An Odyssey through the Phantasmagoria EVIL. “Moon Garden” reviewed! (Oscilloscope Laboratories / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on March 19, 2024

Take a Stroll Through the “Moon Garden” on Blu-ray

Five-year-old Emma is caught in the middle of her beleaguered parent’s marital strife. When Emma witnesses one particular heated and nasty argument between mom and dad, she flees to escape the anger only to slip and fall down the stairs, hitting her head that puts her into a comatose state. She awakes lost, confused, and consumed in an industrialized gray zone, loomed over by strange land’s dark gloom and also curious wonderment that both frighten and amuses her. As Emma looks from the inside out, seeing her parents come together from the struggles to cope and worriment surrounding her comatose body, the young girl is determined to make it back to her parents by trekking through the bizarre land, but a menacing, chattering being feeding off her fear and tears pursues her and she has to rely on the amiable ambivalence of unique strangers that inhabit this world to help her escape the nightmare and return home.

Cut with relatable bleak themes of family dysfunction, Ohio-born filmmaker Ryan Stevens Harris undertakes fantasy rarely seen in this day and age of computer visuals and special effects, probably not since “Labyrinth” or “The Never Ending Story” of the 1980s. Stevens, chiefly an editor in the movie industry with credits ranging from indies like “What’s Eating Todd?” to big-budget blockbusters like Roland Emmerich’s “Moonfall,” writes and directs “Moon Garden,” a wayfaring grim fairytale with visual ferocity in a practical DIY-fashion and without major studio help. The 2022 fantasy envelopes elements of difficult navigation surrounding nuclear family problems through the quivery, unguarded eyes and immense imagination of a very young child still developing those rationality and interpretation skills to make it all make sense. Based off Harris’s proof-of-concept 13-minute short film “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth,” “Moon Garden” is a production of Harris’s Fire Trial Pictures and is self-produced alongside Fire Trail Picture’s co-founded John Michael Elfers and wife, Colleen.

“Moon Garden” is truly a family affair with not just the husband-and-wife collaboration behind the camera but also the couple’s young daughter, Haven Lee Harris, at the forefront as the enchanted young Alice in Wonderland-esque wanderer named Emma. Haven, who also starred in the “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth” short,” fully embraces Emma’s forming schism between her parents and being engulfed by an intimidating atmosphere that’s often bursting with melancholy and acrimony, a credit to the father-director who can turn the darkness to light by making behind-the-scenes an engagingly fun atmosphere for his impressionable, yet talented, daughter to thrive as an untrained actor in her debut performance. As Emma travels through the eclectic settings of sewers and steam pipes, dilapidated houses, swampy overgrowth, and towering observatories, she comes across equally eclectic figment inhabitants that help her, a hammering string musician (Phillip E. Walker, “13 Mysteries”), a sullen groom (Timothy Lee DePriest, (“BnB HELL”), a budding mud witch (Angelica Ulloa, “Gnome Alone”), and a lonely Princess (Maria Olsen, “Vile”), but not all seek the wellbeing of Emma as a haunting levitating and sinister pursuer (Morgana Ignis, “Satanic Hispanics”), garbed in inspired militarism and a void where only sharp, chattering teeth makeup it’s face. Each character is bred out of Emma’s emotional states brought to fruition by her extensive imagination, correlated by her playing with resembling toys before her accident. Mom and dad are played by Augie Duke (“The Badger Game”) and Brionne Davis (“Mom and Dad”) for the first act and through flasbacks of the second and third. The parents inadvertently inject sorrow into the heart of their daughter caught in the middle of the martial affliction. Duke saturates leadenly into the mother’s depression with poignancy and potency, fueled by Davis’s uncompassionate workaholic for the father, and this sparks the tension that requires a forced happy family face around Emma whose brimming at the edge of her imagination for a better existence. Filling in the cast gaps are Téa Mckay and Emily Meister.

