Tag Archives: Well Go USA Entertainment

A Horde of EVIL Won’t Stop a Father from Seeing His Child for the First Time. “Day Zero” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Entertainment)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Day Zero” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment

Convicted on charges of assault, ex-special forces and all-around big guy Emon looks to keep his nose clean, banking off his good behavior to get him released from prison to see his wife and child, who he has never laid eyes on since being incarcerated.  When trouble finds him behind bars, Emon loses his chance with a dismissive warden until a mutated dengue fever virus sweeps through the city.  The virus turns people crazed and blood hungry, quickly engulfing the populated city and streets with chaos that fortuitously, as well as unfortunately, sets all the prisoners free in a tumultuous fight between the living and the infected dead.  Emon must battle through to save his family trapped inside their multi-storied apartment building but inside the dark, densely-packed corridors, the structure is infested with infected with not many places to hide and not much room to evade the bite of the hungry dead.

A running Z-charged, fight-for-your-life thriller hailing from the Philippines with “Day Zero,” the sophomore feature length film from brothers Joey De Guzman, the director, and Ays De Guzman, the screenwriter.  “The Ghosting” director, Joey De Guzman, revs up the slow-motion and high-octane gunplay and the barreling running zombie action set to the tune of a “28 Days Later” type virus that quickly spreads through the one of major metropolises of the Pilipino microcosm.  Ays De Guzman, authorial designer of a few independent Pinoy horror of the past decade with the horror-comedy “Da Possessed” and the dysfunctional family thriller “Santigwar,” Ays bends himself down a different avenue of anxiety-gear terror that taps into a semblance of Zack Snyder caffeinated zombie-violence.  “Day Zero” remarks the return of the “Rabid” producing team of Glenn Mark Salamat, Michaela Reyes, and Stacy Bascon under the production banners of Reality MM Studios and Regal Entertainment.

Speaking about Zack Snyder, I’m convinced hiring a leading man who looks like a Dave Bautista doppelganger playing a large-and-in-charge ex-special forces is undoubtedly derived from Snyder’s 2021 “Army of the Dead.”  Also, a shaved head doesn’t help avoid the lookalike image as Brandon “The Truth” Vera exits the mixed-martial arts arena for greener, lower-impact pastures of the picture business.   The Filipino-American made his feature film debut in 2018 with BuyBust, a narcotics bust and drug war shootout actioner filmed in Manila, going back to his heritage roots to be featured in homegrown productions.  Vera’s latest bout with action “Day Zero” has ingrained much of the same hand-to-hand and weaponry discharging skirmishes except with zombies.  Much like Bautista, Vera’s a broad shouldered, big dude and he’s massive in the tight corridors of the building interior sets yet the former arena fighter just doesn’t bring his large and imposing presence to the screen, he also brings his agility and grace choreographing complex tussles with the forsaken fiends trying to feast on him and others.  Amongst the axe slashing, neck breaking, face impaling, and gunplay galore, Vera also shows his softer side being a puppy-eyed father attempting to connect with his 7 to 8 year old daughter for the first time and rationalize with her on why he didn’t want her to see him in prison.  The softer side of the Emon incorporeally clashes with the rough and ready former special forces kill machine, diluting his character by pulling him in different directions that never consummated a mesh of the two sides.  Instead, we’re delivered a better arc in his wife Sheryl (Mary Jean Lastimosa, “Santigwar”) with initial discomfort with Emon’s troublesome woes only to then understand his internal hardships.  Coming out on top after injury over injury, Sheryl becomes a survivor for not only her deaf daughter but also for Emon who has finally made it back into their lives.  Because the Republic of Philippines is geographically limited, “Day Zero” has a relatively convey Pinoy cast that have crossed paths on previous projects; these actors and actresses include Pepe Herrera, Freya Fury Montierro, Yohance Levi Buie, Joey Marquez, Jema Galanza, Ricci Rivero, Shermaine Santiago, and Jovit Moya.

“Day Zero” is enjoyable, zombie destroying cannonade without the supplements of a patient zero other than radio chatter on the dengue fever mutation.  The well-traversed plot doesn’t ring any originality bells and adds nothing new overall to the zombie canon in what’s simplistically a good-ole fashion romp of the routine.  What Joey De Guzman renders well is progressing the intensity from a slow setup of familiarizing ourselves with Emon and his family to turning up the volume on the convulsing savagery between the rampaging infected and Emon busting out his full-on commando skillset that can eliminate scads of a charging herd.  Guzman’s able to deliver fast action and decent camera work with some satisfying scenes of sanguine splatter.  The sound design of the zombie war cry hones in on the maddening and frightening being cornered and out of options as survivors scatter in a deemed-derelict apartment building with junk-riddled hallways and sturdy but thin cardboard doors, the latter may denote poor set design, but the overall look and feel of enveloping darkness and cluttered walking spaces makes “Day Zero” have that original Resident Evil 2 environment atmosphere to a point.  By no means am I comparing “Day Zero’s” acclaim to the popular 90’s sequel of iconic survival horror but the narrative also plays into a similar storyline scenario which, ironically enough, is more parallel to the franchise than Paul W.S. Anderson’s adaptations aside from the lack of a diabolically Umbrella corporation.  Guzman shows his influencing hand with his latest venture and comes out unscathed with a tachycardia zombie-action movie that won’t flatline on you.

