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An Expedition to Hunt EVIL is now EVIL Hunting the Expedition. “The Yeti” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Yeti” Stomping Its Way onto Blu-ray!

Alaska, 1947 – an oil tycoon’s expedition goes missing after the team doesn’t report to the return boat and a SOS is transmitted days later.  The oilman’s son gathers his own team of uniquely skilled experts to track down the whereabouts of his father and the rest of the missing expedition.  Ellie Bannister, a washed out of cartographer and explorer, is hired to lead the trip because her estranged father Hollis was a part of the first expedition.  Despite her own self-doubting hesitations, Ellie agrees to aid her services but when they arrive, they’re met with a force of evil long thought of urban legend.  One-by-one, they’re being picked off, chewed apart, and spat out in a heap of blood and guts as the creature after them is hunting them down as intruders and pillagers of their snowy forest land.  It’s up to Ellie and the remaining survivors had to contact the boat in the midst of a storm in order to escape with their lives and bodies still intact. 

Horror films about the Abominable Snowman, or even his forestry cousin Big Foot, are always hit or miss, with most of them being duds that don’t do the urban legendary big fellas justice.   And don’t even get me started on those grandiose-embellished documentaries.  Co-writers-and-directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta are taking their shot on the snowy sasquatch with their latest 2026 film, “The Yeti.”  The film is Gallerano and Pisciotta’s first feature length film after having a decent, more than a decade’s worth of short film credits to their name.  The U.S. production builds snowy, forest-filled stages inside Buffalo, New York’s Buffalo FilmWorks to double as the harsh, snowy landscape of Alaska, avoiding long and wide shots in full light to make it more claustrophobic while and contained to effectively represent a location in the 49th state. Torfoot Films and Hardscrabble Film Company serve as the film studios with Johnathan Browniee (“Satanic Panic”), Frank Coppola (“Givers of Death”), Ross Meyerson, and Romano Natale producing. 

“The Yeti” is compromised of an ensemble cast of mostly rescue expeditioners heading into the unknown parts of Alaska to make contact with another expedition team who fell off the radar.  The story is female-led by Brittany Allen (“Jigsaw,” “What Keeps You Alive”) as an afraid of failure Ellie Bannister with haunted history and a bum leg due to polio.  Though deeply flawed in a traditional sense, this doesn’t stop Bannister from accepting the position of expedition leader and cartographer-explorer and while Bannister is rising to the challenges to meet her character arc, Allen doesn’t exude the attributes of heroism with freezing in fear, drifting off with music, and never really coming toe-to-toe with the titular villain and, instead, having more complex conversations and actions with her estranged father as part of a rekindling process.  The rest of her team shows more guts – literally and figuratively – without much of a backstory to them and that wastes the potential to have some sort of strong feelings toward their characters, such as war vet Leander Coates (Linc Hand, “The Other Side”)) who wears a half-mask painted with a crude imitation of a human face, Daniel ‘Dynamate’ Hewitt (Gene Gallerno) as a spacy, good ol’boy drunk and explosive expert, Booker (Jim Cunnings, “Halloween Kills”) as the silent and stoic radio ma, Merriell Sunday (Eric Nelsen, “Nightmare Cinema”) as the missing Tycoon’s son who either has a hidden agenda or has ants in his pants, Margaret Lamb (Christina Bennett Lind, “Calico Skies”) as an animal expert who doesn’t get to use much of her skills and knowledge, and Belle Parker (Elizabeth Cappuccino, “Super Dark Times”) as…well…I don’t really know, assistant to the Tycoon’s son possibly?  Parker’s contribution to the expedition team is never really explained.  The film rounds out with two big hitters in Corbin Bersen (“Major League”) as the oil Tycoon who does have a hidden agenda and William Sadler (“The Shawshank Redemption”) as Ellie’s father trying to stop that agenda. 

Yeti centric stories should exhibit the ugliest, ferocious, hairiest, tallest, and meanest, white furred primate to ever walk the Earth in folklore.  “The Yeti” accomplishes that in a modest level that tries to meet eye-to-eye with Ryan Schifrin’s 2006 film “Abominable” that truly does have a ruthless creature in its blood soaked and gory entrails.  Gallerano and Pisciotta’s Yeti, brought to life by Wayne Anderson (“The Predator”) and Ali Gordon (“Hellraiser” ’22), is tall, stringy and matted hair, large mouth with razor teeth, sharp claws, and an overall, an oversized, white gorilla on steroids.  Couple this beast’s design with gory practical effects by Anderson and Gordon as well and you have potential breathing down your neck!  Yet, “The Yeti” fails to impress despite a visually visceral creature and buckets of bloodshed as the story can’t hold the pieces together even in its rudimentary and predictable state.  Characters are never given the opportunity to make an impact, becoming quick Yeti fodder for the sake of impressive on-screen kills – one man eaten in half, another perforated by a claw, and another’s arm is ripped right off as the Yeti compresses his foot down onto his chest.  There’s little to like about the actions taken and the lack of empathy in their behavior that snag “The Yeti’s” success for an indie product that tries, and to the point, succeeds being larger than its creature mythology.  The creature has more depth and understanding, holding onto a rationality universally understandable, while the characters, who are supposed to be the protagonist and principal good guys on the side of nature or humanity are terribly murky to the point trying to relate to them felt futile. 