If Phil Tippett directed a movie from a script by Lewis Carroll, “Moon Garden” would be the outcome. Pure imagination and creativity ignite a new world to travel down toward the rabbit hole, utilizing a series of practical techniques to show how grotesquely and beautifully grandiose this world can be erected and the odd characters can come alive all without breaking the bank. With any abstract art, grasping concepts and correlating visual expressions can be difficult but with “Moon Garden” there’s a sense of celebration for movie magic. Between detailed miniatures, visual compositing, manipulative time and camera techniques, practical special effects, etc., Ryan Stevens Harris promenades the audience through the different levels, stages, and exhibits of what is a carefully curated museum of ingenuous imagination, which sounds like something Willy Wonka would melody about, and does so while tapping into our own fears as not only having once been children ourselves with vivid imaginations looming in ever crevice of our minds but also in us lucky enough to be parents as Harris interposes clips of Emma peering in reverse through the looking glass, into reality, to see her parents reformulating a bond through the muck of grief, worry, and love for their child in what is a parents’ worst nightmare to experience. “Moon Garden” can be intense and scary at times but certainly could be kid friendly and empowering for little tykes afraid to take on the daunting outside world or the inside of uncertainty.

Our first venture into an Oscilloscope Laboratories release is anything but paramnesia. “Moon Garden” arrives onto an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, 50-gigabyte Blu-ray transferred and processed from the original 35mm print, as Fire Trial Films is a 35mm production company, and presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Having scored age-worn film stock, Harris achieves some unusually neat prints that saturate the colors differently than if the stock was in brand new, pristine condition. An ingrained darkness from the stock adds a pinch of otherworldly tincture that accentuate the already overwhelming serrated slumberland atmospherics coupled with a filmy layer of good-clean grain. Primary colors don’t often appear like primary due to the aged film stock but pop in distinct crush, nonetheless. Emma’s unconscious dimensional detour is full of pocket voids, shadowy symmetrical shapes, and dreamy in exact detail on all accounts without being empyrean or wistfully. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 master audio and the film’s original uncompressed stereo 2.0. The lossless surround sound mix options to deliver the identical audio measures in comparison the uncompressed audio while also slinking through the side and back channels for full-bodied immersion into Emma’s tribulating trek back home. Dialogue comes through exceedingly well-enough albeit the multi-faceted improved industrial soundtrack sneaks in staggering oversteps at times. Speaking of the soundtrack, an original score by composer Michael Deragon, the transitional tunes, melodies, discordances, and synths are just a taste of the eclectic, haunting sounds that navigate Emma’s journey and the elegant, melancholic, and even comforting lullabies by Augie Duke as the mother bring a sort of peace and tranquility that resets the intensity and fear of the child in peril. The chattering teeth, though comically inclined to an extent, are especially effective as a looming, omnipresent pursuant. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features on the Blu-ray include a making of “Moon Garden” featurette that lets director Ryan Stevens Harris be giddy-as-school boy proud to show off and explain the how-tos of his masterclass piece of creativity as well as to dote on his sweet daughter Haven, Harris’s 12-minute proof-of-concept short film “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth,” a single deleted scene, and the theatrical trailer. Oscilloscope’s Blu-ray comes in a clear Amaray case with a what looks almost to be an innominate water-colored cover art composition, with gothic overtures, of a few characters with the reverse side bathed in a blue landscape setting that Emma crosses which is shown in the film. The disc art is curiously plain with the Oscilloscope Laboratories logo and the title “Moon Garden” above it. The not rated Blu-ray comes region free and with a 93-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Ever since post-credits, The M Machine’s Moon Song and Promise of a Rose Garden has regained ground in my mind and it’s a very fitting pair of tracks not only for their keyword titles but also for its industrial beats and unconventional sonority structures similar to the cadence of the deep space wandering that is “Moon Garden” as visually the imagery confounds the senses and surrealism takes hold of us as this sweet and innocent little girl confronts alone a world much bigger than anything than we could ever imagine, and only she can pull herself through while the discordant parents can only be a unifying beacon of light and hope. Highly recommended.

