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Not a Plague of Rats Could Stop EVIL’s Obsession. “Nosferatu” reviewed! (Universal Films / Extended Cut Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Experience “Nosferatu” in 4K UHD or Blu-ray. Purchase Here!

Wisborg, Germany, 1838 – Thomas Hutter is a promising real estate apprentice appointed travel six weeks to the Carpathian Alps to settle on Wisborg real estate for the reclusive and mysterious Count Orlok.  Thomas Hutter is also a newlywed, married to the lovely Ellen Hutter whom together Thomas plans to solidify their proper social status with the wealth of this trip away from his wife despite her pleas for him to stay.  Upon meeting Count Orlok in his dark castle, Thomas is overcome by his host’s undying evil presence that confines him to the grounds while Orlok psychically holds spellbound Ellen’s mind to a fretful state.  When Thomas escapes, he makes it back home at the same time Orlok arrives by ship that brings a plague of rats to the city of Wiseborg as well as a nasty blood-loss disease affecting population.  As Thomas warns of Orlok’s intentions, discredited Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz knowledge of the occult sees through the rat-plague and into the dark heart that has cast its shadow over the city and into Ellen Hutter’s soul.   

The acclaimed folkloric horror director of “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” sinks his teeth into one of the most renowned classical villains of our time, a vampire known to most as Dracula and revised, at times, up to the Robert Eggers take on the timeless “Nosferatu” tale.  Eggers’s 2024 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel and the 1922 F.W. Murnau silent picture, “Nosferatu:  A Symphony of Horror,” written by Henrik Galeen, is also penned by the director, revamped to tell both classic narratives in a way that is his own and that’s reflective of his slow burn gothic dread style.  “Nosferatu” is a Focus Features presentation from the productions of Birch Hill Road Entertainment and Studio 8 as well as produced by Eggers alongside the industry esteemed Chris Columbus (“Home Alone,” “Harry Potter”) and daughter Eleanor Columbus under their Maiden Voyage Pictures co-founded company.

Stepping into the tall, slender, blood slurping role of the titular character, under a full-body prosthetic suit of what is essentially a rotting corpse with a wicked mustache, is Bill Skarsgård, the actor who is quickly rising to the top of heavy makeup and effects characters while making the star-studded Skarsgård name synonymous with horror in his breakout film playing the maniacal demon-clown Pennywise in the film remake adaptation of Stephen King’s “It.”  Skarsgård’s baby face is completely enveloped in the ancient Transylvania nobleman Count Orlok with a high-bridge nose, protruding and high cheekbones, a vertically elongated face, and a sparse hair straggling through presumably a latex mock of decaying skin.  Skarsgård also modulates his vocal chords to reach deep, resonating levels that gives Count Orlok an additional tier of terror.  Undoubtedly, Count Orlok is an omnipotent, powerfully entrenched presence brought to existence by Skarsgård and accentuated and elevated even further by Lily-Rose Depp in Orlok’s obsessive muse of Ellen Hutter.  Through choreographed body manipulation and control, the daughter of Johnny Depp has since put the gum-chewing, wise-cracking, convenient story clerk “Yoga Hosers” role behind to redefine herself as an austere period and physical role actress willing to go the extra mile for the story.  Nicholas Hoult (“Warm Bodies,” “Mad Max:  Fury Road”) updates his Dracula film resume with another after having just come off the heels of playing the titular character in “Renfield” to Nicholas Cage’s grotesquely campy version of the Prince of Darkness, but there’s nothing intentionally campy about this Stoker story nor his role as Thomas Hutter with first-hand experience of Count Orlok’s monstrous dysphoric plague in what would be, too, another physical, yet less so, role for Hoult as a concerned husband fighting for his wife.  Speaking of roles, or films, that come around again for certain actors, Willem Dafoe passes the torch of Count Orlok from his Max Schreck performance in “Shadow of a Vampire” and takes on the elder Professor von Franz, a once esteemed learned man of science and knowledge now a discredited scientific explorer of the occult brought in to see to Ellen Hutter’s feverish nightmares and hallucinations.  Dafoe’s just as spasmodic and expressive as ever to be a part of those knowledgeable opposition of the vampyr realm, giving prominence to the character Dafoe has bordering as a mad genius of sorts with eccentric behavior that never allows to be compassionate or otherwise emotionally driven, like a true scientist.  Principal cast rounds out with Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kickass”), Ralph Ineson (“The Witch”), Emma Corrin (“Deadpool & Wolverine”), and Simon McBurney (“The Conjuring 2”).