Not the usually novel, alternative horror Well Go USA Entertainment has released onto Blu-ray as of late, but “Day Zero” is no zero on our book with its nonstop, large scale, and gripping action on a limited budget.  The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25 is presented in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio.  Graded with a grim cinereal of cadet blue and turquoise, the image has a nipping and snappy delineation within the heavily shadowed interiors with exteriors often bright but still greatly detailed and contoured for depth.  No issues with the format storage and transfer compression within those shadowy compartments that amply decode, or rather unload, the visual markers, perhaps aided by the limited color scale.  The Filipino, mixed with a smidgen of English, DTS-HD 5.1 track has immense depth surrounding the zombie war cry, hitting those rear channels nicely for distinct localization.  Though a lot of action is in confined spaces, depth also translate well to other environmental aspects of the sound design.  Muzzle fire has a brawniness with a consistent impact complimenting the nonstop action.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and intelligible with optional, error-free English subtitles in synch with the narrative flow.  Usually, Well Go Entertainment releases have promotional behind-the-scenes and interviews, special effects insight, or something in the bonus features content but, alas, this particular release only sees itself into our players with the film’s trailer on the static menu.  Same goes with the omitted slipcover that was present in their two previous horror releases. The Blu-ray is housed in a standard snapper case with Vera peering intently forward overtop a near silhouette of an apocalyptic Pinoy street with an odd, near-skeletal figure at the top right adjacent to Vera’s right shoulder and standing on a roof.  This particular, pretty-cool designed character is not in the film.  While the front cover can grab a prospective buyer or renter’s attention, the back cover diminuendos “Day Zero’s” appeal with a prominently goofy, white-eyed infected in the middle looking stupor than scary.  Inside, an advert tableau of other Well GO USA distributions, such as Donnie Yen’s “Sakra,” “The Tank,” and Jackie Chan’s “Ride On,” fill the insert section, which may vary per batch made.  Pressed disc art resembles “Evil Dead” with a red background and a profiled hand reaching upward.  Region A locked, the feature comes not rated at 82 minutes long.  “Day Zero” is my first Filipino horror film experience in nearly four years with the last being 1971’s “Beast of the Yellow Night” and continues to always be a pleasing sit-down with its taste for terror no matter how hackneyed or homage traced. 

“Day Zero” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment

Breathtaking, Private, and Full of Blood-Hungry, EVIL Amphibians! “The Tank” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Tank” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

A financially struggling San Franscisco family of three learn their recently deceased grandmother had a large, secluded property on the oceanic foothills of Oregan. The coastal property was kept a secret for 30 years from the mentally unstable woman’s youngest child, the father, for reasons unknown. Rundown and off the beaten path, the vast acreage promises lucrative income from interested land developers at a time when the family needs the money the most. Included with the home is a water tank system built into the cliffside that can house thousands of gallons of fresh water underground from a nearby spring. Activating the system awakens a sinister breed of anophthalmia creatures, revealed to have plagued the family for generations and answers a number of troublesome family secrets that now terrorize the current inhabitants.

Initially beginning the backstory of a vital family turning point stemmed in the 1940s, “The Tank” succeeds 30 years later in the 1970’s with an execrable house understanding with a loving but desperately coursed family walks into its deadly den and sharp-teethed, subterranean dwelling. The creature feature thriller is the sophomore feature written-and-directed by New Zealand filmmaker Scott Walker, ten years after the director’s debut full-length biographical drama “The Frozen Ground,” starring John Cusack and Nicholas Cage. “The Tank’s theme toils with the troubling idiom, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, as opportunity turns oppressive when ignoring red flag secrets and throwing caution to the wind when taking chances for the love of your family to relieve financial troubles. The looming debt and inevitable curiosity, who we all know killed the cat, sends a family into the fire, produced by Walker, wife Minna, and Lesley Hansen and is a coproduction from Ajax Pictures, General Film Corporation, and Happy Dog Entertainment with Ingenious Media presenting.