Take a Stroll Through the “Moon Garden” on Blu-ray

The EVILS of the Jersey Shore! “Exit 0” reviewed! (DVD / Breaking Glass Pictures)

Posted by Steven Lewis on March 28, 2020

A young New York City couple drive down the Jersey Turnpike down to the Jersey Shore for a quaint getaway in the comforts of Cape May’s Doctor’s Inn Bed and Breakfast. With the hopes of rekindling the spark between them, the omission of the fast churning city living will surely become dampened by the island’s off-season quiet that’s more in sync with focusing on each other. However, after a strange incident at a curbside rest stop, something hasn’t felt right. From the odd tenants to the inexplicable occurrences of the Doctor’s Inn, the strain between their recoupling becomes a daunting wedge and when a videotape is discovered in their room, a videotape that shows a grisly murder on the exact spot they sleep in their room, that wedge not only drives deeper between them but also begins to suspend reality and raise paranoia.

Set on location at the Doctor’s Inn Bed and Breakfast of Cape May, New Jersey is the jarringly fear-fostering “Exit 0” that delivers the grim goods on a dead end, spook story skippered by writer-director E.B. Hughes (“Turnabout”) from a story co-writer with Philadelphian native, Gregory Voigt. Being a local Philadelphian suburbanite myself and a patron visitor of Avalon, New Jersey, having “Exit 0” be a horror-thriller that showcases the tremendous historical and Victorian-laden edifices and tourist retreats like the lighthouse on Cape May point is really invigorating to know that any kind of story, whether horror or otherwise, can be tailored into the seams of just about anywhere on this designer planet. Cape May is charming, inviting, and bustling with touristy customers who’ve answered the call from the beach from up and down the East Coast and surrounding inland areas, but during the off-season, the Jersey Shore, as a whole, is a gloomy and desolate barren land that would emit the appearance of invoking an eerily haunting atmosphere. “Exit 0” is also a charming little independent picture, self-produced by Hughes under his production company EBFIlms.

The cast is comprised of mostly locals in the tristate New Jersey, New York, and Philly area, starting off with Gabe Fazio (“Trauma is a Time Machine”) anchoring down Billy in the lead role of the boyfriend reminiscing about when his parents took him to the Doctor’s Inn when very young and being the plagued victim of severe anxiety when things go strangely muddled during his stay. “The Badger Game’s” Augie Duke plays a constant in Billy’s quickly downgrading opaque craziness as the teetering love interest, Lisa, and though typically the foundering relationship could be the heart of the story, but in “Exit 0,” Lisa might be portion of the reason for Billy’s seemingly unhinged fear. Duke’s wonderfully seductive from a distance, blue balling Billy on his wishful romantic long weekend. Billy and Lisa’s chemistry is in a beaker of unknown substance as we’re not really sure where the stand with each other: Billy doesn’t know whether he loves Lisa or not and Lisa keeps Billy at arm’s length while at the same time attempts to engage in Billy’s sexual advances. Hughes highlights often usual and direct characters to round out Billy’s source of burdens, especially with The Writer played by “The Mask’s” Peter Greene. Greene’s method approach plays into his deep ominous eyes and contoured facial features as a mysterious fixture. Federico Castelluccio plays into the latter direct category as the island’s Detective Mueller. The “Midday Demons” actor perhaps provides a character who becomes the only source of sanity not influencing Billy’s instability and Castelluccio courses a hardnose investigator to reach the truth. “Exit 0” fills out with a couple of veterans in Kenneth McGregor (“Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil”) and Daniel O’Shea (“The Rocketeer”).

“Exit 0” will unavoidably not be a hit with most audiences as a salt of the earth kind of psychological thriller bearing no teeth when considering general moviegoer baits, such as lots of gore, action, and skin, but despite the rudimentary building blocks, E.B. Hughes braises shuttering tension inside a compartmentalized configuration that includes a bit of found footage vehemence mixed with some spun Cape May folklore that’ll find regional nepotism amongst from friends and relatives of the cast and the crew and favoritism from the locals and enigma enthusiastic. Another disadvantage against “Exit 0” is more technical in regards to poor sound editing that picks up way to much noise, ambient and static alike, that’ll certainly dissuade some from enjoying the core plot involving triggering suppressed mental illness and eliciting out of the box interpretation of whether or not what Billy experiences are in fact real or just in his piecing imagination.

