Tag Archives: Well Go USA Entertainment

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, When All Through the EVIL “A Creature Was Stirring” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Purchase “A Creature Was Stirring” Here at Amazon.com

During the height of a 6-day Christmas blizzard, nurse Faith remains home to care for her mysteriously afflicted daughter Charm.   Faith diligently stays vigilant over her daughter’s inexplicable condition with test after test and maintaining Charm’s constant body temperature between 102 to 104.4 degrees, seemingly stabilizing Charm’s condition.  If the temperature exceeds beyond, Charm transmogrifies into a barbed humanoid creature.  While Faith works on a compound cure, Liz and Kory, a sibling pair of Jesus zealots, break into the house seeking shelter out of the deadly snowstorm.  Faith has no other choice but to let them stay the night until the storm subsides but the appearance of Charm’s at-home care and the young girl’s sudden seizures and erratic behavior sends Liz into savior mode, meddling into more than she can comprehend.  Yet, something else lurks inside the house, between the shadows, and beneath the veil of reality that is way more terrifying. 

Even though Christmas might be long over and all the gaudy and brilliantly lit decorates are stowed away back into Grandma’s attic that doesn’t mean the holiday horror train has to depart the station.  And I’m not talking about no Polar Express with the edging on creepy motion capture animation.  I’m talking about “The Cleansing Hour’s” Damien LeVeck’s Twas the Night Before Christmas-inspired titled “A Creature Was Stirring.”  The equivocal creature feature set in the throes of a raging blizzard and inside a very decked the halls house is penned by debut screenwriter Shannon Wells under the original title of “Good Luck, Nightingale.”   Aimed to be more than what meets the eye, “A Creature Was Stirring” blends the involuntary struggles of drug addiction with potent secretions of supernaturalism.  The U.S. production was shot in Louisville, Kentucky, produced by LeVeck, wife Natalie, as well as “Scare Package” producers Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns with Vladislav Severtsev (“The Bride”) under the production companies Skubalon, 10/09 Films, and Paper Street Pictures. 

Topping the bill as Faith is “This Is Us” star Chrissy Metz, portraying a nurse practitioner and mother desperate on concocting a cure to her daughter’s strange, monstrous manifesting condition.  Metz brings the multifaceted mania between being rock solid and stringent with medical checks and procedures and being able to turn aggressive when the moment calls for it, especially swinging a screwed-spiked baseball bat.  This underlines an underlying secret or hidden predicament viewers will be dipped into and begin processing all the little traces of one-offs that don’t necessary make sense to an already peculiar narrative.  Then, there’s Charm, played by Annalise Basso (“Oculus”), in constant oversight, constantly mutable, and urging to constantly be free from her mother’s impervious iron grip to lighten up.   Basso retains angsty opposition while tossing moments of reflective consideration for her mother and for herself, disquieting the teetering tranquility when Liz and Kory come into play.  Respectively played by “Halloween” ‘07’s Scout Taylor-Compton and “Stake Land’s” Connor Paolo, siblings Liz and Kory stir the pot that’s slowly simmering to a boil as one religious dogmatist and one eager to break the constraints of his sister’s purity with sex and drugs complicate the strained mother-daughter relationship with their intrinsic quirks that expose a deeper, rooted-to-reality problem.  The now generational scream queen Compton dons colorful dreads and a large Messiah back tattoo amongst a high and mighty attitude while Paolo can be praised for the sarcasm brought out from the scripted dialogue.  Each of the four principals are inherently different and clash, in a good way, to provoke complications. 

Drug addiction has infiltrated horror years ago and have been the basis of many notable films such as Abel Ferrara’s “The Addiction,” Larry Fessenden’s “Habit,” and Frank Henelotter’s “Brain Damage” to name a few from the massive lot.  “A Creature Was Stirring” taps into that same vein as LeVeck’s injects and shoots up his own interpretation of horrors with withdrawals.  Long time addicts suffer through agonizing, powerful withdrawals that screenwriter Shannon Wells incorporates symptomatically with a figurative approach and while Wells’ story invokes colorfully rich characters and enigmatic tale of terror, brought to life by LeVeck’s vibrantly warm and glow Christmas adorned and atmospheric house, the finished feature, that really has nothing to do with Christmas oddly enough, feels uneven when revealing the irony of surprise doesn’t become catchall illumination.   The most ambiguous part about the tale is the spiny-signified creature, a mutated, zoomorphic porcupine of sorts, to represent ferocity of the withdrawn drug with its hypodermic needle-like defense mechanism and malevolence nature.  The shadowy man-thing is given such a threadbare association between Charm’s anecdotal encounter with large rodent and its manifestation metamorphosis into the fold that the hostile has hardly any staying power as a villain and, like a rodent, really does feel just like a mouse was stirring as it scurries arbitrarily throughout the house but not all is negative as there are scenes that make you go holy crap when recollecting character and creature interactive moments that suddenly click and make sense, often coinciding and juxtaposed against really neat interior cinematography bathed in mixture of hard light and soft glows. 