“The Tank” contains a slim six characters: three principals and a handful of support. However, another can be added to the list but in a non-speaking role, unless you consider Regina Hegemann and her contortionist craft as an articulate performance with her hands, feet, arms, legs, and, well, her entire body. In fact, I do consider those crooked twists and bends of a slender anatomy to be able to speak louder than words sometimes – think the archetypical Doug Jones. Hegemann’s debut film role builds a gap in between the contortionist’s regular vocational circus acts and instructions of physical sinuous spiraling of the human body to bring practical effects to slithering, vicious life in “The Tank’s” underground dwelling monsters – yes, she plays more than just one creature. Hegemann’s innumerable creatures are pitted up against a nuclear family made up of a strictly New Zealand cast beginning with Matt Whelan as Ben, the father and inheritor of the secluded cliffside cabin whose drowning in family closet skeletons and ambiguity, Luciane Buchanan as Ben’s wife Jules who drowns in a different way with debt as she tries to earn her degree in zoology while raising a family and running a pet shop, and Zara Nausbaum as daughter Reia caught in the middle of her parent’s woes and in the clutches of the undiscovered and eyeless salamander never imagined to be extant. With a secret home laid out in Ben’s mother’s postmortem belongings, an opportunity to dig themselves out of debt seems now feasible for a family treading profusely to keep their head above water, but the script only nibbles at what the family is doing at the cottage. Sure, a real estate agent comes a-knocking to offer them an interested buyer’s more than generous offer to build upon the land, but that doesn’t keep the family from loafing about the property, reissuing a there’s always tomorrow stance even when all their current problems can be obliterated with a firm yes. Instead, thinking about the supposedly large offer doesn’t quite kickstart negotiates but rather belays the inevitable, a family’s forgotten dark and dastardly secret is now gnawing on them – literally. Ascia Maybury, Graham Vincent, Mark Mitchinson, Holly Shervie, and Jack Barry fill “The Tank’s” cast list up.

Following up on “The Tank’s” main theme of some family secrets should never be explored, investigated, dug up, analyzed, or even the slightest looked for its potential value because the secret is secret for a reason. Usually, those grounds are odiously detrimental and, in this case, the grounds have hidden a longstanding life form unbeknownst to man. “The Tank” has a hard time selling the message with the one most affected by the family’s history, with a father and sister having perished under mysterious circumstances and a mother committed to a mental institute, having little interest in unravelling the truth. Instead, the reverse happens when Jules immerses herself into Ben’s past, unable to shake the freaky feeling of the cabin’s ominous atmosphere and checkered past around the land that had claimed the lives of her husband’s father and sister. Jules continues to surpass her husband’s faults and failings with a reminiscent climatic “Aliens” strap up for battle when her child is snatched by the insidious creatures, with attributes and coloring very similar to the xenomorph but on a smaller scale and telluric, and to their water-filled, underground tank-habitat. Using an aerosol flamethrower, we again get that Ellen Ripley vibe as she uses her motherly strength to go toe-to-toe with a terrestrial creature who took down a well-built cop with a gun. All the while Jules wades through multiple encounters with the slippery salamander with razor sharp teeth, her husband Ben, who had previously failed in collapsing the cavern with explosives, becomes invalid with injury and so she stands alone up into the final act of one-lining a car creeping-in creature with, “Get out of my car!,” before shooting it’s head off with the dead cop’s sidearm. Comparably not as influential or heavy-duty with force and violence as “Aliens,” “The Tank” still manages to hold water with a strong, female heroine willing to jump into the jaws of death to fight for her child without backup.

“The Tank” doesn’t run empty with a solid Blu-ray release from Well Go USA Entertainment. The AVC encoded BD50 is presented in 1080p, high-definition, in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Faced with a lot of low-lighting scenes, the digitally captured picture offers up good detail levels with spotty compression banding when introducing light into darker scenes. The larger format storage leans to non-compromised video quality that provides enough storage to maintain consistent grading stability and pixel sharpness all along the way. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix provides a wide-berth of sound elements that hit in the right audio channels. I found dialogue to be quite soft, especially against the prehistoric boom-roar of the creature resonating across the channel board, but the overall dialogue track is clean and clear despite its lack of boost. “The Tank” features fair range elements involving the slinking creatures, cabin creakiness, and outdoor ambience; this also includes a well-rounded depth to create space albeit the creature’s ferocious roar that doesn’t have any directional positioning and swallows output space. Bonus features include A Look into the Tank – a compositional cut of cast and director interviews regarding their experiences in the making of the film, Making the Creature is a full-blown look from spark idea to complete realization of the creature-look and design to fit the outward and physical capabilities of Regina Hegemann’s contortionist craft, and the original Well Go USA trailer to bring up the rear. The Blu-ray comes in traditional casing with latch with an advert insert on the inside for three other Well Go USA Entertainment titles. Though not as sexy as some other covers, the still highly effective front cover embodies the mysterious circumstance of looking into the belly of a dark-laden tank. The region A encoded Blu is rated R and has a runtime of approx. 100 minutes. A salamandroid reservoir that supplies a deluge dose of devilish, aquatic quadrupeds, “The Tank” is yet another title of alternative, out-of-the-box horror courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment!

“The Tank” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

Break a Promise with EVIL And Pay the Little-Big Price! “Unwelcome” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Not the Leprechauns This Time.  It’d Be Goblins that “Unwelcome” You!  

