes this paradox notion that causes division amongst the principal characters.  Much of the belief the CRM committed genocide is founded on gut-feelings and hunches, as Iris continues to arduously state and even going as far as killing one of the CRM soldiers without proof of ice-cold facts of CRM’s hand in murdering the close-knit survivalist friends back at the Campus Colony.  On the subject of killing, one of the initial gripes by “World Beyond” was that the first season was gory-lite and lacked a concerning amount of undead rapaciousness for flesh.  The same can be said for the second season that saw little bite from the zombie contingent and, instead, focused more of the dynamics of conflicting groups trying to get the upper hand on each other, but also mirroring the layout of season one, gore and that inherent blood-n-guts cornerstone that, as we all know, makes audiences return show-after-show, season-after season to the “TWD” behemoth.  The latter episodes feature a crimson blood-splattering display of head shots, throat rips, and eviscerations that can sate fans toward forgiveness on being reserved in grisly gaudiness.

If you can’t get enough “The Walking Dead” or “Fear of the Walking Dead” then “The Walking Dead: World Beyond” can help fill that void with a short-lived arc in other parts of the dead-riddled planet and the final season comes to Blu-ray home video with a 3-disc, 10-episode set from Acorn Media International. The PAL encoded UK set is presented in an unmatted 1.78:1 aspect ratio which comes standard for U.S. television programming. Picture image comes from the HD AMC premiere and the noticeable dull details and banding in the digital compression codec. The quality won’t cause eyestrains or be a breaking eyesore as many viewers will notice little difference between television and the Blu-ray data output. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix has no flaws in the digital recording that provides a high bit clarity on each isolating channel and funneling them into one well-blended mix. Range and depth are on point and come through in a tumultuous world of gunfire and that recognizable growling dead. Optional English subtitles are available. With a runtime of 439 minutes and certified 15 or over, “World Beyond” has plenty of content and violence to salivate over but just in case you crave more, bonus features include the Comic-Con@Home 2021 Panel hosted by “Talking Dead’s” Chris Hardwick and includes showrunners Scott Gimple and Matthew Negrette as well as cast members Aliyah Royale, Alexa Monsour, Annet Mahendru, Jelani Alladin, Joe Holt, Hal Crumpston, Nico Tortorella, and Nicolas Cantu in the Hollywood Square-like Zoom panel. “World Beyond” scratches “The Walking Dead” itch for more with a Martial Law look and lockdown theme of military oppression over what remains of the civilian population, an aspect we haven’t seen extensively before in the franchise and slips into the timeline as a needed gap-fill, stretching over a new place and new set of people.

One Hundred and Twenty-Nine Men, Two Ships, and One EVIL Beast Trapped Together in Icebound. “The Terror” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Acorn Media International)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



Departed from English ports in 1845, two exploration sailing ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, sought to chart a northwest passage through Artic waters above North America.  Bound for King William Island with over 120 men between the two vessels, the traversers found themselves icebound as the Winter months froze the arctic waters completely and solidifying their positions within one large ice mass.  Their story doesn’t end there as months pass, even through the summer, and winter’s firm grip shows no sign of rising above zero degrees, sweating the brow of the few experience Arctic officers.  To top off their troubles, a vicious polar bear, or some kind of supernatural beast connected to Innuit people, hunts down and ravages a few unfortunate Royal Navy seamen.  Low of provisions and spirits, a combination of infinite winter madness and trembling fear weigh heavy on the seafaring fellows frozen in an icy cold Hell. 

Straight from the ill-fated expedition in British maritime history, the mystery surrounding Captain Franklin and his crew’s death and disappearance in the Arctic is given the hypothetical explanation and supernatural treatment in season one of the AMC series “The Terror.”  However, the tale is more relative to the adapted novel of the same name written by American author Dan Simmons who specialized in science fiction and horror.  Adding elements of a monstrous presence stalking them in the shadows of a bleak tundra, Simmons’ historical fiction turned television series blurs the lines of non-fiction and fiction with chilling atmospherics and the indelicacies of human nature when necessities for survival are pushed to the extreme and are in short supply.  “The Terror” is backed by a strong executive producer team in Ridley Scott (“Alien”) and notable historical television producer David W. Zucker (“Mercy Street,” “The Man in the High Castle”) with writers Max Borenstein (“Godzilla vs. Kong”) and Andres Fischer-Centeno (“Under the Dome”) penning the screenplays with Tim Mielants, Edward Berger, and Sergio Mimica-Gezzan directing a total combined 10-episodes under the Scott Free Productions and Entertainment 360 flag. 