Well Go USA Entertainment presents “A Creature Was Stirring” on a high-definition Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 has soft illumination but a grading design that’s befits the ’tis the season paradigm with the primary color warmth radiating out from Christmas lights strung up around the house and the beaming brilliance of white battery-operated light-up decorations. Between the crude adornment lighting, some lighter translucent gels, and with a splash of black-and-white, Alexander Chinnic cinematography, presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1, resembles a rave clad fitting into the drug theme as an echo of the one character’s pill-popping, molly-dropping past. Details become diffused by the varying, indiscriminate incandescence and shadowy fields that play into the creature’s tenebrific threat, but those same shadows are often deep without posterization. The English 5.1 DTS-HD master audio achieves the goal of the very title of something stirring inside creating rustling movements and spiny-shifting clacking, coursing through the back and side channels and maintaining an even keeled LFE. Space awareness is key for close quartered tension and that’s rendered well in the design. Dialogue comes off without a hitch and is elevated above the rest of the tracks with no issues with compression faults or a fractured recording. English SDH subtitles are available. Like most Well Go USA releases, “A Creature Was Stirring” shoulders only Well Go USA preview trailers with no real bonus features of its own in the semi-static main menu but what we do get is a better than modest laid out standard Amaray Blu-ray package with a lightly titled embossed cardboard O-slipcover and on the back two different texture types, a polaroid slick abutted against the smooth cardboard. Image design is a greatly detailed silhouette of the porcupine creature looming over the house. The same image is also on the Blu-ray cover with a simple red-beaded or red-string light encircling the title on the disc. There is no insert inside. Rated R for violence, bloody images, drug context, language, and some sexual suggestion, the 96-minute Blu-ray comes region A locked. 

Last Rites: Chrissy Metz battling a deformative disease, drug addiction, an angsty teen, two home invasive siblings, and a large porcupine monstrosity all in the name of “A Creature Was Stirring” is the prickly cold turkey suspenser this side of the New Year.  

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Your Train Has Come in on the Platform EVIL! “The Ghost Station” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Cho-Cho-Choose “The Ghost Station” on Blu-ray!

The Oksu train station’s past has incur many strange occurrences over the 17-years since it’s construction but more recently has seen a string of bizarre deaths. When a public service worker Woon-won witnesses a man’s death on the rails, he reluctantly informs friend Na-young, a struggler gossip journalist in need of a good, multi-click story after being hit with a lawsuit from her previous writeup and landing in hot water with the editor. As Na-young and Woon-won dig deeper to save Na-young’s begrudging career, they soon discover there’s more to this story than meets the eye as train station commuters and workers begin exhibiting scratches over their arms and neck. Those marked eventually die horribly. Bodies pile up as the story leads Na-young to the past of a razed orphanage and visions of grotesque children become the center of the young journalist’s investigation until her friend Woon-won displays the same marks. Now, they must solve the curse before it’s too late.

Based off the real Oksu Station operated by Seoul Metro in the Seongdong-gu district of South Korea and the short digital manhwa webtoon entitled “The Ghost Station of Oksu” from Horang’s Nightmare, the 2022 movie adaptation “The Ghost Station” waters the short story webtoon and grows a surrounding plot around the only adapted portion of a near empty Oksu platform except for one bench-sitting man and a stumbling lady who appears to be intoxicated.   The South Korean-Japanese co-produced picture is written-and-directed by So-young Lee (“Apt”) and Hiroshi Takahashi, the latter is the Japanese filmmaker behind the popular “Ringu” series which crosses orient borders by being the most important or influential in “The Ghost Station’s” inhabited identical J-horror elements.   Co-productions Mystery Picture and ZOA Films pull the train into “The Ghost Station,” produced by Yoo Jang-Hun and is theatrically distributed globally between Smile Entertainment and Contents Panda.