Well Go USA Entertainment brings Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta’s “The Yeti” to physical media with an AVC encoded, 1080p Hi-Def resolution, BD25 Blu-ray.  I’m curious why the decision was made for a smaller capacity Blu-ray because aesthetically, “The Yeti” uses low light, fog, has plenty of tenebrous portions that tend to wreak havoc on the compression decoding.  Same can be said here as “The Yeti” suffers from obscurity infractions that reduce the detail considerably.  If looking at the backside of the physical release, as we’ll also go over later, the stills are quite sharp, suggesting the master to have peak quality whereas the Blu-ray sees a reduction in quality.  Joel Froome’s cinematography is an initial mix bag of harsh lighting, black-and-white, and lower color saturation to be more a period pieces of the 1940s-1950s but once the rescue team is out in the field, Froome switches gears quickly to a claustrophic and cold color mise-en-scene that doesn’t expand landscapes, keeping the area tight amongst the trees with poor visibility due to the blizzard-lite conditions.  The film’s aspect ratio is a widescreen 1.78:1.  The release comes with two English audio tracks, a primary DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo.  The lossless 5.1 is hands down the option to go with with plenty of atmospherics wind gusts, tree rustles, and off-screen Yeti sounds to build tension and isolation.  Dialogue renders over nice and clear with prominence amongst the rest of the layers.  The soundtrack is also equally balanced and integrated but also camouflages in the background, never really becoming a character itself nor being remarkably memorable.  English and French subtitles are optionally available.  Other than trailers and Well Go USA Entertainment previews, the Blu-ray is a feature-only release with no bonus content or stinger scene.  An O-ring slipcover with a telling image of size and ferocity sheaths the standard Blu-ray Amaray.  The same slipcover image art is also the single-sided sleeve and there are no tangible extras within.  Rated R for bloody violence content and some gore, “The Yeti” Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment has a feature runtime of 93 minutes and is region A locked.

Last Rites: “The Yeti’s” a strong enough entry to viciously vilify the snowbound mythical urban legend but directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta don’t finish the job giving the narrative feeble legs on the stand where it counts as blood and guts alone can’t make an abominable snowman film worth watching.

“The Yeti” Stomping Its Way onto Blu-ray!

Your Test Will EVILLY Hunt You! “Prey” reviewed! (20th Century Studios / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Hunt is On.  “Prey” Available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Studios!

Set in the Northern Great Plains of 1791, a young and fierce Comanche woman, Naru, craves to break conventional gender barriers as a tracker and hunter, separating herself from the assumed woman’s place in her tribe as a gatherer of medicine and food.  Naru tirelessly trains herself in the ways of the warrior and has become better than her male counterparts who often look down on her as an inequal; yet, she continues her pursuit to prove her worth not only to men hunting parties but also her own brother who, with all the love in his heart for her, doubts her abilities to meet and become victor over her tribe’s warrior test of hunting a predator that can hunt you back.  A big-game hunting alien with high-tech arsenal invades the land, tracking down the area’s biggest predators, and conquering them essentially his bare hands.  Naru comes face-to-face with the extraterrestrial predator that threatens her people but her cries of wolf fall on deaf ears until the tribe’s bravest war party is defeated and the nearby shrewish French fur trappers are slaughtered despite their gunpowder weaponry, Naru is all that is left between her people and a high-powered killing machine.

From a year and half after the success of its premier release on Hulu, “Prey,” the prequel to the highly popular “Predator” franchise has finally berthed onto the home video market.  “10 Cloverfield Lane” director Dan Trachtenberg helms what is essentially a primal and back to roots prequel with a screenplay penned by television writer-producer Patrick Aison set nearly 200 years prior to John McTiernan’s 1987 action-packed, science-fictional horror “Predator” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger battling a skull-trophy hunting alien with advanced and otherworldly armaments.  Though included as canon, “Prey” separates itself from the pack, especially from the string of “Alien vs. Predator” crossover and the 2018 Shane Black director “The Predator,” and not just in title alone but the title is certainly very significant with a focus on the developing heroine to become respected and an equal amongst the men of her tribe whereas the rest of the franchise focuses on the rudimentary conflict between the very best-of-the-best of tough man and a highly skilled, kill-efficient creature from another planet.  Original “Predator” screenwriters and brothers Jim and John Thomas return as executive producers alongside Ben Rosenblatt, Marc Toberoff, and Lawrence Gordon (“Predator”) with John Davis (“Predators”), Marty Ewing (“It”), and Comanche-Blackfeet American Indian Jhane Myers producing for production companies Davis Entertainment and Lawrence Gordon Productions with 20th Century Studios continuing its long history of distribution presentation of the game hunter. 