The AMC television thriller scores an amazing cast of seasoned English and Irish actors refined in their skills of becoming a part of the history their work reflects.  Chiefly surrounding the top three principle commanding officers, “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’s” Ciarán Hinds as Captain Sir John Franklin, “Underworld: Blood Wars’” Tobias Menzies as Commander James Fitzjames, and with a foremost focus on “Resident Evil:  Apocalypse’s” Jared Harris as Captain Francis Crozier, an unique dynamic courses through the speckled personalities of each commander in the face of duty for Queen and country and in the certain finality to their crisis from the God-fearing Franklin, to the command prodigy Fitzjames, to the more sage practicality of Crozier.  Each also have their own flaws that inadvertently put a blight on the already ill-fated mission of charting a passage through the frigid bleakness of the Arctic ice and how they interact with a doubt inching motley crew of novice and experience sailors, especially between the stark contrast of fellow principle characters in the amiable Harry Goodsir (Paul Ready), whose personality is reflected by his name, in confliction with the more menacingly conniving shipmate Cornelius Hickey (Adam Nagaitis).  Both Ready and Nagaitis perfect their roles in convincing the audience on how we should feel about moral compass as they become the nerve center that drives the tale of continual darkness.  Praiseworthy performances definitely go to the entire cast, that also includes Nuuk native and Greenlandic band frontwoman, Nive Nielsen as well as Ian Hart, Alistair Petrie, Trystan Gravelle, Tom Weston-Jones, and Richard Riddell, pinpointing and bringing to life the mid-19th century Royal Navy speak, look, and mannerisms that adapt over the length and breadth of “The Terror’s” forlorn themes of two ship’s crew stranded in what could be said is a strange and alien terrain that evokes madness and fear in the longer you reside. 

The information surfaced about Franklin’s lost expedition with the discovery of possible cannibalism evidence discerned in the early 90’s and, more recently, the found wreckage of both the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror within the past decade add insurmountable coils of surreal realism around the true tragedy of both ships when embellished supernatural elements of an Inuit spirit animal stalking, hunting, and ravaging the crew.  Simmons novel and the series go hand-and-hand story wise but pull visually inspiration from Sir Edwin Landseer’s painting entitled “Man Proposes, God Disposes” where one polar bears tear at what’s left of a ship’s mast and another swallows what looks like human ribcage remains in a surely more a powerful image that’s aligned with the series in the offering an outcome of when it comes to man versus nature, nature will unduly win on it’s own frozen turf. AMC and Ridley Scott undoubtedly knew how to showcase a character driven story where over the time relations build and deteriorate between crew, officers, and a mingle of both and in that stretch of time, the passing of time itself has seemingly stood still as the nights become longer, routines are made, and the ships are stuck on the ice like a warm tongue pressed against a frozen metal pole, but, in the 10 episode series, the story stretches over a nearly two year period and the production is able to connect together next scenes to the previous ones without having to address each and every moment or exposition enough information to avoid the explanatory segue. This method of filmmaking always leave a smidgen of unknown, leaving viewers like us on tenterhooks and in an agitated state that we’ll never fully understand or fulfill that missing part of the mysterious portions and lapses in time. The unfortunate real life story itself casts an alluring wonder and I would even go as far as maritime excitement even if stemmed out of tragedy; that’s how “The Terror,” affixed to the rising ice in an infinite frozen sea of stalagmites, dresses every episode with a less is more garb. “The Terror” endures for a long time in the mind set to replay the desperation and the poignancy of the character’s madness, fear, cold, hunger, and the rest of their godawful bad luck.

A story relished with new fright and unsullied violence with every repeat viewing is now available on a two-disc, region 2 Blu-ray from Acorn Media International. The 10-episode series is presented in a widescreen, 16:9 aspect ratio, on two PAL encoded discs with a total runtime of 453 minutes. The image pails in comparison to the perilous subject matter with a more softer, hazier picture than the harsh, snowy environment setting. Yet, I find that the subpar high definition not to be a complete distraction as much of story plays out in the dark or in the thick of flurries meant to obscure the eyes from seeing reality before biting your head off. Two different audio options are available on the release – a DTS surround sound 5.1 and a Dolby Digital PCM Stereo 2.0. Both tracks have high audio discernible marks as a well-balanced whole with the dialogue cleanly present, the ambient noise, especially the continuous wood creaking on the ships being squeezed by the ice, finely tongued for ever musket shot and snowy foley, and a respectfully insidious soundtrack that makes the body’s blood curl. Option English subtitles are available. I do think the bonus features are a little on the cheap side with only AMC’s behind-the-scenes commercial break segments making the cut on this release, complete with the AMC logo in tow, but the special features include Ridley Scott on “The Terror,” a look at the characters, the boat and visual effects, and concluding with an inside look at each episode featurettes. By the end of the last episode of “The Terror,” you won’t feel chipper, you won’t feel happiness for a long time; yet, you’ll want more and wished season 2 continued the story, but after an impressionable gnarly grand finale, “The Terror” season one is one of the best televised horror shows to come out in a very, very long time.

EVIL Slums In The Company of Others. “Hausen” reviewed! (Sky Atlantic / Eps. 1-4 / Digital Screeners)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Jaschek moves into a property supervisor position of a slum housing complex with his 16-year-old son, Juri, after the tragic fiery death of his wife. Trying to rebuild and rebound on what’s left of his and his son’s life and waiting for the insurance money to pay out, Jascheck tends to the decrepit building maintenance and, over time, meeting the cold, strung out, and peculiar tenants while Juri attends school and becomes interested with the building’s discretionary drug pushing youths. When a young couple’s baby goes missing, the mysterious disappearance motivates Juri into an investigation, leading his curiosity to discover that the building itself, and the insidious sludge that oozes nearly from every crevice, feeds on the suffering and pain of the inhabitants.