As much as Eggers wanted to make “Nosferatu” a scary film while staying to the themes of obsession and Stoker and Munrau’s core elements, the film only manages to scare up a couple of true moments of hold-your-breath terror with panning shots and swelling scores that composition a seat jumping jolt.  Like most of Egger’s previous work, a continuous course of dread, which the filmmaker produces well in droves, meanderingly streams through the narrative that slowly builds with each closing in step Count Orlok takes toward obtaining Ellen Hutter’s willing submission to him.  Between the 1922 and 2024, both films play the love-triangle card of a married couple’s happiness being compromised by a tall and dark outsider entrancing, enthralling the wife, diverting her loyalty by any means possible.  In this case, those means are to blackmail her by holding the city hostage to plague of rats and draining her of the loved ones surrounding her.  However, the genesis of Orlok’s obsession is built upon brittle sticks with a prologue that hamstrings a powerful, psychic ability unwittingly used by Ellen Hutter to awaken the ancient evil.  The whole origin of events feels threadlike and happenstance, perhaps to instill more mysterioso of the antediluvian universe on a smaller scale obsession story.   Aesthetically, “Nosferatu” follows the Robert Eggers’ cinematography trend of blacks, grays, and a reduction to dull of primary colors for a gloomy period piece of cold weathered melancholy and bleakness under the continuous collaboration camerawork eye of Jarin Blaschke, marking their fourth feature together that implements inventive, complicated shots to sell practicality as fantasy in an early 19th century European context.  Blaschke’s aesthetic style would not have worked without the makeup and prosthetics for Count Orlok as a decrepit evil nobleman juxtaposed against the period costuming and elevated higher by the massive set designs of creating the Wisborg city as well as all of the other sets built to scale on acres of movie lot land. 

Robert Eggers and “Nosferatu” is the match made in dark heaven to give that classical rebirth the kick in the Dracula cape it desperately needed for Universal.  The at-home, Blu-ray release brings the darkness into living room television sets and other media players with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50.  Eggers is also so fine and particular on detail, such as with all the production value listed above and the retro design company opening credits, “Nosferatu” is also presented in a European widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio used in antiquated times of the 60s to early 90s in Europe, to which this story is fictionally set.  The Universal Films release houses both the theatrical version and extended cut at their respective runtimes of 132 minutes and 136 minutes, which is pretty incredible being both versions compressed onto one disc and, in the same breadth, had me concerned for artefacts in what’s surely a beautifully dark and tenebrous veneered Egger feature.  However, low and behold, no signs of posterization or banding to speak of with a saturated void to keep the shadows menacing rather than murky or milky.  The overall grading is quite dark with a deep bluish hue that enriches the time piece as well as the gothic tones.  The unnatural density of color saturation leaves natural skin tones to sake of reality, but the details do emerge here and there when shadow play, mostly around the presence of Count Orlok, is abridged for quotidian life without the encroaching dread of supernatural omnipotence.  Both formats are encoded with lossy audio mixes, a quite of a bit of them actually, with an English Dolby Atmos, Spanish Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, a French Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, and, lastly, an English Dolby Virtual Speaker (DVS) 2.0.  The Dolby Atmos is tuned for a 7.1 configuration, emitting immersive and resonating sound to which “Nosferatu” laps up in luxury.  The most notable aspect of the entire design goes, without question, to Skarsgård voice modulation for Count Orlock, a deep, guttural, European-accented assertion of all-encompassing faculty highlighted in every scene when, even more so when Orlock is not physically in frame.  I like to think Robert Eggers is the Wes Anderson of horror when it comes to dialogue and entourage of ensemble casts and with dialogue range and depth that’s dynamic to flow with the ever-presence of physical change or to swell or diminish a moment.  Dialogue is also stable, clear, and without dodgy interference, the spatial environment diffuses and disperses nicely through side, back, and even upper channels in Atmos and, the illusion provided, in DVS, and LFE finds a proper level without overwhelming cataclysmic plagues, fever dreams, or Orlok’s dreadful lust.  Opted subtitles are available in English SDH, Spanish, and French.  Bonus content includes a feature length parallel commentary with writer-director Robert Eggers, a lengthy behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews from cast and crew, and deleted scenes that can be seen in the extended cut.  The Blu-ray, plus digital code, release comes with white-black and grayscale in between cardboard O-slip with the same Lily-Depp Rose’s face being caressed by Orlok’s sharp-nailed and decrepit hand image also as the cover art on the Amaray case.  Inside, you’ll find the digital code stage right while the disc is pressed like most of all of Universal’s home video Blu’s with a near translucent quality to them.  Theatrical cut is rated R for bloody/violent content, graphic nudity and some sexual content and the extended cut comes not rated.  Though not listed anywhere on the cover or disc, the Blu-ray is encoded with region A playback only.

Last Rites: Robert Eggers shoots his shot working his dream story under a major Hollywood studio providing him with a major Hollywood sized budget. “Nosferatu” is every bit of Eggers, carved out and etched to the gothic and folkloric perfection that has quickly skyrocketed his brief career and the eclectic cast stuns in their own right with otherworldly and creepy performances that revives ole’ Count Orlok back to from the celluloid dead.

Experience “Nosferatu” in 4K UHD or Blu-ray. Purchase Here!

A Family of EVIL Walks, Talks, and Comes in a Putrid Shade of Blue! “Super Z” reviewed! (Synergetic / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Super Z” Has Bites and Baffoonery!  Amazon.com Has it on DVD!