Much of the cast, as well as the crew, consists of people of indigenous people heritage, honoring First Nations with representation and authenticity.  At the very heart of the story, as the face of the principal hero, and as a young woman who unfortunately in this industry is the atypical-appearing action star is Amber Midthunder (“14 Cameras”) as Naru, a skilled hunter-tracker disparaged and scoffed at by most of her tribe for not following traditional suit.  Naru is an outsider thinking outside the box while still maintaining the traditions of her people, such as wanting to participate in the Kuhtaamia, a hunting rite of passage that leads to being a warrior.  Midthunder executes the character free from vanity but maintaining strength, courage, and quick thinking despite some inexperience which is a greatly adorned flaw to have in a grounded main character battling against the odds.  Naru is at odds with her younger brother Taabe, an adored and venerated hunter who wants to believe in his sister but edges more toward conformity or conventional ways.  Dakota Beavers tackles Taabe’s athleticism, showing no hesitation in battling the predator on horseback, while also softening the eyes and feeling compassion for his onscreen sibling handled a raw deal.  While Dane DiLiegro (“Monsters of California”) is no Kevin Peter Hall, the original actor donning the Predator suit in the first two films, the 6’8” former oversees professional basketball player fit into the large shoes of a new kind of a predator, one we haven’t seen on screen before, and giving the powerful alien creature a fresh take without breaking off too much of the character’s franchise stride and still being a monolithic monster of formidability.  “Prey” rounds out the cast with Stormee Kipp, Bennett Taylor, Michelle Thrush (“Parallel Minds”), Nelson Leis (“The Curse of Willow Song”), Mike Paterson (“Crawler”), Tymon Carter, Skye Pelletier, Harlan Blayne Kytwayhat, and Samuel Marty (“Don’t Say Its Name”).

From the very title, “Prey” is the analogous prequel and follow-up “Predator” story that strays away from the rough-and-tough, highly trained killers in harsh combat terrains and settings with overkill tech and firepower that blasts everything to smithereens path.  Instead, Dan Trachtenberg travels back in time, back when more primal and essential courses of survival were relied upon by grit and skill.  Even the predator is not as technologically advanced as his descending successors. Trachtenberg mentions in one interview that this particular predator, with a vastly different shaped head and having more low-tech gear, and I use that in the loosest of terms considering the predator’s technological advancements compared to 18th century man, may be from another hemisphere of his world, but I’d like to think this earlier version is more like earlier man prior to evolution, or else how can we explain the flintlock pistol connection with “Predator 2.”  This canonical link plus Taabe’s bordering cheesy throwback line, if it bleeds, we can kill it, give tribute to the acclaimed two films that paved the path to setup “Prey’s” success to stand on its own two monstrous feet being set not in a hot jungle, an urban heatwave, or in the midst of an alien race’s civil war or long historical combat with another race, but in the serene, idyllically raw landscape of Northwest America and that is faced with a lead hero we’ve never seen before in a Predator film.  Character driven elements provide a substantial arc in Naru’s story, encrusted by challenges, failures, and successes that make the Comanche woman worthy of the hunt. 