The webtoon is only a leaping point for the film version.  Not establishing any cited characters in the illustrated horror story, a whole new plot is built around and extended upon the webtoon narrative of the drunk platform woman that ends in a horrific accident for the young gawker on his phone texting ridicule commentary of her inebriation.  Story continues with a gossip Na-Young on the heels of being reprimanded for not receiving consent for her story of labeling her subject a him despite being very convincingly a woman in looks.  Bo-ra Kim plays the tenacious yet conflicted journalist, self-deprecating her career as clickbait material rather than honorable news reporting until the supernatural Oksu Station occurrences shed light on a bigger, corruptible conspiracy.   The “Ghost Mansion” actress sleeps through what should be a cold-clenching tale of sprog spirits and callous coverups that form a mighty-gripped grudge on those unlucky enough traipsing through the station yet doesn’t really affect her directly.  Oppositely, her friend Woon-wan epitomizes exaggerated fright within the performance of Jae Hyun Kim who can express translated fear in breath holding moments but outside of that Kim dons childish whimpering and yelling as if it’s a fad.  Together, the actors cancel out their characters flaws by embodying one investigative team as a public station worker and a journalist uncovering the truth and to save themselves the next victims of vicinity vindictive spirits.  “The Ghost Station’s” richer performances are yoked by stinted deuteragonists that actually drive the story but feel suspended in their integrated impact and relegated to being flashbacks or wedged into one particular location without a ton of exposition or background.  The dictatorial gossip editor (Kim Na-Yoon), the creepy alcoholic mortician (Kang-il Kim, “I Saw the Devil”), and the first victim’s externally anxious, psychosomatic dreaming sister (Shin So-yul, “Pyega”) are colorfully acted, complex in character, and plod the story along intrinsically, yet they’re underutilized hanging around the peripheral with only the sister edging out the other two with a more direct connection to the grudge or curse. 

Without unwrapping “The Ghost Station” before watching the film, the story progresses along without any cause for concern with a supernatural sleuth story of a horrible train accident causing a domino effect of curses.  Deeper into the feature, a water well becomes a focal object, then abnormal faces of ghastly children appear, and the principals are using keywords, like grudge, grudge this, grudge that, and where have we heard of this before?  With Hiroshi Takahashi “Ringu” films dappled intermittently with “Ju-on” insignias that turn the initially promising K-Horror into a full blown J-Horror in repeated attire.  While directors So-young Lee and Hiroshi Takahashi are able to garner a handful of scares through technique, makeup effects, and morose aesthetics and dolor, “The Ghost Station” has a creative deficiency as there are just too many coincidental “Ringu” and “Ju-on” suspense devices to craft an original curse tale despite the positivity just oozing out from the idea of two nations blending their respective horror niches into one project that dissects the integrity of the individual.  Na-young’s ethical dilemma as a tabloid journalist carries weight and is tiptoed around when her editor urges for better clickbait material, Woon-won struggles with self-preservation and a friendship bond, and other minor examples add up to the summation of choice.  Many made bad choices that resulted in an orphanage full of pissed off preadolescents using their spook powers for premeditated parricide.   

Walk down to the platform and wait for your train to come into “The Ghost Station,” servicing now on Blu-ray home video from Well Go USA Entertainment.  The AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD25 is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio.  What the release showcases, as far as image quality, is a more than adequate transfer of the substantially tenebrous picture that renders shadows without analogous banding or splotching.  The low-light grading offers a polished appearance with deep, rich shadows to provide a natural ominous atmosphere and partially shroud characters without compromising distinctive detailing.  The Korean language audio options include a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track. A more than viable digital audio recording that clear and comprehensible with formidable sound design for quotidian scare devices that abled to still produce fear, using the back and side channels to flesh out the scare factor in a fine-tuned direction. Dialogue’s renders nicely without any technical or interfering barriers. English subtitles are optionally available, come error free, and pace well with the rapid Korean dialect. Like many of the Well Go USA titles, not a ton of bonus features are inlaid and the same is said with “The Ghost Station” that only holds trailers for other Well Go USA Entertainment films. In a traditional Amary Blu-ray case, the front cover pays homage to the Horang webtoon. Inside, an advert insert is included with other Well Go USA films from the company’s Hi-Yah! collection. The not rated feature has an 80-minute runtime and has a region A playback only. ”The Ghost Station” undertakes a mesh of identity between K-Horror and J-Horror that sought to pull up to the platform as a singular, supernatural, scare package and, in the end, the film pulls in as a train of consumable terror.

Cho-Cho-Choose “The Ghost Station” on Blu-ray!