Trying desperately to become pregnant for some time, Jamie and Maya celebrate the news of learning they’re expecting but their jovial rejoice is cut short when three thugs break into their city apartment home, nearly bringing an end to their lives and the baby.  When Jamie’s great aunt Maeve wills him a rural cottage in Ireland, the married couple jump at the chance to start afresh away from the urban chaos and the trauma in hopes for a peaceful life with their child.  The friendly village residents take in Jamie and Maya unconditionally but one stipulation is highly encouraged to be met if living at great aunt Maeve’s cottage:  they must leave out a blood offering for the little people, the Redcaps, of the forest butted up against their home.   Just happy to be out of the city, Jamie and Maya shrug off what they believe to be folkloric wives tales of old Ireland and on such short notice, they hire Mr. Whelan and his children, who come with an unfavorable village reputation, to do much-needed repairs around the house.  When dealings with the Whelan clan go violently sideways, Maya invokes superstitious belief to draw the Repcaps out of hiding and implore their murderous mischievousness for dire neighborly assistance. 

Welcome to the “Unwelcome!”  Pint-sized evil continues to be mondo popular around the world, especially in the Full Moon empire that’s built a kingdom off the backs of supernatural ankle biters.  However, “Unwelcome” is not a Charles Band production that’s rushed straight through to a fast-tracked, direct-to-video release of shoddy, schlocky proportions.  Instead, this release comes from overseas, the UK specifically, with some quality production footing that lands the 2023 released film into a limited theatrical run before hitting the home entertainment market.  Behind the film is Jon Wright, director of dark humored revenge against high school bullies in the “Tormented,” who directs and co-writes “Unwelcome’s” grim fairytale-like narrative of personal growth, inner fight, and underfoot goblins gone wild with Mark Stay, reuniting with Wright for the first time since their script collaboration on the 2014 automaton invasion epic, “Robot Overlords.”  Under the once working title of “The Little People,” “Unwelcome” is a production of the Yorkshire based Tempo Productions Limited, with cofounders by Jo Bamford and Piers Tempest as executive producer and producer, and the private equity investment group, Ingenious Media, with producer Peter Touche along with Warner Bros. and Well Go USA Entertainment distributing. 

“Unwelcome” has such unusual casting in a good way.  The entire Whelan clan consists of actors plucked from successful, multi-seasonal television shows that have essentially shaped their careers from their well-known, fan-adored roles, but the unintended adverse effect in such triumph stamina is being recognized only for that performance.  In my mind, Colm Meaney will forever be embedded in my hippocampus as Engineer Chief Miles O’Brien from “Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine.”  “Con Air,” “Under Siege,” and even as a British Airways pilot doomed for landing in “Die Hard 2,” Chief O’Brien, I mean Colm Meaney, is still in space tinkering with transporter buffers.  Here in “Unwelcome,” Meany is Daddy, aka Mr. Whelan, a rough around the edge contractor who beats his kids, let them get away with whatever they please, and has a real notoriety around town.  When I say kids, I mean grown adults stuck in Daddy’s hooligan wake and are played by more outstanding and familiar faces from Ireland, such as Hodor from “Game of Thrones,” Kristian Naim, Netflix’s “Derry Girls’s” Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, and the “1917” actor and upcoming principals of “Last Voyage of the Demeter,” Chris Walley, make up the trio of terribly laid construction workers who have really no business being around a hammer, a ladder, or anybody’s valuables.  That brings me to “Unwelcome’s” lead actors as the scarred couple who hires out Whelan’s band of delinquent spawns to do the handiwork repairs.  I realize Wright and Stay wrote Douglas Booth (“Pride, Prejudice, & Zombies”) to be an overly optimistic and fairly useless good guy with Jamie, but the insecurities are just ostentatiously oozing out of the husband without a clue.  Jamie’s arc also doesn’t quite flesh out by the end of the film as he’s blocked by the baby mama instincts of Maya, played by “Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City’s” Hannah John-Kamen, with an unspoken I’ll-do-it-my-damn-self attitude that sends the narrative into a knife-brandishing gob of Redcaps eager to do her bidding for an unfavorable exchange.  Maya sacrifices all for a good man with good intentions who can’t do diddlysquat to save her and, in the end, that doesn’t seem balanced for this ferocious fairytale. 