From its Hulu premier on July 22nd, 2022 to its at home, physical media release a year and change later on October 3rd, 2023, “Prey” has come home on Blu-ray home video from 20th Century Studios home entertainment.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 presents the film in a widescreen 2.39:1 that captures the vista survey with breathtaking sharpness in detail in the 4K scanned print, adding that ever-so-delicate crispness to each foliage-laden and mountainous range landscape.  Even the visual effects, such as a plain rabbit running from a wolf, the bear versus predator, or the deadly rattlesnake, had Its near immaculate rendering show every texturized detail albeit very minor clunky movements.  Color and lighting result in natural tones and sources except for the ashen dead timber sequence that reduces the saturation to make the added fog denser and provide an area of casualty when the predator comes to call.  “Prey” has an outstanding five language audio tracks to choose from:  An English DTS-HD 7.1 master audio, an English Dolby digital 2.0 descriptive audio, a Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, a French Dolby Digital 5.1, and, for the first time ever, a Comanche Dolby Digital 5.1.  From one of the bonus feature’s deleted scenes, Trachtenberg’s voiceover commentary suggests, at one point in time, the dialogue was going to be fully Comanche, and some scenes, such as the deleted one on the Blu-ray, was filmed in the native tongue.  However, English was decided upon for the final product, but the full-bodied English DTS-HD 7.1 track is masterclass with great attention to extracting those detail elements, such as the serrating gore moments, the whizzing and blips of the predator’s gadgets, and the action associated between minor and major scuffles that build to “Prey’s” one-on-one climax.  Depth elements has space between background and foregrounds, channeling nicely through side and back setups, and the range is extensive in those aforesaid moments of detailed instances plus a few LFE moments of explosions and a thunderous ship landing and takeoff.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and prominent between the audio’s varied language blend of mostly English sprinkled with Comanche and French.  What’s missing from “Prey” that’s a staple through all of the “Predator” films is a rendition of Alan Silvestri’s iconic score, but that omission will likely feel more heartfully loss with diehard fans of the franchise.  However, composer Sarah Schachner’s (“Remains”) orchestra composition is of epic storytelling that pulls similar grand dramatics from another similar time period, Native American film, “Last of the Mohicans.”  English SHD, Spanish, and French subtitles are available to the feature only.  Bonus extras include an audio commentary with director Dan Trachtenberg, actress Amber Midthunder, cinematographer Jeff Cutter, and film editor Angela M. Catanzaro, a Making of Prey behind-the-scenes with cast and crew clip interviews and action footage, Prey FYC Panel with cast and crew discussion, and deleted scenes and alternate openings with a Trachtenberg commentary that explains why the scene was shot and left cut on the editing room floor as well as a visual storyboard of Naru and the predator in a chase in the treetops.  20th Centry Studio’s Blu-ray comes in a conventional snapper amaray with a rigid O-slipcover of Naru’s warpainted eyes overtop one of the original first key arts released of the film – predator in the background of the decaying timber forest ready to strike with its large wristblades as a Comanche warrior, presumably Naru, in a defensive crouch with tomahawk in hand.  The amaray’s front cover sports the same image.  Inside there is a NECA advert for a 7” figure of the feral predator with a matte red disc print with the title and the three target dots reflected in mirror.  “Prey” is rated R for strong blood violence, has a runtime of 100 minutes, and is surprisingly region free, a solid additional to anyone’s Predator film collection. Dan Trachtenberg is on to something here, guiding the extolled Predator toward a new, yet familiar path in what has become an exciting new beginning or pivot for the trophy hunting alien race just begging for the big screen one more time.

The Hunt is On.  “Prey” Available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Studios!

Entrenched EVIL Sprouts Roots of Hate! “Bunker” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Go into the “Bunker” and Never Come Out!  Now on DVD!

Trench warfare has already been damning for allied forces held in stalemate against the German’s only yards away in their trench.  When the commanding Lt. Turner discovers the German trench has been abandoned, he moves his ragtag team of British and American forces across a barbed wire and cadaver-laden no man’s land in to salvage victory for obtaining a German bunker without a firefight or loss of life.  What they discover is an externally barricaded bunker and inside the vacated stronghold is a barely-breathing German soldier nailed to a cross.  Incoming artillery causes a bunker cave-in, leaving two of the soldiers dead and the others trapped inside.  Slowly, something insidious and omnipresent inside the bunker builds measured madness inside them, turning one-by-one the seasoned and fresh off the boat soldiers to suspect each other’s loyalty, sanity, and hope for escape,  something that has been dwindling every minute with each stale breathe. 

War and horror are unequivocally synonymous.  The atrocities and death seen on the combat field can break a person’s psyche in a matter of an artillery shell explosion.  Trauma can quickly take over as the totalitarian regime and that carnage-induced shock can never be unseen ever.  The wide-speed obliteration of people and towns done in the second Great War, between the Nazi hate-war crimes and the collateral damage caused by Blitzes and tank fire, has been the foundational base for a number of appended horror films.  “Men Behind the Sun,” “Outpost,” “Shockwaves,” and even “Ilsa, “She Wolf of the SS” are just a select few of the many subset horror films to be inspired by World War II.  While the more contemporary “Overlord” joined the bandwagon of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, overlooked is the first Great War as the backdrop for horror narratives.  When I jog my categorial knowledge and memory of WWI horror movies, only one comes to mind, the 2002 M.J. Bassett mud and rain-soaked supernatural thriller “Death Watch” with Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell.  Now, I know two with 2022’s “Bunker,” the debut feature length script written by Michael Huntsman and directed by Adrian Langley (“Butchers”).  The U.S. production is spearheaded by Crossroad Productions with Buffalo FilmWorks (“A Quiet Place: Part II”) footing the costs by executive producers Lisa Gutbertlet, Andy Donovan, Jennifer O’Neill, Kevin Callahan, George Pittas and Brett Forbes (“The Collector”) with Matt Corrado (“Half Sisters”), Patrick Rizzotti (“The Collector”), Greg Wichlacz, and Michael Huntsman’s father and Blue Fox Entertainment founder, James Huntsman (“The Night Eats the World”) producing.