Even Bad CGI Crocodiles Have an EVIL Smile. “Crocodile Island” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertianment / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Journey to the “Crocodile Island” on DVD from Well Go USA!

The Dragon Triangle is known for being the Bermuda Triangle off the coast of the Asia continent.  Ship and plane mysteriously disappear due to the area’s supposedly distorted navigational and mechanical instruments, wreaking havoc on commercial transportation and the directionless travelers who have wandered into its esoteric province.  When an Australian outbound commercial flight GZ261 is forced to violently crash land due to this very phenomenon, survivors find themselves not in the middle of the sea but on an uncharted island full of man-eating crocodiles, large and ferocious spiders, and a giant, prehistoric crocodile that can swallow a person whole.  With no food or water and danger lurking around every corner, the remaining, uneaten passengers must survive with the tools around them and locate the wreckage of a World War II plane that crashed long ago, salvage it’s radio, and call for rescue but the journey is perilous with a very hungry, colossal crocodile on their tail.

The Dragon Triangle, alternatively known as the Devil’s Sea or the Pacific Bermuda Triangle, is actually a real stretch of urban legend approximately located from the Northern Tokyo to the narrow vertex down below the island of Guam and enveloping most of the Japanese offshore islands.  The suspected berth of paranormal yarn has a long history of marine mysteries and aviation ambiguities and it’s also the basis for the 2020 Xu Shixing and Simon Zhao creature-feature actioner “Crocodile Island.”  Shixing, who went on to helm “Sharktopus” released this year, and Zhao, who oversaw the directorial duties for “The Antarctic Octopus” also released this year, seem to have knack for exaggerated megafauna movies beginning with “Crocodile Island” from a script by Minming Ni of “Exorcist Judge Bao.”  The undivided Chinese production showcases under the banner of Perfect World Pictures, an entertainment content company that often co-finances films with American studios, such as with “Jurassic Park Dominion, and New Studios Media, the company behind Ni’s “Exorcist Judge Bao.” 

At the very core of “Crocodile Island’s” larger-than-life CGI creature extravaganza is a life ordeal larger than any crocodile could ever be with a strained father-daughter relationship that takes surviving a plane crash, man-eating reptilians, and supersized spiders to resolve.  In steps Gallen Lo as rigid father Lin Hao to agitated and rebellious daughter Lin Yi, or as called continuously in the film as Yiyi, played by Liao Yinyu.  The “Vampire Controller” Lo takes parental responsibilities like a high-end security guard at an exclusive night club exhibiting almost zero emotion toward an equally stoic daughter who just lost their mother, the reason for the plane ride from Australia where Yiyi’s mother, Lin Hao’s ex-wife and Yiyi resided after a suspected divorce. I say suspected because Lin Hao hasn’t seen his daughter in years, solidifying his estrangement to the extreme, but deep down he reticent care for her despite the lack of expressive emotions and awkward alienation.  He shows this be becoming a gatekeeper against Yiyi’s romantic interest Cheng Jie (Wang Bingxiang) who boards the same flight but keeps his distance by concealing his presence from what would ultimately be a father’s sundering wrath in effort to protect and reconnect with her having been absent during her adolescence and still thinking she’s a child.  That becomes the underlining theme to “Crocodile Island,” to fight to protect what’s most dear to you, as Lin Hao fights against man and beast to protect his child and going through the learning curve of her growing up.  One significant flaw in Lin Hao’s development is his background is never divulged.  We’re hinted by other survivors that he might be former military, but nothing is clear except that he’s had some survivalist and leadership training, two apex personality attributes that collide in reconnecting with his daughter as well as sewing a connection with her boyfriend who’s eager to protect Yiyi too.  Out of all the survivors, this triad dynamic is harder pressed than the others – a first child expecting couple, a social media junkie and her creep of a friend with a bad heart, a pair of single men – who seem like they’re just a long for the ride, to be crocodile chow, or to give the principals more time to work out their internal issues.  Wei Dang, Xue’er Hu, Qiwei He, Zhao Zuo, Zhiyan Zhao, Jack Wayne, Bruce Alleyn, Patrick Alleyn, and Jinyi Zhao costar.