If there is one aspect, above all us, to note about “Unwelcome’s” shin kicking goblins as a takeaway is that the rambunctious and ravenous Redcaps are not computer generated, are not puppets, and are not even animatronics.  Actors and stuntmen fill those small shows with a little help of disproportionate movie magic, heeding to the ways of a lost art in miniaturizing actors, such as in “Willow” or “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” and touching up with some CGI on the tangible face molds for a layered composition that’s super fun to see come to life on screen.  Unfortunately, the Redcaps make a late appearance into a yarn unspooled with mostly the pent up pile of frustrations of Jamie and Maya as an unlucky couple without a chance of peace in the world.  Trouble finds them wherever they go in what’s essentially a trade for city thugs for unfriendly country versions of the same type of ill-mannered.  “Unwelcome” plays very much into it’s title that no place feels welcoming for a couple on the verge of the already daunting premise of parenthood life and everything appears now alien as the world is being upended by concessions for your child in what has turned terrifying in what was supposed to be a warm, welcoming of a new adventure.  That’s the sensation setup for the pair who trust dip into trusting superstitions and magical beings to be their guardians.  Folklore then takes over; its has, in fact, been welcomed to save the day no matter how maligned the backstories.  Wright and cinematographer Hamish Doyne-Ditmas do, in fact, construct an ocular stage crafted out of an ethereal red and yellow fire lit sky with an overall color theory toned to contrast as a mystical storybook set in what is usually flush with greenery around an Irish village, reminiscent of late 70s-early 80’s European horror sets built to detailed scale, built with vibrant backlighting, and yet built to feel distant, apprehensively off, and strange like another world, a Redcap ecosphere.  “Unwelcome’s” ending also pulls from that unabashed time to be creatively mad in an innately mad universe with an unexpected Redcap reason that doesn’t clarify so much their hunger for blood offers, which the diet includes raw store-bought meat and the frothy flesh of felonious individuals, but better explains their twisted promises and intentions for their knife-jabbing services rendered.

With Goblins, there’s always a price to pay but for the Blu-ray release of “Unwelcome,” the price is worth the admission.  The single-layered, AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p Well Go USA Entertainment release presents the film in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Slightly squeeze onto a BD25, there’s some minor irregular compression patches that degrade solid darker colors and the image loses a bit of sharpness in the background – you can see an example when the Redcaps pop up out of the keep tower appearing more like moving globules than well-defined humanoids.  Goblin facial features and skin and clothes textures have tactile appeal during closeups with the same being said with the cast in their natural color tones.  Computer-generated facial movements have seamless pertinence to the surrounding action and the motion of the Goblin actors themselves with layering of frames looking clean to create their smallness around principal characters.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix maintains a stout dialogue track but deploys no depth into recordings resulting in all the dialogue tracks to be at the forefront, even when characters are in the background in the scene.  The weird spatiality with the dialogue doesn’t translate over to ambient noise as those tracks are well designed into the scheme with levels of depth that add richness to the storybook atmospherics.  English SDH are optionally available.  Bonus features include a behind-the-scenes cast and crew interviews discussing their time forming the idea and working on the project, a making the Redcaps segment with special effects supervisor Shaune Harrison (“Nightbreed,” “Attack of the Adult Babies”) discussing the step-be-step process of bringing these little devils to life, including showcasing their head and body molds, and the theatrical trailer. The physical property comes in a standard Blu-ray snapper with latch with one-sided cover art of a knife-out Goblin starring up at the new mistress of the house.  Inside, a single-leaf advert of Well Go USA films and the disc pressed art with a blue-graded Goblin looking menacing makeup the inner contents. “Unwelcome” runs at 101 minutes, is rated R for strong violence and gore, pervasive language, some drug use, and sexual material. From an ironic perspective, “Unwelcome” uses the mythological mischievous of Goblins as a gas pedal accelerator to mature a pair of genteel gulls faced with a parlous reality and to be factotum in life in general told inside in the linings of a dark and gory fairytale universe.

Not the Leprechauns This Time.  It’d Be Goblins that “Unwelcome” You!  

EVIL Embarks with Cons and Cops in “Project Wolf Hunting” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Project Wolf Hunting” on Blu-ray and Available for Purchase by Clicking the Cover Art!

After a disastrous Philippines-to-Korea extradition processing of criminals that resulted in an airport suicidal bombing with multiple casualties, the procedure to transport dangerous criminals moves to a decommissioned Cargo ship known as the Frontier Titan.  The 3-day journey is expected to be a safer option to extradite Korea’s most wanted as highly trained and experienced detective accompany the criminals as armed escorts.  Every contingent has been covered except for what lies in the belly of the cargo ship.  Hidden in the bowel, underneath the engine room, a top secret biological weapon, involving an ancient wartime prisoner’s chromosomes commingled with the agility, strength, and prowess of a wolf, being transported across the sea.  When the criminals plan an elaborate seizing of the ship, the monstrous hybrid man known as Alpha is also inadvertently released and kills his caretakers, leaving him free to roam the ship and engage the good and bad guys alike as fair game to hunt.

Only a handful of times in my life have I’ve seen a film with so much blood.  “Project Wolf Hunting” is one of the bloodiest, most violent, Korean films to come out of 2022.  The hybrid action-horror with a genetically hybrid superhuman is the latest effort from writer-director Hongsun Kim, sticking with the horror genre after his positive reviewed 2019 evil spirit family drama “Byeonshin.”  The title, in reference to the operation of transporting Alpha through to East China Sea, into the Korean Strait, and dock at Busan, is the international marketing title for the Korean name “Neugdaesanyang” and is a film I can confidently and merely describe as “Predator” meets “Con Air” on a cargo ship.  Seasoned civic officers of the law, hardened criminals with sordid pasts, a special op consisted of superhuman soldiers are up against the odds to stop the Alpha, the original specimen.  Film between the ports of Busan, Korea and Manilla, Philippines, “Project Wolf Hunting” is the Korean venture production from Content G with Gu Seaon-mok serving as producer and is presented theatrical by The Contents On in association with CJ CGV.

