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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Mystery > Death > Supernatural > Elvis & Annabelle (2007/Vivendi DVD)

Elvis & Annabelle (2007/Vivendi DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Feature: C-

 

 

Several comedies about a relationship that survived because one person saved the other person from beyond the grave have been made, but this has never worked beyond a concept or as a joke.  Usually it is linked to Halloween, maybe a hit record and always to the Horror genre, but Will Geiger’s Elvis & Annabelle (2007) tries to do it without most of the semantic trappings of the past.  It also is not an outright comedy, but the script by Geiger (who did a Free Willy sequel a few years later for home video) can’t pull it off; thus its long trip to home video.

 

Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) is Annabelle, a local beauty queen supported by her successful parents to have a nice life and future, but when she apparently dies, young morgue attendant Elvis (Max Minghella of The Social Network) kisses her and suddenly, she comes back to life!  From there, they fall for each other, but from there, they start to become doomed and the film quickly looses its grounding despite a supporting cast that includes Joe Mantegna, Mary Steenburgen and Keith Carradine.

 

The title characters are lite nods to southern stereotypes and the approach of doing a never-say-horror-film-horror-film does not work out, but at least Geiger tried something different, but in the end, it feels like a bad 1980s film minus any of the phoniness or fun.  Except for the actors, there is nothing much worth seeing here.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot in the Super 35mm format by Director of Photography Conrad W. Hall (Panic Room, The Punisher (2002)) and it has some good shots, but this transfer is soft and may not be representative of Hall’s work at its best here.  The look did not stay with me, but I would like to see this again on film and/or Blu-ray to compare.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is subtle and dialogue-based, with the surrounds (and a serious soundfield) ever kicking in.  A trailer is the only extra.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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