“Crocodile Island” stands alone as a 100% Chinese backed product for the often American partnered Perfect World Pictures as the carnivores look nothing remote similar to the likes of “Jurassic Park” and, instead, has all the hallmarks of a midnight feature on the Syfy Channel but even through the shoddy computer imagery, the feature remains one-up from those made-for-television premiers by turning on and building up some tense atmospherics, a fog-laden forecast with Kaiju-lite spiders dangling-dormant overhead the survivors or the close-quarters cave battle against the giant crocodile, that does keep concentration from veering off into a ditch of mundane dullness.  Still, every creature, every aircraft, and every explosion from the muzzle fire of the U.S. military issued Thompson submachine gun to the fragmentation detonation of the MK II grenades are CGI rendered and poorly at that.  The laws of physics do not apply to “Crocodile Island” as the regular sized reptilians can leap forward, airborne, for feet on end and the action is almost a near, undefinable blur on screen of the pallid, fringing translucency composite mockup.  While visual effects can be 90’s intro-level rubbish (what year are we in?), I found the story to be palpable enough and to a point of plane crash survivors find themselves basically on a heavily reduced variation of “Land of the Lost” or “Journey to the Center of the Earth” where instead of a T-Rexes and other giant, prehistoric creatures nipping at their heels, massive ocean crocodiles and arachnids lay claim to their flesh and bones but that part of the story wavers on wishy-washy rationalization.  The World War II plane that crashes, because of a flock of pterodactyls nonetheless, was carrying radioactive material which is alluded to being the cause of the giant spiders and crocodile, yet the crocodile was present at the WW II plane crash when snatching one of the pilots right out of the sky with a vertical leap, so the mysterious Dragon Triangle Isle remains still a mystery.

If I had to choose between the Bermuda Triangle and the Dragon Triangle, my chances of survival definitely reside better west side of the prime meridian and now you can make that determination yourself with a DVD copy of “Crocodile Island” courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment.  As part of their Hi-Yah! collection, despite depicting no martial arts, “Crocodile Island” is presented in a widescreen 16×9 aspect ratio and stored on a MPEG2 encoded DVD9 with a average bitrate between 7 to 8 Mbps.  Aside from the absurd VFX, “Crocodile Island” looks pretty good compression-wise and detail-wise with a blight free digital image that pops with lush greenery and stark contrast, the brilliant sandy beach and bright blue water comes to mind as examples, with a grading range that runs the natural color spectrum.  The Mandarin language audio comes with two options:  a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and a Stereo 2.0.  Both render a clean, damage free mix with prominent dialogue and a pinpoint ambient sound design only to be besmirched by the laughable CGI and creature noises.  While the track is listed as strictly Mandarin, an English dub on the same track combs over the natural voices of the English-speaking actors, the pilots in the movie who are obviously speaking English when reading their lips, but the English dub sounds like Asian actors attempting English vocal impersonations that synch up egregiously.  Subtitles include English, traditional Chinese, and a simplified Chinese, which I’m not entirely sure if that means for a child’s benefit or another reason.  The English synch appears to be oversimplified as well with a slew of straight forward statements and exclamations, adding little depth to what the meaning characters attempt to convey in more significant conversion.  There’s not much in the way of special features in the rainy motion DVD menu aside from the film’s trailer and other Well Go USA Entertainment preview trailers for “A Creature Was Stirring,” “Creepy Crawly,” and “Gangnam Zombie.” The Amaray front cover has run-of-the-mill, campy Giant crocodile pomposity of a cover art with the doubled-sided, one-sheet inside insert of other Hi-Yah! Well Go USA Entertainment titles. What I found aesthetic is the simple designed, yet eye-catching disc pressed with a shimmering glint. Not rated and locked on a region one playback, the release has a runtime of 87 minutes. While this crocodile’s skin remains without a tangible leathery hide in the semi-aquatic beast’s digital creation, “Crocodile Island” has sporadic action and atmospheric value vastly needed to combat the cringeworthy croc.

Journey to the “Crocodile Island” on DVD from Well Go USA!

A Thousand EVIL Little Legs Wriggle Inside You! “Creepy-Crawly” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Wigged Out by “Creepy Crawly” on Blu-ray!

During the COVID lockdown, a group of tourists are confined to a quarantine appointed hotel in a Thailand city. Fielded by skeleton hospitality, the hotel aims to make the tourists comfortable as possible with the limited number of staff and security on hand. Though frustrated and displaced, the quarantined few feel ultimately satisfied by their popup accommodates spearheaded by the Thai government. However, one amongst the staff and tourists is a shapeshifting monster of local legends, jumping from body to body in hopes to find a person with unique blood in order to survive for eternity. Forcibly detained by a sleazy and easily persuadable hotel manager, Leo, Fame, and their families hardly trust anyone, even themselves, as a hidden creature invades a new host to become closer to living forever. It’s true shape like a centipede, the creature summons its smaller, poisonous brethren to wreak havoc inside every crevasse of an inescapable shelter.