What’s interesting about Korean cinema is what you know what you’re getting with the characters who are greatly upfront, unpretentious, and full of attitude.  There are not a lot of false veneers with the cast of characters, something that can be said with most films spawned out from the Asia Pacific industry.  I might dangerously be overgeneralizing but from my viewings and writeups, but I’m fairly locked into my statement with confidence as “Project Wolf Hunting” paints a stark contrast of who’s who from the beginning without casting any doubt or even suspicion. Even with the some of the ship’s crew, Hongsun Kim clearly delineates their allegiances despite not coming right out with it initially and the cast immerse themselves into the appointed role with well-designed idiosyncrasies that seeing them out of character can be a bit of shock. Park Jong-doo perhaps is the most archetypical with Seo In-Guk, in his first feature performance, becoming the despot amongst the thieves. Guk transforms his appearance with full body tattoos to denote mafioso status and even takes that extra step with a few naked from the rear scenes to establish a conspicuous nonchalance for what anyone else has to think, say, or do. When many of the insurrectionary inmates take the ship, Jong-doo’s counterpart, Lee Do-il, isn’t so easily intimidated but is reserved and quiet in his strong posture. Dong-Yoon Jang offers a less violent option only to bide time for what’s ahead of them, the Alpha. Gwi-hwa Choi, who been hot right now in Korean cinema with having roles in “Train to Busan” and “The Wailing,” is the extraordinary and mysterious monster prowling to kill every single person on and off the ship’s manifest. With Alpha’s eyes stapled shut, maggots feeding off the festering tissue inside his mouth, and has a near spartan approach to liquidating, Choi completely transforms into the silent hunter with unstoppable and wild violent mode, but Alpha is only a name and the implicit meaning of the name does change hands throughout the course of the film that makes “Project Wolf Hunting” all that more the interesting. Female principals are not meek, weak, or helpless in his all-out brawl in a confined space with Jung So-Min as an eager cop with acumen and Jang Young-Nam as the dangerously uncouth companion to one of the mafia’s leadership and the fact that none of them are a love interest, or become even remotely involved romantically, sexually, or even innocently, speaks volumes on “Project Wolf Hunt’s” no room for romance rampage. The large cast lends to a high body and the acting pool rounds out with Dong-il Sung (“Byeonshin”), Park Ho-San (“The Call”), Chang-Seok Ko (“Lady Vengeance”), Lee Sung-wook (“Spiritwalker”), Jung Moon-sung (“The Cursed”), and Son Jong-hak (“Thirst”).

There’s so much blood. That statement was worth repeating. “Project Wolf Hunt” is reminiscent of the Japanese samurai films of yore or the absurd comedy gore film with geyser sprays of red with every blow.  Literally, tons of fake blood was used to coat the sets crimson in an impressive feat of movie magic carnage.  I’m also doubly impressed how the special effects team was able to achieve multiple sprays from out of the nostril cavities in what might seems small, insignificant, and simple looks amazingly palpable on screen that stopping to think about the difficulty in how that effect can be accomplished can be easily overlooked.  The blood sprays are only a fraction of the wide variety of violence and gore put on display and we’re treated to an abundance of slaughter and a superb, choreographed melee in each and every tightly confined skirmish that makes “Project Wolf Hunting” captivatingly adrenalized.  Production design creates the illusion of a cargo ship without question and the visuals, though soft in some scenes, sell the nautical voyage through clear skies and a storm rough patch.  Much of a part of “Project Wolf Hunting’s” success is cinematographer Ju-Hwan Yun’s framing.  The example I like to use is the post-elevator attack when the hoisting cord snaps that sends the lift plummeting down the chute with Alpha inside.  Yun then sends the shot from the top down the chute to the exposed opening of a mangled lift to see Alpha turn his eye-stapled face upward toward the narrowly escaping prey.  The shot gets the heart pumping and relays, in one sequence, the unkillable nature of Alpha.  If “Project Wolf Hunting” isn’t already thrilling enough with the brimming, cutthroat tensions spilling onto every deck between the police detectives and the criminals in their custody, the evolutionary plot twist that welds the age-old divide between the two frictions is a bloodbath you don’t see coming and one you’ll enjoy experiencing. 