A genetically produced, made-to-order zombie foursome are grown in a private laboratory and continue to be experimented on by a greedy CEO and his team of mad scientists from conception to create a group of governable, intelligent, and unstoppable do-bidders.  The latest batch of untested cultivating serum provides the four with the ability to think and talk, the only severe drawback side-effect is the  foulmouthed and uncivilized behavior makes them spitefully aggressive.  Able to speak for the first time, the zombies are actually a family of four and are able to use their undead abilities to escape with their undead lives to plot a revenge on all of humankind for all the cruelty brought down upon the zombie gene.  Feasting on a nearby couple to stave their hunger and infecting the couple’s white-boy rapper son to join the family as one of their own, a male heir of sorts amongst two older sister siblings, the now nuclear zombie family forages for human flesh while turning a rundown cabin in the woods into a place they can call home and plan their worldwide retribution, but as mother and father work on their relationship issues, a son finding love to become a man, and two sisters with an uncontrollable bloodlust, the impatient CEO hires mercenaries to hunt them down as retrievable property.

Who better to create an absurd, over-the-top zombie comedy than the people of France, the national birthplace of the absurdism philosophy.  That is what the gonzo-gory “Super Z” reflects, a heightened realization of life and intelligence after many years of being a docile dead becomes the basis for French writer-directors Julien de Volte and Arnaud Tabarly in their first feature length film.  Grossly saturated with explicit pejoratives, zany antics, and is hairbrained on a level I never would have thought could be achieved, “Super Z,” short for Super Zombie, is based off the filmmakers’ 17-minute 2014 short film “The Foodies” and now in 2022, the film unlocks yet again a very seldomly explored narrative that walks the same flip-the-script lines on taking the George Romero-style zombie perspective, such as with 2007’s “Aaah! Zombies!!” or 2013’s “Warm Bodies,” and laces it with an unrestrainable absurdist style.  To be honest, “Super Z” will repel the majority of audiences who can’t embrace its border crossing childishness and cartoon consorting pursuance.   Following the success of the short film, Tabarly and Volte’s Orléans, France based La Ruche Productions is the production company’s first feature film outside the regular shorts and documentaries accomplished by the company and is produced Laura Townsend.

The story engrosses us into the ebb and flows of family dynamics, but not just any kind of family dynamics as it’s made up of genetically modified zombies.  Yet, Arnaud Tarably and Julien de Volte don’t divide the extremities of the living and dead too far apart.  Family dinners are still held together around the table, the purpose of existence within the fragile relationship construct comes into question quite about between father and mother, and even a teenage boy coming into manhood when washed over with an overpowering smitten sensation at first sight of a farm girl are all the things the zombie family experience making a life away from human interaction with the only human interacting being the one where the zombies have the upper hand as well as the severed torsos, the castrated genital organs, or the decapitated heads as a full table spread with dad’s special gravy (aka blood) as the secret sauce.  While their performances won’t win any kind of awards, at all, I do believe “High Lane’s” Johan Libéreau as the father Gertre and “Savage State’s” Julien Courbey as the mother Stephana cater to the bloody nub of gnarly passion between two also covered in filth and body fluid zombies lovingly trying to protect their unique family at a normalized primal cost and formulate a monumental revenge against humans.  One question that rises out of Gertre and Stephana’s relationship is is Stephana supposed to be a man actor playing a woman character assigned gender by genetic disposition or a zombified gay man in transition?  It’s never clear but it also doesn’t really matter as it adds to Stephana idiosyncratic comedy as she removes a female corpses breast to sew to her own chest but also pees blood standing up!  It becomes just a curiosity that arises but the crux of the character is nailed down by Courbey who shows a sensitive and savage side being a cabin-wife to three children and providing for Gertre’s quest to queen her zombie world domination.  Gertre and Stephana’s children are played by returning “The Foodies” actors Fabien Ara as the baby boy Yvon and Florence Bebic-Veruin as sister Georgette with the addition of Audrey Giacomini being adopted into the ferociously multifaceted family cast as the second sister Marcelline.  Ara and Bebic-Veruin reprise their colorfully blue necrotic-skinned and blood-red splattered characters as squabbling siblings as the babied Yvon is coddled to the point of seeking love in a local farmer’s verbally abused but carefree and nearly toothless daughter Augustine, another reprised performance by Marion Mezadorian who was also a farm gal in “The Foodies.”  “Super Z” fills out the cast with lots of zombie fodder but also includes Jean-François arises, (“Time Demon”), Ludovic Schoendoerffer (“Crime Scenes”), Jacques Boudet (“Dracula and Son”), Laurent Bouhnik, and Jo Prestia of “Irreversible” as the mercenary’s very much alive cousin and the zombie family’s bodiless uncle!  Wait, and you’ll see what I mean.