Tapping into the same slithery vein as “Night of the Creeps,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” or even “Slither” itself, co-writers-and directors Chalit Krileadmongkon and Pakphum Wongjinda channel their inner spirit animal, the thousand-legged wriggler, back to their home country of Thailand for a new creature feature sure to have your skin recoil with formication.  Also co-written alongside, Charoen Kaithitisuwan, “Creepy Crawly,” or better known in Thailand as “The One Hundred,” is the second feature for Krileadmongkon behind another unearthing creature construction in “The Beast Below” that was released the same year as “Creepy Crawly.”  For Wongjinda, the 2022 released film marks the 9th feature in the filmmaker’s 20+ year-long career who began in 2001 with a script surrounding a feminist ghost killing men victims in “Body Jumper.  “Wongjinda has been once around the horror subgenre carousel to now collaborate with the fresh perspective and ideas from the up-and-coming Krielandmongkon to extend Thai’s catalogue of cinematic chills and thrills.  Neramitnung Film and Fatcat Studios serve as production studios with producers Natchanok Kamonrattananan, Punyanet Tanaprapass (“The Beast Below”), and Kamonwan Kanaraksunti. 

Perhaps better if told in the perspective of an ensemble cast, “Creepy Crawly” reduces is principal character pool to just two, a hot-headed Taekwondo champion named Leo and a social media influencer aptly named Famed.  The two cross paths while being COVID quarantined, sharing a smoke in the stairwell while sharing breaking the hotel rules of remaining locked in their rooms.  There’s not much in the way of connection between the two characters, played by one half of the Golf & Mike musical group Mike Angelo (“The Misfits”) and the mixed heritage of English, Chinese, and Thai actress Chanya McClory, as the progressive action teases something more than just stairwell strangers as Leo frequently comes to Fame’s aid whenever he his sixth sense senses danger.  Both principals carry collateral damage weight with family members also being in quarantine with them; Fame has her brother and social media partner Fiew (Benjamin Joseph Varney, “The Promise”) while Leo has a slightly more extensive circle and greater family drama with sister Lena (Kulteera Yordchang) and their mute, widowed father (Paramej Joiam, “407 Dark Flight 3D”) to which with the latter Leo has an aversion in connecting with periodical flashbacks of Leo and Lena’s dying mother and somehow, which is revealed later, their father is to blame.  This creates more of an arc for Leo with an imbalanced, shared protagonist lead with Fame who we don’t get to know as intimately other than she has an incurable blood disorder that could be fatal if not treated with meds.  “Creepy Crawly’s” cast is beautifully eclectic, and I don’t mean with appearances but rather their interesting, robust with personal motivations, and not terribly dull or overtly bland with performances from Wanpiya Omsinnopphakul, Chanidapa Pongsilpipat, Sita Chutipaworakarn, Chutaporn Chaikawin, and David Asavanond as the slimy hotel owner.

As I sit down to gather my thoughts about this review squirming with venomous centipedes, a house centipede, or what we like to call in our house a thousand-legger, steps hundreds of feet-over-feet on the wall in front of me. Talk about good timing, bad omens, or just a straight up coinkydink when a cousin of the deadly antagonist you just bore witness in a film crawls up the wall in front of you. Despite the inspiration that scuttles in front of me, “Creepy Crawly” has a more fantastically gigantesque infestation. The story has a COVID-19 backdrop and is supposedly based off the story of Battambang told by King Chulalongkorn, aka King Rama V. I, unfortunately, can’t elaborate much about the story as I couldn’t dig up anything that closely resembles the analogy between a centipede invasion and a French conflict. Or are the centipedes a metaphor for the European encroachment? Or are they a metaphor for the COVID pathogen that’s hidden amongst the atypical carriers? Either way, “Creepy Crawly” is visual effects driven with a crevasse-trenched and many-moving-leg scaled arthropod with a pincher-laden head but before the monstrosity makes face, the mega-centipede can hop from body to body, able to protrude tentacled pinchers like spears, impaling victims as well as transposing itself into another body before sucking and skinning the host dry of life and flesh – very reminiscent of an Edgar suit. The jutting spears from the host never harms the body, alloying to-and-fro the skin, and clothing, in a compatibility of supernaturality that fits the folklore mold explained during the opening credits. That’s where I imagine the lore ends and the exoskeleton evil begins as we’re sucked into Leo’s daddy issues, the hotel manager’s self-preservation, and Fame’s bad blood that’s good for the big bad bug. Though Leo’s emotional pull the right heart chords and the hotel manager selfishness and greed adds tension and conflict to an already imposing no way-out scenario, the blood disorder plot device is skimmed to be barely tolerable without diving into the science of why a 10-foot centipede can survive on a compromised blood.

