Tag Archives: Wicked Ones

There’s No EVIL Magic Cure for the Inevitable. “Bag of Lies” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

See What’s in the Bag! “Bag of Lies” on Blu-ray!

When everything seems to be going Matt and Claire’s way with a strong marital bond, a beautiful house, and rising careers, life throws them a nasty curveball – Claire is hit with inoperable, terminal cancer. Laid up in bed, her weak immune system and fleeting strength are spent on retching up the remains of the chemotherapy treatments she suddenly quits. Matt, under a considerable amount of pressure in losing his wife, has tried everything from conventional medical treatment to the snake oil practices of holistic cults. Desperate for a cure, Matt turns to a man and his bag. Not just any bag, but a bag given the right ritual and stated purpose will produce all that Mark desires and, in this case, the return of his wife’s good health. The man warns that rules must be followed and when Matt can’t uphold his end of the agreement, what he wishes for will still come true in a way most unpleasant.

“Bag of Lies” is the 2024 released supernatural thriller to boldly state that no matter whatever miracle cure is trialed or desperate attempted, one can’t stop the juggernaut of grim inevitability, and if somehow, someway one beats the momentous odds, nothing will ever be the same again or, perhaps, it will be worse.  Debuting his first feature, David Andrew James is the mastermind behind the screen treatment of the story, directing and writing the shooting script based off a story by Nick Laughlin, known for his art and props on “Wrong Turn” remake and “Bones and All,” and “Clever Girl” creator Joe Zappa that tackles one of the more painfully enduring occurrences of impending loss, the slow and excruciating rot of cancer that selfishly takes everything and all anyone, especially loved ones, can do is sit and watch the wasting away from internal consumption of being.  “Bag of Lies” is another Dread Presents and Traverse Terror collaboration, produced by Dread and Epic Picture’s Patrick Ewald and Matt Cleckner alongside Spencer Frazen, Joe Hui, Victoria McDevitt, Jake Heineke, and director David Andrew James.

One of the problems “Bag of Lies” has lies with the married couple Matt and Claire Quimby, played respectively by Patrick Taft and Brandi Botkin (“Bystanders,” “Wicked Ones”).  The problem is not chemistry as the affectionate teasing and relationship frustrations are the hallmarks done right to reflect any kind of amorous partnership on screen and the fact that Taft and Botkin have previously collaborated also makes establishing an already established couple a lot easier but the latter has been under different roles and conditions with Taft producing projects, such as “Wicked Ones,” and both also having roles in the same television series entitled “Wildfire” but overlapping only once in their own three episodes span.  The problem falls upon how their characters got to be where they are now and that creates an injustice to that particular unpleasant side of the story because the audience never experiences the good times the Quimby’s once had before cancer strikes at Claire, not even in a remote sense, and that ultimately fails them because its hard to fall long and hard if not privy to the height of their good fortune.  The lack of backstory extends to the supporting cast with Matt’s awfully empathetic cousin Harold (John Wells, “The Possessed”) who hangs around, brings over a 6-pack, and occasion reworks their basement to surprise Claire with an in-house music studio, more so the former two, and the mysterious man Al (Terry Tacontins) who offers or is sought out or is just happened upon, it’s unclear, the even more mysterious bag option to Matt with a vague understanding of instructions or the cost of what he’s about to unleash or sacrifice or both.  These supporting characters lack of reason for being a cog in the bigger machine seems happenstance rather than necessary to the progression or the problem in what evolves into more of a three-way triangle between Matt, Claire, and an unusual young woman sneaking into their house and property and has a quirky laugh and a dark circle on her palm, played by Madison Pullins (“Baby Oopsie: The Series”).  Aja Nicole and a Kayla Theis round out the cast as Matt’s doctor friend Gwen and local bartender Lilly who has loved one ailment issues that parallel to Matt.