“Super Z” will not sate everyone’s thirst of comedy nor will be gripping horror, but the French absurdist film will quench with gore galore with a setup that’s real light on its feet, swiftly making haste through a narrative that if you blink or didn’t hear a certain part of the dialogue, or read the subtitles if you don’t understand French, than you’re left holding the bag trying to play catchup on what the hell is going on.  Not your fault by any means as “Super Z” goes at a super breakneck speed that aggressively aggregates zombie intelligence, a laboratory escape, a zombie-turned-son, and a quiet, secluded abode to make camp all within the first 15 minutes or so.  From there, we ease into the zombie family country life, getting to understand their troubles, their ambitions, and their family squabbles more-and-more while father and his daughters hunt down bypassing humans with a machete and make a smorgasbord of homecooked organs, blood, and flesh out of them that is fit for an undead king while the wife cooks the food and showers the biologically unrelated brat with pet names and adorable little hairdos to much of his disgust.  Zany can’t describe “Super Z’s” overzealous rubbish yet within that zany overzealous rubbish, a thin stream of guilty pleasures can result in keeping attentions from pressing the off button and burning the disc to a crisp.  “Super Z” is not a too terrible horror-comedy as long as understanding the premised background helps focus on the filmmakers’ key conveyances within an absurdist designed paradigm that just happens to have lots of blood and guts. 

If the zombie subgenre was becoming too stale as week old bread, then “Super Z” keeps the rotting bags of walking meat fresh with a managing ménage of the uncouth undead. Synergetic distribution goes international with domestic releases with “Super Z” on DVD. The Smart-Ass Zombies are presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio with a picture quality that renders clean just like many modern-day digital models. The Synergetic DVD has consistent Mbps decoding reliability on the DVD5, decoding at a rate of 8.9 Mbps with hardly a blip on compression. In regard to the coloring, the zombie family’s forest background pops with lush greenery that becomes invariably evident in other mise-en-scene aspects as a higher contrast delineation defines the boundaries super well, materializing emerging imagery with deep shadows and a vibrantly eclectic color palette resembling near comic book visuals that luckily absorb Cyril Féron’s cut-and-paste visual effects into the crass configuration. The French Stereo 2.0 offers free from nuisance tracks but definitely output in a two-dimensional standard that, since there’s more range than one might expect, softens the punch of this madcap zombie mayhem to a par mix that works well enough. The zombified autotune adds a layer of obstruction over the dialogue track but if reading the burned in English subtitles, then there’s nothing lost in that respect. The entire mix is an overall healthy dose of ambient bustle, sprightly dialogue, and lots of buffoonery snaking in between. The Synergetic DVD doesn’t support bonus material with only the feature and a chapter selection on the main menu but there is an after credits stinger of a cow and a severed head that attempts one last quick chuckle out of the viewer. Supporting all region codes, the DVD has a runtime of 80 minutes and is seemingly unrated, there is no stated rating on the back cover. Speaking of which, Synergetic DVD covers skirt the cost with slapdash compositions an eighth grader learning AutoCAD could have completed for a solid C+. The mustard yellow with black, nearly indistinct, vignettes don’t provide any kind of appetizing stimulation and, oppositely, can snuff out any sort of enthusiasm toward checking this French absurdist piece out, but don’t let the lackadaisical cover art dishearten a peak into what could be a considerably wild and gory experience. Just be warned that “Super Z” isn’t for everyone and everyone isn’t for “Super Z” living on a different, bizarro plane of existence.

“Super Z” Has Bites and Baffoonery!  Amazon.com Has it on DVD!

When the Heart Loses is When EVIL Invades the Head! “The Twin” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

After the tragic car accident that claims the life of their son Nathan, grieving Rachel and Anthony move from New York City to a sublime region of Finland, a place where Anthony’s lineage lies and where he spent time as a child. Nathan’s twin brother, Elliot, is frequently overprotected by his mother after the loss. When Elliot begins to exhibit troubling signs in his behavior that links to his deceased twin brother, Rachel grasps out for explanations, looking for a rational and irrational answer that could contribute to such erraticism in her son. One possibility, paved by a local outsider with her own personal demons, is the Finnish community is beholden to a supreme darkness that seeks to possess the child from the beyond. With nowhere to turn for help, Rachel relies of her motherly instinct to protect her child at all costs and from all malice from all forms. but what the evil that plagues Rachel and Elliot might be closer to her than she realizes.

Identical twins are already at about a 10 on the creep factor scale. Margot Kidder in the dual psychotic role of Brian De Palma’s “Sisters”, the unnerving Jeremy Iron performance of manipulation and cruelty in David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringer,” and even those Grady twin sisters from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” are an eerie extract overlooking the fact that two people can look so exactly alike. The biological phenomena goes against what proclaims us to be human in the first place – our individuality – and to be regularly utilized as a factor of the strange and unusual in a horror film just fills the cup up with a whole bunch of, and I quote Jordan Peele, nope! Finnish writer-director Taneli Mustonen is the next filmmaker to implement the oddity of identical siblings in his latest horror-thriller entitled simply “The Twin.” Co-written with Aleksi Hyvärinen, “The Twin” is the sophomore horror feature behind 2016’s “Lake Bodom” to emerge from the writers who have found cadence writing, producing, and directing comedies. Spun from Mustonen and Hyvärinen’s production company, Don Films, Don as in the title of respect, along with collegial line producer Mika Pajunen. Responsible for funding “The Twin” are returning “Lake Bodom” executive producers Fabian Westerhoff, Joris van Wijk, and Toni Valla with Shudder’s Emily Gotto acquiring distribution rights with financial backing.