As far as COVID-theme foreign productions, “Creepy Crawlers” checks out as a roach motel monster movie from Well Go USA Entertainment. The distribution company’s Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, and presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Visual effects conducted by Thailand’s Matchmove team have remarkable detail in the composited scenes with the exception of one latter scene that compromises the blacks of reality to a darker shade of gray or blue when overlaying it with the digitally added creature. Details are generally delineated nicely, color grading pops natural tones, and the BD25 offers sufficient space to suppress compression artefacts. The Thai DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio with optional English subtitles greatly exudes the centipede click-marching and pinch clips to effectuate an army of killer scurrying arthropods swarming onto, into confined quarters and those suspected of sickness, COVID-19 to be exact. Dialogue cleanly renders, especially between the majority of Thai and the medley of minority languages, such as Chinese and English. Bonus features are limited to just Well Go USA previews/trailers in what has become another barebones release for the company. The Blu-ray comes in a standard amary case with snapper with fantastically to truth image of the creature on the front cover while the inside has a paper advert for three Well Go USA films with the disc art displays warm shades red and yellow in what is a very culturally appropriated Thai coloring. “Creepy Crawly” scritch-scratches the lousy sensation of a buggy creature feature with loads of action that tries to add and induce more into the narrative beyond what’s innately there and that can be a great repellant to this wecl invasive species of Thai genre films.

Get Wigged Out by “Creepy Crawly” on Blu-ray!

When There is EVIL in the Seoul! “Gangnam Zombie” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Well Go USA’s “Gangnam Zombie” on Blu-ray Hi-Def!

In the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea, former backup to the national taekwondo team Hyeon-seok works underpaid and unhappily for a smalltime viral video streaming company.  His colleague and crush, Min-jeong, is a content editor constantly being hit on by the knavish company owner.  Unhappy at their jobs, the two miserably plug away while avoiding the elephants in the room until an infected, flesh-eating man walks into their office rental building, biting and infected the surrounding professionals that turn the place of business into a place of horror and survival.  With the doors chained shut and no way to call for help, Hyeon-seok, Min-jeong, their small band of coworkers, and the building’s landlady react antagonistically against the quickly devolving situation that seeks to sink its teeth into them.  The upstanding Hyeon-seok does the only thing he knows how, to fight his way out while protecting Min-jeong from a mass army of blood-stained teeth.

In the wake of the popular successful running and rampaging outbreak spread of zombie-madness in “Train to Busan,” the 2016 all-aboard the zombie train thriller not only blazed the rails with a hyper-intense, body-over-body, dog-eat-dog infected film confined to the cramped aisles of linked train cars but it also set the tone for years to come with imitators to rake in the cash of the outbreak breakout success.  Though the concept is nothing new, South Korea has adopted the fast-running infected flesh-eater and shaped it with mass affect with newer entries being submitted every year since the release of “Train to Busan.”  “Rodeukil” director Soon Sung Lee has helmed one of those new entries with “Gangnam Zombie,” a far more contained zombie burst confined to a mall-like office building set in the heart of the Gangnam district, hence the title.  “Gangnam Zombie” is a self-produced production of Soon Sung Lee in association with JNC Media Group and Joy N Cinema with co-producer Choe Gwang-rae.