When a black, wet stain on the wall embodies a biological presence of asexual spores and elicits the instinctual first thought of alarm sounding bells ringing to back away in your mind, this is how Till Kleinert and Anna Stoeva injects fear and biotic crud with their new horror television series, “Hausen.” It’s Bloggin’ Evil got to sample the first four episodes of the German 8-episode series that showcases director Thomas Stuber’s dank complexion of anthropomorphized leeching of the lower class, filmed partially inside an East Germany, 20 plus year abandoned hospital, once known as the GDR Hospital, located in Berlin. Kleinert is the writer and director of 2014’s “Der Samurai,” pulling from his film the lingering disembodied or dreamlike and integrating that surrealism imagery for the new series, and collaborates with first time writer, long time producer Anna Stoeva, one half of the boutique film production company, Tanuki Films. “Hausen” is a production of the Berlin-based company Lago Film, who co-coordinated the production on David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” under department head, producer Marco Mehlitz.

“Hausen” primarily focuses around a reestablishing father and son, Jaschek and Juri, after a tragic house fire that claimed the life of Juri’s mother. The series starts off with the two driving up to the housing complex and breaking themselves right away into a runaway rundown building that needs more than just a sprucing up. “Transporter: The Series'” Charly Hübner plays the handy father, Jaschek, with non-expressive can-do attitude that becomes a block of interrelation between him and his son Juri in another unreadable performance from Tristan Göbel of Lago Film’s “Goodbye Berlin. That inexpression is the intentional tone of “Hausen’s” entire cast of tenant characters who float through a barely-living existence, most living grubbily, few living in humble comfort, but all being exploited by the organic narcotic that’s living, breathing, and striving from the inhabitant suffering. Hübner and Göbel impassively shepherd along the story along that introduces new characters into new episodes that digs deeper into the complex’s black, oozy, heart symbiotically connected to a caretaker known as Kater, the very first character Juri and Jaschek meet upon arriving at the building for the first time. The autodidact Alexander Scheer touts an unkempt, dirtied, and made to look like a complete hobo in Kater who, unlike his onscreen cohorts, vitalizes the screen with wild-eye expressions and an unsurmountable jocularity and puckish wit. The series rounds out with stars Lilith Stangenberg (“Bloodsuckers – A Marxist Vampire Comedy”), Stefan Haschke (“Krabat and the Legend of the Satanic Mill”), Daniel Sträßer, and Andrea Guo.

“Hausen’s” intended aloof pulse courses consistently throughout, at least in the first four episodes, that piece together and induce layers of grayscale personalities that have been cross affected by the building’s malevolent life force and the subjugating delinquent class that feel no need to make their surroundings better as their stuck in a vicious cycle rut of drugs and despondency. “Hausen” allegorically uses horror to intensify the already tragic aspects of corrupted ethical life choices people make when drugs are prioritized as more important than others and even their own lives. The first episode features a young couple with an infant and as they attempt to stay clean and withhold what little money saved for a new and better apartment, the building reacts by taking measures in the form of tormenting the husband’s brittle sobriety as he’s caring for the baby alone. He passes out and wakes to find the familiar narcotic he can’t seem to escape on his person. The scene mirrors good intentions of abusers who fall into withdraw with the withdraws being symbolically displayed as the building’s evil doings to keep the pain profit flowing. Overall, “Hausen” drips with underbelly exploitation that doesn’t stop with just the adverse, malignant housing as it spreads into Juri and Jaschek’s tense relationship and into the ounce of good left inside them, fleshed out in scenes that become a crossroad of choices where choice A) is to do the worst thing possible to compromise the smidgen of hope left or choice B) to reserve themselves into taking the harder, but good moral standing, road and work at rekindling a tattered bond that would go against everything the “Hausen” has thrown at them.

A skyscraper of bleak and austere horror, “Hausen” houses a slick secretion of mystery in every crevice. The Sky Germany produced horrifying mystery-thriller is now out in the UK on Sky Germany’s sister-programming, Sky Atlantic. A statically lit doom and gloom scenes never venture away from the tinted battleship gray and blue color scheme that goes hand-and-hand with a cleaned up GDR hospital shots from cinematographer, Peter Matjasko, that’s reminiscent of David Fincher films = think “Alien 3” but with way less yellows. The black sludge is a satisfying unnatural pigment of midnight black that contrasts nicely against said tinted lens coloring, providing a catheter of continuously streaming tenebrosity. We’ll have to wait and see how Juri, Jaschek, and the rest of the tenants fair in the last four episodes that shafted us with a plummeting cliffhanger midway through and, hopefully, ItsBlogginEvil.com can provide more coverage on the unnerving new television series that will put a stain your soul.