Like most films about twins, the 2022 released twists and turns of a back-and-forth intrapersonal thriller uses one person to Eddie Murphy the roles. That person in “The Twin” is the pintsized Tristan Ruggeri who made his television debut as young Geralt in the hit Netflix book-adapted dark fantasy series “The Witcher.” Unlike most films about twins, Ruggeri really only has to play one but teeter the personality of the other in a symbolic showing of painful sorrow manifested to sorely miss what’s essentially your exact self. Imagine you’re a twin of a deceased sibling and you look at yourself and see your brother or sister. Rugger’s able to capture that emotional payload at such a young age despite being rigid as many child actors typically unfold early in career. Much of the story is seen through the eyes of Rachel, a distraught mother coping with the tragic loss, and the audience experience darkening, supernatural plot that’s unravelling a Satanist cult’s clandestine desires to bedevil her now only son Elliot.  “Warm Bodies” and “Lights Out” star Teresa Palmer plays the now the mature and safeguarding motherly role in the grand horror scheme alongside fellow “Discovery of Witches” costar Steven Cree (“Terminator:  Dark Fate’) playing her novelist husband, Anthony. For “The Twin” to actually work for the viewer to understand on a sympathetic level, you need to feel the love between them and finding love between Palmer and Cree is about as loveless as a platonic relationship. Aside from sharing a bed and a child, the romance and amorous has been removed from play, but that of frigid factor could have very well been intentional for the story. The principal casting concludes with Barbara Marten (“The Turning”) and the town eccentric, a foreigner who Rachel relates to and latches on to when the crisis with Elliot worsens.

“The Twin” is small principal cast with big background actors that menacingly swallow nonconformers alien in nature to their surroundings. Foggy atmospherics, looming, creaky wooden house, and the dissociative difficulties that put Rachet through a tizzy compound the fear and the affliction of anxiety that turns everything close to you against you in a heap of isolation. All the dead silence and surreal nightmares build tension effectively, keeping the audience on the edge for that peak moment. Mustonen and Hyvärinen throw in a capacious curveball that lets characters wander and explore then develop and action against before pulling the rug from under our one-directional firm footing for a twist. That twist, however, is a play fake we’ve seen before in recent years with the armor of horror shielding the true trepidation. When the peeling begins and the revealing shows us more complicated layers beneath the rotten onion, the once randomized vectors formulate a picture and within the systematic process of slowly uncoiling initial perceptions and believed facts, the story takes on a whole new meaning and, sometimes, even begs the question if what we just watched is still a horror picture after all? “The Twin” very much fits into this goose chase genre but fits like a size two times too small. The path Rachel follows is a yellow brick road to Oz. Oz being the satanic cult is scheming kid-snatch in place of the Beast more vigorous. Mounds upon mounds of hearsay, circumstantial evidence, and even a factoid or two lead the film by the nose to an unwittingly demise of its importance to the story as a whole once all the cards are laid out before us. “The Twin” then goes into heavy exposition to try and explain much of what Rachel experiences and it really felt like a bunch of hot air, a passive attempt to briefly summarize the last 109 minutes without really telling us much about anything. There’s still lots of questions concerning Anthony’s wealth, background, and mental fortitude. Questions also arise about the story’s hook that suddenly drives the characters to make radical changes in a blink of an opening montage eye. “The Twin” has shuddering moments of stillness suspense and a disorienting subcurrent that severs safety at every turn but flirts with unoriginality too much for exhilaration in an all-been-done-before dogleg…with twins.

Acorn Media continues to be the leading UK home video rights distributor for exclusive Shudder releases as “The Twin” makes it’s Blu-ray debut in the region. The PAL encoded region 2 Blu-ray is presented in 1080p high definition with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Retaining mostly in gray and blue hue to convey melancholia to the fullest extent possible, the picture quality doesn’t retain a terrific amount of detail. Textures are often softer during gel-night scenes with no well-defined lines and when compared to day-lit scenes, the details are starkly steelier. The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound caters to a sound design that can differentiate between the bumps in the night as well as the stock-still silence that strikes at the nerves. Dialogue amplitude is on the softer side but very clean and very clear to comprehend. English subtitles have optional availability. Special features include a making-of featurette with cast interviews spliced in. The standard Acorn physical releases for Shudder remain the same for “The Twin” with a common blue case snapper with one-way cover art of uninspired creation. The film is certified 15 for strong horror, threat, bloody images, and violence. As far as doppelgänger bearing horror, “The Twin” is nowhere near identical to others but as for its fraternal individuality, there’s little unique about the Taneli Mustonen picture involving paranoia and primal maternal instinct.