Embark on a minatory trip to Cape May with E.B. Hughes’ “Exit 0” on DVD Home Video distributed by Philadelphia company Breaking Glass Pictures. The region 1 DVD is presented in a widescreen, 1.78:1 aspect ratio, with a runtime of 95 minutes. “Exit 0” isn’t a popping color film that limits the ranges to being bleak shades of primary colors that opalescent from scene to scene until we meet The Writer whose basking in a harsh, almost heater like, fluorescent red. These scenes exhibit quite a bit of color banding, noticeably on the walls. Details are moderately soft on times, especially on faces, but there’s plenty of good contour lighting to equalize the effect. The English language dual channel stereo mix initially begins with a rough edit that can’t discern dialogue and backdrop noise audiophiles, making the car ride exchange dampened between Billy and Lisa who are nearly drowned out from the car’s whooshing ambience. Stereophonic sound system feels more mono that can’t grasp the voices and the anxiety riddle milieu that bombard Billy’s crumbling agitation. Dialogue tracks are, for the most part, prominent and can be discerned. Special features include a lengthy and in depth Q and A with director E.B. Hughes, Gabe Fazio, Peter Greene, and Federico Castelluccio, behind the scenes footage, outtakes, a bonus short film “Harsh Light” written and directed by E.B. Hughes about an aging boxer whose career has hit a dead end, and the theatrical trailer. “Exit 0” is abstruse conjecture that mental illness and chilling folklore can be one in the same, depending on one’s subjective perspective, and E.B. Hughes and his anchoring leads masterfully leave open the murky, rheumy wounds for personal contemplation in a hair-raising tale.

Available on DVD at Amazon.com

Evil Lusts, Stimulates, and Impregnates! “The Black Room” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on September 2, 2017

Paul and Jennifer Hemdale snag a great deal on their dream home withstanding an ugly past considering the previous homeowner who disappeared without a trace and a woman ending up badly burned. Despite the stigma surrounding the house, the Hemdales vow to turn their first home into a marital love nest, but every instance in which one of them is ready to break in the new home underneath the sheets, the other falls flaccid, as if something is keeping them from making love. Beneath the first floor, in the darkest part of the basement, there lies a locked black room with ritualistic pagan writing sprawled inside every wall, floor, and ceiling surface and an demonic incubus, lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to reinstate a master plan to take over the world. When Paul becomes a host for the incubus, the body count rises when repairmen, friends, and family come calling to their home and Jennifer must discover what’s causing her husband to act like a perverted jerk before she too falls into the incubus’s malevolent grip.

“The Black Room” mixes dark demon humor with perversions in a butt-cheeky horror comedy written and directed by Rolfe Kanelsky, whose credits in “Nightmare Man” and “Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle’s Intimate Encounters” have sure to have aided in the director’s seamlessness in blending an erotic tone with an aggressive horror element. Kanelsky’s cavalier approach to the 2016 film, “The Black Room,” hints at the Sam Raimi approach with the unexpected and the bizarre mischief of the demon and a violin heavy folk-artsy soundtrack style with jump scare after jump scare techniques, but without going full blown with “The Three Stooges” antics as Raimi is well-known to implement. Instead, Kanelsky’s far more subtle and isn’t afraid to be verbally pun awful, even during more positionally vulnerable scenes involving actresses. Whereas most horror films uses horror as an exploitative tool or an ultimate means to be hacked to pieces, “The Black Room” transforms nudity, and sex, into a running joke much like a Troma production would gravitate to, with “Tromeo and Juliet” being a prime example, and then punch the joke into hyper drive by either being overly gory or ridiculously impractical.