“Bunker” follows a group of allied soldiers unwittingly stumbling upon a supernatural dugout left behind by the enemy.  The U.S. production is fitted with nearly an all-American, all-male cast with the majority playing British soldiers and while accents do justice stressing certain syllables and comes off pronouncedly brisk, the ears can detect subtleties that can make you question the actor’s national validity, such as with stage actor Patrick Moltane’s Lt. Turner.  A very proper English suited from his officer rank, but the act does come off over-the-top and colorful in Lt. Turner’s pithy and lively vocabulary.  “Bunker’s” principal focus is on Pvt. Segura, a Latino-American medic who has answered the call of duty and has served long in the conflict, trying to prove his worth as outsider in his own country.  “Eraser:  Reborn’s” Eddie Ramos helms the character’s drive as an upstanding member of his community and as a military soldier by doing his part, playing the overall even-keeled medic whose goal is to keep soldiers healthy and breathing in a time of war.  “Bunker’s” subtle racism isn’t teeming and poignantly powerful, but the small band are mostly and carefully passive aggressive against Segura, except for one other private fresh off the boat, Pvt. Baker (Julian Feder, “Escape the Field”).  Segura then becomes what he’s yearned for, to be a protector, something he can’t do with minds already set in their ways with the rest of the characters who are either indifferent to his presence or forthright in his face as the root of their problematic situation.  Quinn Moran, Adriano Gatto, Mike Mihm (“Unsane”), Sean Cullen (“Killer Rats”), Roger Clark, and Luke Baines as the crucified Kraut make up the remaining all-male cast.

The all-male cast is crucial to the “Bunker’s” undercurrent theme which isn’t a torrent of one-after-another hits on the surface level.  Under the context that soldiers universally believe in comradery, especially during wartime stuck in a trench when relying on the next man to watch your back, Pvt. Segura secretly yearns to belong, be one of the team, and blend into the uniforms of brown and tan, suited mostly for the typical late 1920s white male.  Through the early acts of passive aggressiveness, the commanding officer ordering him to behave when left unattended, scolded for another private’s inability to move quietly across no man’s land, and being a person of mistrust when trapped in the German dugout, Segura ultimately is perceived as the enemy when the ungodly presence causes hallucinations, fear, and self-inflicting injury.  The bunker represents a fermentation of hate and death, deep-rooted distrust through the depictures of white radicles connecting everything around them be shield by the dirt walls that forces ugliness to come to a head by way of messing with the mind.  Being semi-familiar with Adrian Langley’s previous horror “Butchers,” I expected brutality, bloodshed, and groundwork that slowly flourishes as the story progresses and Langley delivers on demand with a chillingly connotative race-horror in an oppressive and melancholy World War I background.  While some period and wartime elements and actualities may frazzle historical war buffs, “Bunker” has otherwise resounding production quality despite its low-fare budget, feeling very much like the horrors of trench warfare and then some.

Philadelphia based, independent film home video distributor Breaking Glass Pictures releases Adrian Langley’s “Bunker” onto DVD.  The MPEG-2 encoded DVD5 is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  Honestly, the compression works well here with the color reduction, a decrease in the hue saturation, leaving behind more neutral tan, browns, and greens, to flourish as an old timey picture that harmonizes with the classic resembling opening credits where the cast and crew are listed as whole.  Details are generally potent, reflecting delineating contours, coarse textures, and all the minor sweat, dirt, and blood strewn about the dugout from the Arri Alexa camera that captures confined spaces with vast depth.  The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound is the sole audio option and is the really only option needed for a confined, atmospheric film like this that utilizes the back and side channels with crumbling dirt walls and muffled bombardments.  There’s a nice balance between the prominent dialogue and the ambient action with Andrew Morgan Smith’s punchy score that’s like a mix between Joseph LoDuca’s “Army of Darkness” and Alan Silvestri’s “The Predator,” intense, grand, and heart pounding like a classic monster movie soundtrack. There are no subtitles available on this release.  Bonus features only include “Bunker’s” trailer and other Blue Fox Entertainment previews, another World War thriller “Wolves at War,” and Langley’s “Butchers.”  Physical attributes include a tempered chocolate-appearing DVD case with a long ally solder entering a large and foreboding bunker with war and graveyard elements above ground.  Inside, there disc art is pressed with the same image but cropped to just show the soldier entering the bunker.  There is no insert included.  The region 1 locked playback DVD comes not rate and has a runtime of 108 minutes.  “Bunker” is slowly-seeping dread of psychotronic apathy and abiding odium that manifests creaturely out of war’s massive and overwhelming stress and death.

Go into the “Bunker” and Never Come Out!  Now on DVD!