EVIL is a Giant Cockroach Trying To Bite Your Head Off…Man! “Love and Monsters” reviewed! (Paramount / Blu-ray Review)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

For seven years, monsters have ravaged the human race to nearly extinction after nuclear nations destroyed an planet killing meteor in space, but the radioactive debris that fall back to Earth mutated the smallest creatures into monstrous killing machines.  Humans have been divided into colonies forced into underground bunkers.  Joel Dawson has been barely surviving with bunk mates who see him as a liability in his inability to act when faced with a monster situation and has been unable to connect, romantically, with another person.  When Joel discovers his high school sweetheart is 85 miles away in another colony, Joel decides to leave the bunker safe haven and journey across the dangerous surface for seven days for the sole purpose of love.  Forced to face his fears and adapt to survive a perilous land full of giant centipedes, hungry massive toads, and a crusty crab the size of a two story building, Joel must rely on his instincts and the help of rule-following topside survivors to see again the girl he thought he lost.

Add “Love and Monsters,” a monstrously romantic creature feature, right up there with “Warm Bodies” as this decade’s version of horror and love dancing the tangled tango in this kill or be eaten comedy-love pursuit directed by Michael Matthews.  The 2020 release is Matthews’ sophomore directorial from a script co-written between Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson off a Duffield’s original “Monster Problems” script.  Duffield is best known for penning last year’s water leviathan success, “Underwater,” starring Kristen Stewart, with “Monster Trucks’” Robinson coming aboard to finesse the grand adventure mechanism that makes “Love and Monsters” a singular trek through heart-thumping terrorland.  The Canadian production filmed in the amalgam terrain of Australia is produced by Dan Cohen and Shawn Levy, who both know a thing or two about doomsday premises in producing Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and the Denis Villeneuve sleeper sci-fi first contact film, “Arrival,” under 21 Laps Entertainment in association with Entertainment One and Paramount Pictures distribution in North America.

A singular journey of bushwhacking and survival falls upon the shoulders of a young man who hasn’t yet transitioned to be an adult. From the time he was 16 years old, Joel Dawson knew love, but didn’t know how to fend for himself when life gets tough….really tough, like, full of carnivorous creatures in an end of humanity and heading to extinction tough. Yet, as adults, we thrive on challenges as our brains have learned to adapt with each new level of adversity and obstacle. For Joel, being stuck in the past, reliving a swift romance, has suspended him in nowheresville as he struggles to find love and age-appropriate interaction with of his kind peers. Dylan O’Brian captures Joel’s inability to see the clearly world around him because, literally, he hasn’t seen or experienced the world for about a third of his young life. Portrayed early on in young adult fiction with his feet firm in the heartthrob remake of “Teen Wolf” television series and coming out of adapted for film “The Maze Runner” trilogy, O’Brien discovers that being feeble and lonely can be just as powerful as being a werewolf or a dystopian survivalist; instead, O’Brien up-plays the quirky, quick-witted, outcast with delusions about his solitary and unpopularity as he finds fortitude by trekking seven days through a monster-riddled hell to rekindle his relationship with Amiee, the last person he personally felt a connection to who hasn’t been squished under the foot of a Granddaddy Long Leg. “The Head Hunter” and “Underwater” star, Jessica Henwick, retunes her vocal chords to present her best American English accent in order to be Joel’s live-or-die love interest, if she hasn’t changed in the last seven horrible years. Yet, before Joel and Amiee reunite in what’s a finger-crossable moment of love again at first sight, the meek Joel Dawson needs to go through, what half the monsters outside have already gone through, is a metamorphosis of sorts to be bigger, tougher, and more self-reliant. This is where MCU alums, Michael Rooker (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) and Ariana Greenblatt (“Avengers: Infinity War”) step in. As Clyde, Rooker’s the Bear Grylls of monster land, knowing all the tips and tricks of topside survival all the while sporting a Richard Simmons perm, whereas Greenblatt, as the orphaned Minnow traveling in companion with Clyde, is just rugged despite her pintsize. “Love and Monsters” really focuses on these four individuals that mainly perpetuate only one of them, Joel, to be the best survivor he can be at the bottom of the food chain, but other minor characters do arise and nudge brash action that requires the solidity of an unbroken community chain. Dan Ewing (“Occupation”), Ellen Hollman (“Asylum”), Pacharo Mzembe, Tre Hale, Senie Priti, Amalie Golden, and “The Road Warrior’s” Bruce Spence makes a cameo appearance as Old Pete.