The title “Bag of Lies” is a spin on the idiom a pack of lies, defined as a grouping of false statements or information led to deceit.  “Bag of Lies” plays and preys upon that deception of an all-in-one, quick-and-easy remedy aimed to be a cure-all when, in reality, the thing to solve all your problems is nothing but snake oil that builds hope out of desperation, that sees confidence stemmed from false promise, and instills blindness to the consequences it delivers.  David Andrew James favors suspending in disbelief more than what’s comfortable as Matt experiences haunting visions of ominous means to an end yet doesn’t seem too bothered to really dig into the background and so the story flounders in the second act with Matt just experience weird and frightening sights and sounds without even an attempt to explain, until near the end.  Frankly, if I kept seeing a quirky, quizzical madwoman constantly around and inside my house, the cops would be on speed dial.  Instead, Matt lets himself be silage for the taking, cut off from the rest of reality for the most part without ever going to the authorities, without ever confiding in his friends, nor without ever digesting his experiences and talking about it with his wife, who is usually part of the strange visional equation.  That isolation plays into the burdening effect of trying to beat the odds by doing it yourself and not asking for help, which is definitely being depicted here in Matt’s own surreal nightmare, but the lackadaisical effort and having one peculiar instance roll over him after another breaks down the story’s credibility.  Much like the cancerous rot that’s eating his wife from in the inside out, Matt’s own rot origins from being stagnant and it’s that do-nothing that bears the consequences of terrifying transfigurations in not only his sweet Claire but also in himself. 

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” interlocked with desperation and a melancholic longing is how the “Bag of Lies” shapes fictional hope around a wrenched inevitability, similar to what the French author Guy de Maupassant once said,, “ the only certainty is death.”  Dread and Epic Pictures brings home an unrated, AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD25. Presented in a widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio.  Brandt Hackney’s shadowy cinematographer has a fairly nature presence in natural daylight sequences but utilizes a quite a bit of low-level, low-frequency lighting to create a soft incandescence and low-contrast shadows spreads.  Much of the same textures and colors are shown over and over and without that breadth of diversity, comparing scene-by-scene details are more than slim but what’s apparent is subordinate to the atmospheric lighting, or lack thereof, to create moody, broody dark house settings with little light to expose detail and color.  Even in bar sequences, the dimness doesn’t allow detail.  The English audio offerings are a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. What’s uniquely about the “Bag of Lies” audio facet is the distinct distortional soundtrack by James Paul Bailey who, in his own words, could never recreate or repeat the score again because of the randomized tones and feedback produces by temperamental distortion boxes, overlayed and modulated to produce a one-of-a-kind soundtrack to parallel the rotting horror “Bag of Lies” corkscrews into. Dialogue does the job with a clean and clear rendering by an indifferently satisfying sort of humdrum performances unfazed by the surrounding sideshow of black bag magic and the curious curiosity that’s emerging vocally from within its capacity. There’s decent localized range within Quimby house with conversating interactions with a door or a vent in between, using post-production to fill in hurling diatribes from the basement below toward Matt in Claire’s voice. English and Spanish subtitles are optionally available. Special features include a brief behind-the-scenes featurette with cast interviews voicing their deconstructing opinions about the story. Though not listed on the back cover, there is a longer, more in-depth featurette around James Paul Bailey’s distortion oeuvre for the film that’s quite comprehensive, plus the film’s trailer and other Dread Presents film trailers. Physical features are just like all the other bare minimum Dread-Epic Pictures release with a standard Blu-ray Amaray and no inserts. The cover illustration has clunky written all over it with a photoshop job of what looks like a giant dirty taco, but it’s the titular bag, with a dirty disfigured hand reaching up and out. The release has a region A playback and has a runtime of 96 minutes.

Last Rites: Neither great nor is it terrible, “Bag of Lies” skips a few key steps toward being a promising indie horror and though the theme is poignant, fantastical, and infused with a jarring soundtrack, the ironic inevitability is there is no cure for what can’t be fixed.

See What’s in the Bag! “Bag of Lies” on Blu-ray!

EVIL is Released When the Rent is Due! “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Spooked by “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” on Blu-ray!  Purchase at Amazon.com!

Massachusetts native Laurel has been living in New York City for a few months with a roommate she barely knows or sees because of their opposite work schedules.  When Laura discovers her roommate’s dead body in their shared apartment, the living space no longer feels comfortable, and the uneasiness keeps her awake long after the police and coroners remove the body that has left them baffled with a cause of death.  The mystery of her roommate’s demise, the agony splayed on the corpse’s face, and knowing her lifeless body has been undiscovered for at least a couple of days just next door to her room leaves Laura shuddered to the point of reaching out to her ex-boyfriend to hear a friendly, comforting voice, but bizarre and supernatural occurrences slip Laura in a state of panic and fright with a presence that has suddenly haunted her urban home and with the unearthing of her roommate’s black magic paraphernalia and a demonic symbol under her bed, Laura just uncovered a hidden nightmare that would have been a life saver if listed in the roommate wanted newspaper ad.