Action, horror, human experimentations, and with a complemental nod to the hard-hitting Asian cop films of 90’s, “Project Wolf Hunting” has teeth and stamina for 123 minutes of knockaround bloodshed. A winning Blu-ray release for Well Go USA Entertainment, the film is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The AVC encoded BD50 offers a topnotch 1080p resolution that translates well to the big screen with granular detail in the interior and exterior of the cargo ship set and displays the stylistic choice of a warm color scheme consisting of prominently yellows and greens, providing less shadowy, higher contrast areas to suggest there is nowhere survivors can hide. Though quite a bit of CGI throughout the film, the end result doesn’t appear half bad with more fleshed out textures built into the renders to make them less gummy-looking. The release offers four audio options – a Korean and dub English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and a Korean and dub English 2.0 stereo. Obviously, you receive more bang for your buck with the amped up surround sound option and don’t have to contend with dubbing if you go the original Korean language route. A high velocity range sounds strong through the rear channels with gunshots, the ship’s indiscreet hum, and the overall ricochets, clinks, and skirmish shuffles submerge an enveloping blanket of directional sounds right in your ears. The Korean dialogue is clean, clear, and vociferous in Korean inflections. English subtitles are optional and available well synched and error-free. Like status quo with other Well Go USA Entertainment releases, bonus features are an ornately produced, one-sided interview vignettes with the cast and crew and of the behind-the-scenes making of the film as well as a making of Alpha which was more actor Gwi-hwa Choi’s excitement about this different kind of role per his usual. The trailer is also available in the bonus content. Physical features include a traditional Blu-ray snapper with latch with the grisly, dirty face of Alpha blended into a black background. The film is unrated and is coded region A for disc playback. Despite minor convoluted expounding, “Project Wolf Hunting” kept the attention at high alert with a high body count, an indomitable super soldier, and a cargo ship load of blood.

“Project Wolf Hunting” on Blu-ray and Available for Purchase by Clicking the Cover Art!

Sometimes, You Can Feel EVIL Tightening Around Your Throat. “Death Knot” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Death Knot” Hangs Loose on Blu-ray! Purchase Your Copy Here!

Hari and his sister Eka receive the tragic news of their mother’s suicide.  They return to their rural childhood village home to attend her funeral and prepare arrangements for the family home, but the siblings are met with a cold shoulder as the locals have shunned their mother, fearing her as a black magic practitioner who made a pact with the Devil himself.  The suicide and the village distress illicit different responses in both children – Eka wants to put everything behind her and live her life in the city of Jakarta. While Hari drowns himself of guilt over his mother’s death as he hasn’t visited his mother in years and wants to cherish the time left of his mother’s house, despite the not so pleasant childhood memories of his mother’s descent into mental instability.  When a upcoming storm makes leaving the village impossible, in what the superstitious locals note as The Harvest to claim souls, Hari, Ek, and Eka’s husband, Aldi, are forced to stay the night and that’s when strange visions and odd behaviors evoke the presence malevolent entity, an ancient deity, to beleaguer Hari and Eka into submitting to its will.   

Not too many Indonesian horror films see the light of day, buried beneath the massive manufacturing machine from the West, such as North America and Europe, that churns out films about every 8 seconds, the same rate in which babies are born at in the U.S, but that doesn’t mean the country known for its idyllic 17,000 islands and Buddha temples doesn’t have a repertoire of horror. In fact, obscure cult celluloids like “Lady Terminator” and “Satan Slaves,” known to those with indie horror running through their veins like crack cocaine, are the exemplar of the scarcely noticed Indo-horror collective and now that modern technology provides streaming servies far and wide from every corner of the world and advances in filmmaking make accessibility and recording film considerably cheaper and easier to complete, getting exposure becomes greater to other titles mostly hidden gems from the rest of the narrowed focused general population. Point in case, Cornelio Sunny’s “Death Knot” debuts his occult thriller that incorporated the grimly prophesized myth known as the pulung gantung that speaks of a great, fiery meteor being a harbinger of suicide and in Indonesia, the most common suicide method is by gantung aka hanging. “Death Knot,” also known as “Tali Mati,” isn’t the only film based on the myth, but what separates this film from other myth-based works is that the pulung gantung is still relevant today with highly resolute belief amongst the underprivileged and poorer neighborhoods. Sunny co-wrote the script with Ike Klose and is produced by Ismail Basbeth under Sunny’s company banner Matta Cinema in association with Kathanika Entertainment, SRN, and Umbara Brothers.