What I find interesting about “Love and Monsters,” that’s more prevalent in most post-apocalypse themed plots, is the lack of dog-eat-dog between humans.  While the story mainly skirts around the concept with a running gag that the real reason Joel left his colony is because he’s a no-good food stealer, Joel’s interactions with his and Amiee’s colonies, plus in his travels with Clyde and Minnow, showed no sign of deception or greed, a rare and humbling dynamic when starved, weary, and scared people are backed against a wall and cutthroat advantages are at arm’s length; instead, a real sense of community and compassion is committed that brings a sense of hope, not for just Joel in a world conquered by monsters, but for also audiences with pessimistic views about the volatility of man.  Even with all the fears of A.I hostile takeover, tender moments of man face-to-face with machine seals that threat into inexistence as Joel comes across a damaged MAV1S unit, an anatomical automaton built for servicing humanity, borders that plane of complex human emotions with all the right things to say and able to read what Joel needs to here to keep him moving in a sacrificial scene of the androids’ last hurrah before complete battery drain.  “Love and Monsters” doesn’t do a complete withdrawal from the hypodermic needle of inhuman poison, but the concept is certainly not the emphasis.  With a title like “Love and Monsters,” you want the monsters to be, at the very least, half of the story, as promised, and we’re treated to a slew of different monsters with different personalities and with different innate weapons. Not all the monsters are blood thirsty. Some are gentle, but judged for their immense size and scary physical attributes and Matthews points this important theme out in a trope about-face, signifying that just because this is a monster movie, doesn’t mean all monsters have been unjustly deemed vicious and terrorizing. In a way, these monsters parallel in being judged just as inaccurately as Joel is by his survivalist peers without so much as the benefit of the doubt and only when a trust evolves from out of being scared is when judgements wash away with sheltered conventional thinking. Diminutive inside a fantasyland of behemoth horrors, “Love and Monsters” has a tremendous heart with an interpersonal message about understanding connections with people inside the mixed-messaged confines of coming into adulthood.

If we don’t nuke ourselves out of existence first, the lifeforms underneath the soles of our shoes will gladly seize dominance for an easy, human-sized, snack in Michael Matthews’ “Love and Monsters” now released on Blu-ray plus digital, as well as 4K Ultra HD and DVD, courtesy of Paramount Pictures. The PG-13 action-adventure creature feature is presented in high definition, 1080p, widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Australia is already a futuristic land of gorgeous overgrowth and untouched wonder, Lachlan Milne trades in the practical (zombie horde) aesthetics of “Little Monsters” to a transcending larger types of monsters to scale an open world environment to eventually be combined with post-production visual effects of Kaiju-sized myriapods, crustaceans, and amphibians to just name a few. Award winning VFX company, The Mill, has seamless and organic creations that blend truth and deception with the scariest of ease as creatures explode out of the ground or lumber above head with no angle left uncovered or underdeveloped in giving audiences unmistakable visuals of our nightmares. The English language 7.1 DTS-HD master audio mix is the epitome of well balanced with clear dialogue, a complimentary soundtrack, and a long range and diverse depth of sound engineered monsters being monsters from low, sonorous gutturals to the high cracks and pops of creature movements. Inside a cardboard slipcover, The Paramount Pictures Blu-ray comes with a digital movie code to add to your digital movie collection to watch anywhere, but the release also comes with deleted scenes, a “Bottom of the Food Chain” featurette feature snippet interviews with the cast and crew, and “It’s a Monster World: Creating a Post-Apocalyptic Landscape” that dives into the natural preserve combined with production design to create the apocalypse illusion. Adventurously invigorating and outside the norm of telling story patterns, “Love and Monsters” romanticizes the post-apocalypse with a self love theme in a hope-inspiring and fun creature-crammed monster movie.

Blu-ray of “Love and Monsters.” Click poster to purchase at Amazon.com!

UK Release of “Lights Out” Wants to Remind You That Darkness is Evil!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

With the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment December 12th release of David F. Sandberg’s “Lights Out,” a frightening film that will make you afraid of the being alone in the dark just as “Jaws” did for swimming in the ocean’s water, hitting Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital Download, there are others to celebrate the darkness surrounding them with a list of iconic horror (and comic book) legends in which the dark has influenced them, has inspired, has empowered them, and has made genre-bending characters the most evil monstrosities in their own right.

Count Dracula

dracula

As Seen In: Dracula (1931)
From: Transylvania. Though partial to the odd British holiday.
Profile: Dracula (Bela Lugosi) is an ancient-but-charming aristocrat with a big castle and dodgy accent. Likes sucking blood and terrorizing English toffs.
The Story: The Count comes to England for a spot of neck biting, but gets the stake from Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan).
The Dark Side: The sunlight kills Dracula. Or weakens him (depends on which film you’re watching, to be honest). Either way, he’d prefer you kept the blinds shut.
Some Light On The Subject: With his big shadowy castle, fear of daylight, and penchant for a midnight snack, Dracula is cinema’s original “creature of the night”.

Gremlins

gremlins

As Seen In: Gremlins (1984)
From: Discovered in a Chinatown antiques shop, albeit in their much cuter Mogwai form.
Profile: The Mogwais turn into mischievous green monsters, who enjoy messing with electrics and, erm, watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
The Story: The Gremlins run amok over wholesome town Kingston Falls and ruin Christmas.
The Dark Side: Much like Dracula, sunlight kills them. Even a camera flash sends them scurrying.
Some Light On The Subject: The Gremlins take a classic horror trope – the monster who doesn’t like light – and make it one the film’s three “rules” (no bright lights, no feeding after midnight, and DON’T get them wet – that’s just asking for trouble, that is).