Atmospherically creepy and part of the reason I don’t like having roommates, “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is the little known, highly effective supernatural haunt horror from writer-director Kurtis Spieler.  Spieler has crossed our paths previously with the 2013 released lowkey thriller under the guise of a werewolf with “Sheep Skin” distributed by Unearthed Films and the review came out on top with a positive write up that noted the film as “a fresh suspenseful spin on lycanthrope mythos.”  Since then, the American filmmaker has re-directed and completed the 1984, John Liu unfinished cult and martial arts actioner, “New York Ninja,” for a Vinegar Syndrome exclusive release and has also preceded his dead girl paranormal enigma model with “The Devil’s Well” that has a similar plot but with a found footage medium.  Spieler’s latest venture provides the opportunity to work again with a couple of actors from “Sheep Skin” under the banner of Invasive Image with the director co-producing alongside longtime collaborator and Invasive Image co-founder, Nicholas Papazoglou, and one of the film’s principal leads and “The Sadist” screenwriter, Frank Wihbey. 

“The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is one of those indie films that snags and headlines a genre icon to thrust the title into the spiraling coil of a massively oversaturated low-budget horror pool in the hopes that the film sticks to the now desensitized fans who have been burned too many times too often by radioactive junk.  The tactic is not always necessarily nefarious or a fool’s paradise to lure in fans into a schlock storm of insipid independent media as “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” proves that though the original “Friday the 13th” actress and scream queen, Adrienne King, might be the top billed, the actress is definitely not the star and the film still manages to provoke a keen spine-tingler with a lesser known and younger cast dipping their toes into the what King has already lapped twice, if not three times, over for decades.  King’s name becomes the proverbial foot in the door for new, upcoming talent for audiences to be exposed to, such as with Laura Dooling playing as, well, the spookily chipped away, panic-induced Laura.  Dooling immerses us into her character’s complete physical cutoff from friends and family as a woman stewing in an uncomfortable sixth sense that surrounds the disturbing faculties of her roommate’s death.  Dooling nails the superb chiller despite the one-sided act with no other cast to react off of for the majority of the runtime, paralleling her character’s isolation with her own to root out goosebumps unaccompanied.  King and Frank Wihbey head up the detective detail as the around-the-block Detective Richards and the fresh understudy Detective Miller.  The older woman, younger man character dynamic rides a similar trajectory to their professional colleague one and I’m not talking about cougars, if that is where your mind take you.  Though she certainly can be a cougar if she wanted to, King is more of a mentor on camera than she is off camera, playing the seasoned detective who warns the ambitious Miller not to get involved with active case women.  Wihbey’s a suitable fit as the double-edged sword eager rookie to King’s cooler, calmer approach to bestow path-treaded wisdom for a reason.  One of the highlighted performances stems from “Sheep Skin” actor Michael Shantaz, a tall and intimidating presence that sizes up Dooling’s terror tenfold from the very first scenes of the deceased’s dazed boyfriend Derrick crossing the threshold into Laura’s apartment.  Subdued and stony-faced, Shantaz adds to the tangible terror in contrast to the paranormal one at hand, yet both are ostensibly woven from the same thread.  Fellow “Sheep Skin” actor Bryan Manley Davis along with Jasmine Peck and Jennie Osterman (“Dickshark”) fill out the cast.