To ensure his debut directorial goes without a hitch, Sunny slides into the lead role of Hari and how Sunny and Klose write the character counterintuitively to screenplay 101 by not building him up, providing background, or instill preconceived notions through the acts. Hari’s a clean slate from start to near finish from scene one that involves him waking out of a horrible dream about his mother after briefly texting his sister. Written to have no depth in existing or having interests in anything, Hari’s hyper-focus is his mother’s legacy and commorancy, leaving his current mundane left in Jakarta to worry about his decease mother he hasn’t seen or talk to in years. Sunny is swarthy handsome, strong in subdued stubbornness, and limits his range toward his character in being the nondescript nonbeliever of occultism that innately scares the dickens out the poor village people. Hari and sister Eka (model/actress Widika Sidmore, “May the Devil Take You Too”) toss crumbs of background about growing up with an absent father and a community abhorred mother but appear unruffled by a broken home and, for the most part, shrug much of that rich backstory from their tabled history. Sidmore does a better job bottling Eka’ fear and loathing of a place that dejects her existence as villagers shun them for their devil pact bloodline and, eventually, the ooze of unwantedness seeps out of her to the point of being an emotional mess. Only when her loveable and amenable goofball husband, Adi (Morgan Oey, “The Deadly Love Poetry”), suddenly grows an obstinate backbone and refuses to leave the village, acting strange with an uncomfortably warped smile on his face as he fixates his glare deep into the forest, does Eka’s emotions pour toward a direction and hone in on a purpose until she, herself, falls into the same possessed-like predicament that befits her more than Adi but would be two perfectly ear-to-ear, Chesire cat-grinning candidates for Parker Finn’s horror-hit, “Smile.” The entity that has dominion over them isn’t so subtle, but Oey and Sidmore’s performances are, in a good way, awkwardly creepy and perfectly executed. Oey’s mimicking of a twist on the Balinese dance Hari’s mother performed in the opening scene before her demise and with what looks to be Hari’s mother silhouette impelling the dance in the shadows is “Death Knot’s” eeriest moment that lands traditionalism and supernaturalism into a single scene of shadows and visitants.

“Death Knot” is a slow burn, dread building, culture integrating, ambitious debut feature from actor-turned-director Cornelio Sunny.  Performance driven with little-to-no special effects, the surrounding morose atmospherics of “Death Knot” relies on the cast and it’s portentous, jump scare score to deliver a palpable fear without a perceptible villain, keeping very much in tune with one of Indonesia’s notorious folklores.  The limited budget constrains Sunny to character exposition and pursuance of self-selling the concept of an entity inhabiting friends and family with only their God-given talents and appearances to construct ominous opposition.  Descriptively, the notion sounds monotonous in tone, substandard in achieving a certain level of jitters, and gridlocked from a story perspective, but Sunny and his counterparts are able to feed the idle monster with energetic enthusiasm that turns the notion on its head with menacing and foreboding results, amplifying to one of the story’s other themes of paralyzing guilt that affects Hari from moving forward in life because of that equivocal estrangement between him and his mother.  However, one of the biggest problems to come out of “Death Knot” is the ambiguously fated ending for Hari, surrounded by a 50-yard radio of melee weapon-holding villagers like he’s been suddenly dropped in the middle of the Resident Evil 4 video game.  Perhaps not making the connection more evident, Sunny and Klose do faintly paint the picture of social class tensions with big city Hari, Eka, and Adi being met with aversion by the lower-class, rural village who have a strong belief system in the supernatural but is not a major clash or even an apprised motif represented only by a few aloof moments.  I was also hoping to see the myth’s harbinger of death with a great fireball in the sky to signify the beginning of The Harvest, aka hangings to usurp soul energies to feed the devilish deity, but that didn’t happen considering the budget for limited-to-no visual effects. 

“Death Knot” has this somber quality in its characters who are dropped into an unwelcoming village on a dark and stormy night scenario that puts a very Plutonian stamp on what kind Hell-crafted mark an ancient, malevolent God has left on forgotten land.  Well Go USA Entertainment picks up and distributes the home video rights to Cornelio Sunny’s debut hair-raising feature with a Blu-ray release. Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the cinematography by Gunna Nimpuno captures the elemental beauty of rural Indonesia with rolling fields as far as the eye can see and the integrated towns built into hills becomes one seamless graft of spartan man living humbling on nature. Night shot continuity is Nimpuno’s weakest link in the arrangements of shots between the house at night and the forest at night. Outside the house is a natural pitch black with little lighting other than a green gel or another warm color in the house exterior but the forest scenes, every single one, are glazed with blue tint during day shooting to fabricate night sequences. The reproduction compression on this AVE encoded BD25 is rather good with little-to-no signs of banding, artefacts, or other lossy content issues. The Indonesian DTS-HD 5.0 Master Audio is digitally a solid track with a lamentably fine, back of the mind, sound design harmonized with an intense summitting score. There are also no issues with the digital tracks, any audio compression, and each track plays its role in sundered channels, creating an omnidirectional biodome that immerses you into the Sunny’s intimate family curse. English subtitles are option and are well-synched with grammatical accuracy. Aside from the opening previews of other Well Go USA titles, there are no other bonus features with this release. The physical features include the traditional Blu-ray latching snapper with a creepy enough illustrated cover art of a small smiling evil figure standing and surrounded by an engulfing forest. Inside is a leaf insert advertising other new Well Go USA distributed films. The film is not rated with a region A coded playback and has a runtime of 101-minutes. Cornelio Sunny first efforts don’t go unnoticed as “Death Knot” hooks with a mystery that slowly unravels the ugly truth of material myth and renders a stagnant guilt out of a powerfully, paralyzing combination of estrangement and loss.

“Death Knot” Hangs Loose on Blu-ray! Purchase Your Copy Here!