Beware the EVIL Bite of Silver Teeth! “The Cursed” reviewed! (LD Entertainment / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



Lord Seamus Laurent and the neighboring landowners show grave concern for the recent Gypsy encroachment upon their shared property.  In proactivity protecting the laboring residents and the pastoral farmland of the feudal system, Laurent and fellow landowners order the removal of the Gypsies by hiring ruthless mercenaries who slaughter every last Gypsy in cold blood and bury them in the land.  When every resident on the estate, from villagers to the lord’s family, share a common nightmare of silver teeth buried with the Gypsy corpses, an evil curse unleashes upon the farmland with a killer beast roaming, hunting every resident.  Gypsy chasing pathologist John McBride enlists himself helping Laurent and the villagers to not only relieve them of the cursed creature, but also face his own tragic past linked to the very same evil he pursues.  

Lycanthropy an allegory for the cholera outbreak in late 19th century Europe?  That’s the seemingly centric subject to Sean Ellis’s written-and-directed, folkloric supernaturally spun creature feature “The Cursed.”  Though narratively set and actually shot in France, “The Cursed,” or else better known internationally under the original title “Eight for Silver,” is comprised nearly of all English actors with very few from France and an American in the principal lead to wage war against a swift enemy that kills anyone without prejudice and without mercy.  No, I’m not talking about the wolfish creature that rips settlers and lords to shredded sacks of meat.  I’m speaking of the Cholera epidemics of the 19th century and while Ellis’s metaphoric intentions lean more toward the pains of broad-based additions, our modern pandemic plight felt more widespread linking both the past and present with an event that plagued countries like a curse with unsystematic cruelty and didn’t differentiate between the poor unfortunate and the opulent.  The Los Angeles based production company LD Entertainment finances and produces the feature under Mickey Liddell (“The Grey,” “Jacob’s Ladder” ’19) along with executive producers Alison Semenza (“Lost Boys:  The Tribe”) and Jacob and Joseph Yakob.

“The Predator’s” Boyd Holbrook walks the pathological shoes of John McBride, a man haunted by his past in his continuous pursuit of nomadic Gypsies, and it just so happens that McBride falls right into the thicket of, unknown at the time, Gypsy-made bedlam as missing children and ravaged dead bodies pop up.  Holbrook tries to corral in the pathologist’s inexplicable purpose as the character is often too withdrawn from his intent on what he’d actually do if he came across any Gypsies, which McBride never does.   Instead, McBride feels like a hero who’s dumped in the perfect place at the perfect time to be the hunter of what his pathological experience and instincts claim to be the death-dealings of a wolf while the village becomes the bewildered and unassuming hunted, led by the 2019 “Hellboy” actor Alistair Petrie as the noble estate lord Seamus Laurent stewing stoically in his own despair and desperate head space in search of his missing son (Max Mackintosh). The only character acting rationale in a conventionally proper manner in her reactions to the whole situation is Seamus’s wife Isabelle (Kelly Reilly, “Eden Lake”), with a blistering heartful longing for her son, and their daughter Charlotte (Amelia Crouch, “The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death”), with a shock-induced and childlike response to her brother’s disappearance. Yet, Isabelle and Charlotte alter course. Isabelle weaves in and out of anguish to the point where her suffering is only implemented to benefit the story and Charlotte, well, Charlotte plainly disappears as a key supporting character who knows truly happened to her brother in the field and with a villager boy, Timmy (Tommy Rodge), who discovers the silver teeth etched with curse inducing rune symbols. The interactions between McBride, Seamus, and Isabelle never quite feel nature and complete, as if there’s an unspoken trust issue between McBride and Seamus or a mutual understanding or compassion between McBride and Isabelle that never leaves the hilt of the sword to see spark action. Nigel Betts, Roxane Doran, Richard Cunningham, Pascale Becouze, Simon Kunz, and Amazon’s “Hanna” star Áine Rose Daly, as farm hand girl turned white wolf, round out “The Cursed” cast.

Sean Elliss tweaks the werewolf mythos to try and shake up the genre, turning it up on its head to dust off a tired narrative of man bitten by wolf, man turns into wolf, wolf terrorizes villagers, and villagers kill wolf with silver bullet. Instead of silver weaponized for good, “The Cursed” weaponizes it as Gypsy revenge, a calling card that leaves bite marks with lasting impression until every single inhabitant, guilty or innocent in the crime against the Romanian wayfarers, is laid to waste by its transformative power. Though unexplained in why the Gypsies forge silver fangs etched with a curse other than a storm is coming, as if perhaps they’re clairvoyancy provided them with a disturbance in the air instinct rather than exactly what to expect, the teeth are a nice cinematic touch of menacing terror literally inscribed on each tooth. “The Cursed” atmospherics of folkloric superstitions blended into a broodingly dense landscape of low-lying fog and uncomfortably vast empty fields surrounded by a thickset of trees comes close to the likes of a Hammer horror setting, especially with the period of time in which “The Cursed” plays out in that has been Hammer’s niche era. The setting might be the only controlled aspect of Ellis’s take on the werewolf genre as the werewolf, if that is what we can even call the abomination of mutation, is written from out of our traditionally known contexts and into a new breed of metamorphism. Hairless, white, and somatically encasing, Ellis’s monsters radically redefine our expectations with a beast that literally consumes our very being and turns us into an unrecognizable fiend amongst the flock. Fast, agile, and ruthless, this newfangled fang-bearer up until the end never received any insularity resentment from me, but the ending abruptly diminishes the near mindless brute strength of a beast with a hint of intelligence in its ability to sound like person to draw the hapless into a trap and that’s where a line needs to be drawn, especially when the technique is used as an out of the blue device toward an endgame.