The aphorism less is more can be applied to many things and many situations, often generally true, much like overthinking a simple problem.  For the cast buildup of Soon Sung Lee’s “Gangnam Zombie,” the saying torpedoes any kind of chance connecting with the chaos-engrossed characters.  Opening to Cho Kyoung-hoon and his partner’s breaking and entering of a shipping container full of boxes of I-don’t-know-what, objectively were lost to the here and why this crime becomes not only ground zero for the epidemic, Cho Kyoung-hoon’s Wang-I is attacked by a container-hitching infected cat of all things, but also the motivation for their transgressions of thievery.  I honestly could not tell you what was being hijacked from the container boxes; to me, the contents appeared to be COVID-19 test kits which would make sense since “Gangnam Zombie” forces the paralleling global epidemic done our visual esophagus with a cat instead of a bat.  After dispatching his partner with a bite to the neck, in what is a very vampiric method I might add, Wang-I wanders his dazed self into the city of Seoul, especially the Gangnam district, where he steals red meat from a grocer and stumbles with a self-image conflict into Hyeon-seok and Min-jeong’s office building.  Indiscriminately unhappy with their jobs with a mild sense of attraction between them, the characters are played by Ji Il-ju and Park Ji-yeon who can’t really get into the tumultuously thrown together chemistry needed to make their emotionally pulling tug work with viewers.  The supposed coupling actors’ scenes feel one-sided with Park Ji-yeon in a defensively scared and uncertain shoes but very much guarded against Ji Il-ju who can wear his heart on his sleeve as he roundhouses zombie extras left and right.  Cho Kyoung-hoon feels more enthused in his black-eyed, rabid-smile zombie mode while still able to grasp his humanity with close-quarters hand-to-hand, an enthusiasm not really shared by the others when faced with ground zero apocalypse that doesn’t quiver under one-liners and vapid, vacuous vernacular and vigor.  Min Choi, Tu-in Tak, and Yi-joo Jung round out the cast.

“Gangnam Zombie” falls into the cheap-thrills trap of comparing itself the deadly strain of COVID-19 not because of the cat and bat reference above but because the opening title sequence hammers in a quick recap of the epidemic era in massive overload of visuals with the occasional infected person flashing into frame.  Though not mentioned once of COVID into the dialogue, a tumbling of slowly progressing confusion settles itself inside the narrative of what director Soon Sung Lee is trying to convey comparing COVID to chaotic cannibalism.  The exploit is egregiously akin to Full Moon’s capitalizing indecorous “Corona Zombies.”  The two not only share germs but also share essentially the same title and are both more comedic and lighter, shadowing over and taking away any intensity it intended in this more comedy-horror than horror-comedy.  Zombie carnage is laid waste to bad continuity editing as we see some of the same zombies looking down one hallway and then in the next scene and in a different hallway there is the same infected head, zombies inexplicably rolling on the floor into frame, zombies sneaking up behind people only to hesitate an attack with more of an intent to scare them when the chased turns around, and the infected are not brainlessly dulled and have the ability, or at least only one of them has the ability, to fight back with blocks and other defensive and offensive moves.  “Gangnam Zombie” milks the stouter predecessors with a haphazardly duck taped lesser vessel to slog forward what other South Korean filmmakers have previously perpetuated so well in the subgenre.

On Blu-ray now from Well Go USA Entertainment is “Gangnam Zombie” with an AVC encoded, 1080 hi-def, BD25, presented in a listed widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio that works well in the compressed environment of the office building. Exterior scenes of the city, overall general landscape, suggest a wider aspect ratio, perhaps a 2.35:1 to capture more the of the urban landscape. Speaking of the office building, the well-lit environment provides less complexities on the digital image with the same gray, steel, and translucent facing in most of the scenes. Varying saturations of red diverse the blood shading around the body and face with darker tints often looking like motor oil to match the midnight irises. Details in the digital age rarely see a loss of face with natural skin tones, to the minute details of reflective surfaces, and a properly sterile office space. The only audio track built into the release is a Korean DTS-HD 5.1 master audio that’s balanced appropriately with forefront dialogue and a backseat generic soundtrack mix of heavy metal and crescendo builds. The zombie grunts, groans, and roars tear into the channels, nicely through the backend channels, but with cacophonous irritation at times. There’s decent secondary sound design with the baseball bat being hit across infected faces and the floor, despite revealing its rubbery bounce, and Ji Il-joo kick and punch melodies. Sometimes a hit-or-miss with bonus features on the international releases, this particular Well Go USA release comes bare bones with no special features on the software. The hardware, aka physical features, is also not terribly spectacular with a standard Blu-ray casing with a sketch and paint cover that’s slightly misleading where our protagonist will be when the outbreak breaks. Unlatching the case reveals an advert insert for three Well Go USA distributed films, likely rotational with different features, with a unique fascination disc press art of rope tied radio with outstand hands and fingers appearing to grab the bottom of it. It’s a Blu-ray opening enigma viewers will have watch the feature to understand. Clocking in at 82 minutes, “Gangnam Zombie” is region A locked and is not rated. The bite marks of “Gangnam Zombie” are a familiar pang and now nearly a decade after a formidable Korean zombie subgenre began, we’ve become too desensitized for hackneyed carbon copies.

Well Go USA’s “Gangnam Zombie” on Blu-ray Hi-Def!