I’m always intrigue, or maybe just easily entertained, by titles that goad into viewership for the simple fact of fulfilling title-spurred questions with answers.  The title “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” elicits many unexplained uncertainties that become an itch you can’t scratch until the end credits fade to black.  I want to know who is the Dead Girl?  Why is she dead?  What’s terribly important about the specified Apartment 03?  Do the Dead Girl and Apartment 03 correlate more significantly somehow in the story?  All these internal queries, prompted by a non-generic, puzzling title, are just cascading through the mind in a deluge of I-gotta-knows and for the most part, the team behind the quaint thriller does rub the itch to a smoothed over satisfaction while also working the edits, the angles, the sound design, and the lighting toward a decent scary movie.  What’s fascinating about the story is the exploration of the immediate after when Laura is left shivering in shock, solitude, and a sense of grim thought knowing she’s been living with a corpse for the last 48 hours.   She hits all the stages of a post-traumatic situation by reaching out to family and friends, diving into comforts like making tea or taking a shower, and even finding ways to keep busy and remove the macabre image from her mind by cleaning up the crime scene herself.  That portion of etching into Laura’s psyche distracts her in an ironic, detrimental way because as she attempting to self-soothe by any means possible, she oblivious to the grotesque presence coming and going and in-and-out of the negative space with its body jerking as it glares at Laura with blood running down it’s shirt.  Laura is also not cognizant of the things that go bump in the night as they barely make a blip on her radar or trigger her into a deeper stage of fright until it’s too late.  The climatic ending stretches the story further into love hexes and demonic contracts that perk up the ears in interest as the story gets into the nitty-gritty of details of what’s happening and why but doesn’t quite reach the finish line of resolve with a deflated conclusion that supposed to leave you shocked when it really just leaves you. 

Not your typical bottom-of-the-barrel budgeted or gore-drenched debauchery Wild Eye Release, “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” looks and feels like a big-budget ghost film with all the muscle-seizing suspense.  The bold independent home video distributor delivers the Kurtis Spieler picture onto a Blu-ray collector’s edition, which, again, is atypical for the label.  The AVC encoded, high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray is presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Spieler has defined himself as a master of the negative space and, fortunately, there’s no lossy image from a deficient compression, leaving a crisp view of the lurking, crooked dead entity soon to fill the void or not as the director tends to position the camera for an uncertain possibility.  Details are relatively good within a muted color scheme and many of scenes are dark lit, bordering on a neutral to high contrast with a palpable delineation, with only the dead girl’s room projecting a stony mustard illumination and spotted moments of candle and hand torch lighting.  Other scenes, more so involving Detective Richards and Miller, dip into the cop-noir with gel and back lighting that looks vivid and mysterious on screen.  The surprisingly backwards tech of the English language LPCM stereo relies heavily on dialogue than ambient jolts of jumps scare sounds though there are a few, effective examples about and is balanced well with the dialogue that is a little on the mumbling side but comprehensible and free of obstruction, interference, sound design, or otherwise. The dual channel stereo works and is adequate for the size of the picture that doesn’t require a multi-channel audio format as there are no explosions, whirring bullets, or a large cast to create depth range.  Soundtrack composed by Connecticut based, VHS-inspired synthwave artist, Brian Burdzy – aka Satanic Panic ’81, delivers a low and lively and often deadened (pun intended) but rhythmic sound reminiscence of John Carpenter scores that gives Spieler’s film a very “Halloween” vibe. Aforesaid, Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t accompany a ton of special feature material with their releases unless on their Visual Vengeance sister label but the seemingly new special edition line, in conjunction with a regular standard release, bears more supplementals for the storage.  An audio commentary with filmmaker Kurtis Spieler , a behind-the-scenes featurette featuring cast and crew retrospective interviews of their time on the film, Spieler’s 2011 short western thriller “No Remorse for Bloodshed” (though mistitled on the back cover as “No Remorse Bloodshed,” Take 3S Video – a montage of actress Laura Dooling humorously pretending to be clipped by the marker clapper on third takes, an image gallery, and Wild Eye Releasing trailers of “Smoke and Mirrors,” “Wicked Ones,” and “The Bloody Man.”  The physical aspects of the release include a clear Blu-ray latch snapper with a macabre illustration of the titular dead girl holding a knife on the front cover, as you’ll see in the image below for the trailer.  The cover art is reversible with a still image of Laura Dooling in one of the more thrilling scenes on the reverse side.  Inside the snapper insert is a folded mini poster of the SE’s O-case slipcover with another illustration of two more characters in a 70s inspired retro design.  The region free, unrated film clocks in with a 72-minute runtime – an easy, breezy thriller with punch.  “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is a perfect selection for a Halloween night movie. An eerie apparitional residuum that’s character-driven, tense, and thoroughly carried by the small cast.

Get Spooked by “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” on Blu-ray!  Purchase at Amazon.com!