Whether be a narrative about an all-consuming addiction or about a precipitating plague of chaos in the time of cholera, the uniquity of “The Cursed,” semi-diverging from one of the most revered classic monsters in our history, may be an immediate turn off for many traditionalists, but the film does right by the savagery gore, the minatory threat that lingers in every scene, and that no one is immune from danger. LD Entertainment is set to release “The Cursed” this Friday, February 18th, in theaters. Since this was a digital screener, the audio and video will not be covered. No bonus mater or extra scenes during or after the credits were provided. Sean Ellis provides that creepy fog-laden and dense folky aesthetic of barnyard chic while still conditioning an upscale appearance of a beautifully crafted production from a native French crew of productions designers in Thierry Zemmour and Pascal de Guellec as well as costume designer Madeline Fountaine. “The Cursed” starts strong with visceral intent to be novel by offering callous over civility, a dysmorphic werewolf, and a new set of blingy chompers fit for Lil’ Wayne, but gaps riddle unignorable holes into the story and its characters that ultimately becomes the silver bullet obliterating the beastly nature this new breed of wolf desperately needed to survive unscathed.

After Death is When Things Get Really EVIL! “One Dark Night” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Good girl Julie wants to join a The Sisters, a small high school club ran by three girls, one of who is the ex of Julie’s boyfriend.  Out to prove to herself and to The Sisters she’s willing to go the distance being fun and reckless, Julie subjects herself to The Sisters’ initiations, even the more cruel ones set by her boyfriend’s spiteful ex.  When the last initiation involves staying locked in overnight at a mausoleum, The Sisters will go beyond the limits in trying to scare her out of pledging, but the death of a bio-energy telekinetic practitioner with a cryptic occult past is freshly stowed away in one of the mausoleum’s coffin crypts and in death, he is more powerful and dangerous than when alive.  Trapped, Julie and The Sisters are terrorized by his power as he seeks to transfer his malevolent energy into one their bodily vessels. 

A PG rating back in the pre-1990 was also an abstract concept.  “Clash of the Titans.” “It’s Alive.”  “Jaws. “ “Prophecy” (the one with the spirit bear, not the Christopher Walken film).  These are a handful of titles that were MPAA rated PG approved, but contained nudity, bloody kills, and not to forget to mention some terrifying visuals that’d make anyone piss their pants.  “One Dark Knight” also fits into that category as the 1982 teen horror from “Friday the 13th Part VI:  Jason Lives!” director Tom McLoughlin set his sights toward a R-rating with the mindset that his detailed scenes of decay and rotting corpses and a face blistering the flesh to the skull would surely be slapped with the 17 years or older rating.  Low and behold, the ratings board thought otherwise, surprising McLoughlin and his co-writer Michael Hawes (“Family Reunion”) with a parental guidance rating that my 7 and 4 year old could sit in on without me fearing theater security or, even worse, the mind control hypnosis and repetitive nurturing elements of today’s movies and shows that don’t make a lick of common sense or brandish any artistic heart. McLoughlin’s ‘One Dark Night” has plenty of heart and plenty of floating dead bodies in this Comworld International Pictures production with “Out of the Dark” director Michael Schroeder producing and Thomas P. Johnson as executive producer.