In all honesty, “The Black Room” is the second Cleopatra Entertainment title reviewed at Its Bloggin’ Evil, with the first being a clunky deal-with-the-Devil thriller entitled “Devil’s Domain” by director Jared Cohn, but Cleopatra’s latest entry into the demonic hierarchy enrolls more star power to provide legitimacy in the horror realm by casting horror hall of famed actress and “Insidious” series star Lin Shaye as the snarky previous house owner with a dwelling secret and as well as “Species” series and “Ghost of Mars” actress Natasha Henstridge as the lovely Jennifer Hemdale. Shaye’s dedication to any project, big or small, places the four-decade-careered actress as a beacon of hope for the indie project and Henstridge, still oozing that blonde bombshell of sexiness image, is the proverbial cherry on top. Shaye and Henstridge bare a heavy cast presence without having to bare much skin, but there’s a fair amount of nudity to behold from actresses Augie Duke (“The Badger Game”), Jill Evyn, Alex Rinehart, cheesy horror goddess and “Killjoy” actress Victoria De Mare, and a full frontal nude debut by Milena Gorum in her first credited film. When you’re done ogling over the female roster, a tall, baritone voiced Lukas Hassel illuminates as the sleazy parasitic host of an sex-crazed incubus, embracing every tall, dark, and handsome aficionado to dream of Paul Hemdale in a variety of gore-raunchy segments while maintaining a straight face about the filth that seeps from his character’s mouth. Rounding out this cast is a “Skarkansas Women’s Prison Massacre’s” Dominique Swain as the film’s third headliner on the Blu-ray cover and intro credits, one of my personal favorite supporting actors James Duval (“Cornered!”), Caleb Scott, Robert Donovan, and with genre favorite Tiffany Shepis.

While the story’s nuts and bolts of “The Black Room” consists of demons, possession, and world domination, lots of sex, sex talk, and sexual situations litter every scene. Yes, the demon is an incubus and by very definition of the term, a demon who makes sexual advances on women while they sleep, whole-heartedly defines the amusing premise. Maybe with Kanelsky’s background in softcore erotica, sex comes second hand and writing all the associations with the act is easier for the filmmaker who installs both main characters, Paul and Jennifer, with an insatiable sex drive from beginning to the end. Even with side characters untarnished by the incubus’s powers, such as the perverted water heater repairman, become a slave to the story’s grossly sexual tension. Now, I’m not complaining, but the continuous play on sex is odd without the slither of a moral growth. After all is said and done and the characters walk away from a deadly supernatural cluster-you-know-what, neither Paul and Jennifer progress, knowing nothing more from when they first started, and plateau to a level right from the start when first purchasing the dreadful dream home.

Cleopatra Entertainment and MVDVisual present “The Black Room” on a region free Blu-ray with 1080p on a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Coloring is everything and the range of hues in “The Black Room” vividly crisp off the screen and the filter lighting smoothly goes unnoticed when sudden changes from natural to red flare up. For most of the 91 minute runtime, a clean image plays out a levelness throughout, but film grain presents itself in last moments of said titular room and the digital effects are gaussian soft that it’s penalizing. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has a compressed audio that’s not up the spec when considering Cleopatra is a major record label. The dialogue is clean and prevalent, but sorely soft at times with ranges between ambient, soundtrack, and dialogue fluxing more on the lower volume totem poll rather than being beefy and in charge. Audio is passable, being free from damage and distortion, but a little more range would do this demon dance some justice. Bonus material includes commentary with director Rolfe Kanelsky, star Natasha Henstridge, supporting actor Augie Duke, and producer Esther Goodstein, a slew of extra and extended scenes, a severely anemic behind-the-scenes short, a brief blooper reel, slide show, storyboards, and the film’s trailer. When considering between the two demonically-charged Cleopatra Entertainment productions “Devil’s Domain” and “The Black Door,” there’s no contest as the latter is technically a much better film and a lot of fun to watch and sure to be every gore and sex-hound’s wet dream with titillating special effects, especially with an invisible entity seducing a sleeping Alex Reinhart with a major titty-twister, and a dark sense of humor of unholy pleasure.