Buffalo Bill

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As Seen In: The Silence of the Lambs (1990)
From: Ohio, where he has the most bizarre workshop in the history of tailoring.
Profile: Real name Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), a serial killer who kidnaps women so he can make his his own “woman suit” with their skin.
The Story: Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) helps FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster). After noshing the faces off a few prisons guards, naturally.
The Dark Side: Gumb traps Starling in his cellar, stalking her in his night vision goggles.
Some Light On The Subject: The dark becomes a deadly weapon. It’s masterful stuff, using the viewer’s primal fear of darkness to create scares.

Bioraptors

bioraptor

As Seen In: Pitch Black (2000)
From: A planet in the M-344/G System. Science speak for “somewhere in deep space”.
Profile: Species of aliens that live in the darkness. Look like a much daintier hammerhead shark. Dangerous, but no match for intergalactic criminal Riddick (Vin Diesel).
The Story: Riddick and a ship of space travelers crash land on the planet, just as it’s about to enter a moth-long eclipse. Typical.
The Dark Side: Another one that can’t stand the sunlight. Strange that they should live on a planet that only gets dark every 22 years.
Some Light On The Subject: This does for the dark what Jaws did for the ocean.

Anne and Nicholas Stewart

anne-and-nicholas-stewart

As Seen In: The Others (2001)
From: A dusty old house on Jersey, where they live with their uptight mother Grace (Nicole Kidman).
Profile: Deathly pale and mollycoddled.
The Story: After new servants arrives at the house, strange events lead the family to believe the house may be haunted. Probably never occurred to them that they’re the ghosts.
The Dark Side: They suffer from a rare photosensitive condition – forcing their neurotic mother to obsessively close the curtains. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep mysteriously opening on their own. Spooky.
Some Light On The Subject: The kids’ condition is a smart twist on an old horror trope, making the darkness a key plot device.

Batman

batman

As Seen In: Batman Begins (2005)
From: Gotham City. Which is about as dark-sounding as a city gets.
Profile: Orphaned billionaire who dresses up like a bat.
The Story: After witnessing his parents’ murder, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) reinvents himself as the Dark Knight, turning feat back on the criminals.
The Dark Side: Spends most of his time creeping around in the shadows on tip-toes so he can jump out on the baddies.
Some Light On The Subject: Though not an actual horror character, Batman is intrinsically tied to the night, fear, and darkness – fusing super-heroics with gothic elements. Check out his first mission in the Bat-suit, lunging out of the shadows vampire-like to snare his prey.

Diana

diana

As Seen In: Lights Out (2016)
From: An old mental institute, where she was killed in a freak accident while doctors attempted to treat her light-sensitive skin condition.
Profile: Returning from the dead, she’s become a crazed psychotic obsessed with keeping former institute pal Sophie (Maria Bello) all to herself.
The Story: Diana stalks or kills anyone who stands in the way of her friendship with Sophie. Bad news for her kids Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) and Martin (Gabriel Bateman).
The Dark Side: Like all great monsters, Diana can only exist in the dark. So keep those lights very much on.
Some Light On The Subject: Perhaps the most ingenious take on cinema’s of the dark yet. The darkness becomes the monster.

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“Lights Out” SYNOPSIS:
“When Rebecca left home, she thought she left her childhood fears behind. Growing up, she was never really sure of what was and wasn’t real when the lights went out…and now her little brother, Martin, is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that had once tested her sanity and threatened her safety. A frightening entity with a mysterious attachment to their mother, Sophie, has reemerged. But this time, as Rebecca gets closer to unlocking the truth, there is no denying that all their lives are in danger…once the lights go out.”

Teresa Palmer (“Triple 9,” “Warm Bodies”) stars as Rebecca; Gabriel Bateman (“Annabelle”) as Martin; Billy Burke (the “Twilight” franchise) as Martin’s father, Paul; Alexander DiPersia (“Forever”) as Rebecca’s boyfriend, Bret; and Maria Bello (“Prisoners”) as Sophie. Annabelle 2’s David F. Sandberg helms the script of “Final Destination 5” screenwriter Eric Heisserer.

BLU-RAY AND DVD ELEMENTS

• Deleted scenes

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION ELEMENTS

On December 12, “Lights Out” will be available to own for streaming and download to watch anywhere in high definition and standard definition on favorite devices from select digital retailers including; Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Sky Store, Sony Playstation, Wuaki.tv and Talk Talk.

BASICS

PRODUCT SRP

Blu-ray £15.99

DVD £9.99

Street Date: December 12, 2016

DVD Languages: English

BD Languages

DVD Subtitles: English SDH

BD Subtitles: English

Running Time: 81 minutes

Rating: Rated 15 for strong supernatural threat, bloody images