Before hitting the sequel and remake circuit with “Psycho II” and “Body Snatchers,” Meg Tilly broke onto the scene as “One Dark Night’s” leading lady as the amiable Julie whose looking to shake her good girl image. The little sister of “Seed of Chucky” and “Bound” star Jennifer Tilly takes the role by the reins by undulating her fear and determination to do what The Sisters initiate her into completing. The Sisters is comprised of renowned voice actress and “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” costar Elizabeth Daily, Leslie Speights, and lead by Robin Evans as Carol, the spiteful and venomous ex-girlfriend of Julie’s now jock boyfriend (and Christopher Reeves lookalike in my opinion) in David Mason Daniels. You know what they say about love triangles they? They always lead to psychopathic, telekinetic psychics reeking havoc in a mortuary. Luckily for Tilly, Speight, Daily, Evans, and Daniels, psychopathic, telekinetic psychics are not real and neither is the person who plays the Karl Rhamarevich aka Raymar character! You see, the opening is the post-death scene of Raymar whose lying dead under a coroner’s white sheet along with six beautiful women stuffed into a corner closet in his oddly tatterdemalion apartment. The next time we see Raymar is in his casket, wide open, wide eyed with blue lightning summoning to animate the dead from the mortuary crypts; yet, Raymar is played by a dummy in the film created by Tom and Ellis Burman (“Star Trek” franchise in various capacity and “Scrooged”) and Bob Williams (“The Terminator”) who mold Raymar after the contours of Christopher Walken – second time Walken has popped up in this review! The more interesting casted parts, whose characters don’t do diddly squat in the film, is Adam West (“Batman”) as Raymar’s daughter (Melissa Newman) level-headed husband and The Predator himself, the late Kevin Peter Hall, in a minor appearance before becoming the man behind that one ugly son of a bitch mandible mask. You also actually get to see how tall Hall was in his prime.

“One Dark Night” flirts with being this strange horror that blends teen suspense and shenanigans with gothic horror with pseudo-science deviltry sushi wrapped into a Euro-horror roll. I kind of love it. I’m one of those horror fans who avoid trailers like the plague and try not to read synopses on the back cover, going into every viewing with complete ignorance, total unbias, and good attitude. I didn’t even know Meg Tilly was in “One Dark Night” for Christ sake! As the 90 minute runtime ticks down, I’m curious to where McLoughlin starts to take this film that doesn’t seem to quite get into the horror portion of Raymar’s show-stopping comeback. McLoughlin and Hawes hype up the love triangle with Carol’s bitter acrimony and Julie’s adolescent need to not be a one-note complexion all the while Steve desperately needs Carol to cease and desist any and all torturous hazing attempts, but there’s still this itty-bitty connection still tethered between the two that also causes Steve to two-time his new, more benevolent, girlfriend. In the end, I can confidently say that Steve is a good dude, a guy who double downs on a girl like Julie who can’t seem to get it through her thick skull that she doesn’t need to prove anything to three dimwits with sheeny club bomber jackets. I can tell you who isn’t a stand up guy – Raymar. Kudos to McLoughlin and his crew for creating one evil son of a bitch villain without there ever being a palpable proverbial man behind the mask to bounce off a projection of fear and contention. The evil Raymar practice was so intensely evil it was beyond our dimensional comprehension and broke the mold of death with the abilities to animating the dead among other things. “One Dark Night’s” slow start leads to a not to be forgotten survival terror against an army of the harnessed dead.

Raymar isn’t the only thing brought back from the dead, but also “One Dark Night” as MVD Visual, under the MVD Rewind Collection, strike a deal with Code Red to utilize their OOP transfer and bonus materials for a new re-release Blu-ray hitting retail shelves this Tuesday, August 24th! The 1080p high definition transfer is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio speckled nicely with natural, pleasant looking reel grain. Like the Code Red special edition release, plenty of details shine through the delicate rendering that can be image wispy at times. Loads of superficial damage – frame scratches, edge flare ups, rough editing cuts, smudges – can’t go unnoticed, but these blemishes don’t hinder much as the scenes are more transitional during the setup to the big mortuary finale. What differs from Code Red’s DTS-HD 2.0 mix is thee English language LPCM 2.0 mono mix that still lightly treads with subdued effect, much like the Code Red release. Dialogue can sound muffled with popping landing just under the surface and bubbling up during dialogue scenes. Still, the audio track stands it’s ground by clearly rendering every dialogue, effect, and soundtrack without question. English subtitles are also available. You want bonus features? You got’em! Interviews with director Tom McLoughlin, actress Elizabeth Daily, actress Nancy Mott, cinematographer Hal Trussell, production designer Craig Stearns, producer Michael Schroeder, and special effects crew member Paul Clemens are all individualized for maximum recollection tidbits and factoids. There’s also audio commentaries by McLoughlin and Schroeder as well as McLoughlin and co-writer Michael Hawes. Plus, we also graced with McLoughlin’s director’s cut, a standard definition, unfinished, work print version in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio that shows the director’s true take on the narrative before producers ultimately decided to go another route…behind his back nonetheless. Behind-the-scenes footage, Paul Clemens photo gallery, and original theatrical trailer round out the disc bonus content while the physical release comes with a retro-take card board slipcover, reversible cover art, and a collectible mini poster inside the case liner. If you’re a fan of Euro-horror, “One Dark Night” embodies the very soul of the Lucio Fulci and Michele Saovi supernatural archetype sewn seamlessly into an inescapable and hopeless dance with the gnarly energies of the stoic dead.

Pre-order “One Dark Night” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!