Halloween 2010 B-Movie DVDs: Four
Boxes (2009/E1) + The Rig (2009/Anchor Bay) + The Dark Lurking (2009) + Demeking – The Sea Monster (2008) + Psycho Shark (all Cinema Epoch)
Picture: C
Sound: C (Boxes: C-) Extras: C/C- Main Programs: C- (Shark: D)
Continuing to look at the onslaught of Horror genre
releases for Halloween 2010, we turn to some silly titles on the DVD
format. Each of the five titles here are
as silly as they are unoriginal and that they are blatantly admitting to such
only confirms the lack of ambition throughout.
Four Boxes is the potentially interesting
story of a group of people who discover a webcam site where they can see a
mysterious figure planning for what apparently is a serious terrorist
attack. However, it becomes convoluted
very quickly even to the point of trivializing the subject matter. It had the most potential of the five here
and quickly implodes on itself. The Rig is Jaws on an oil tanker, down
to the cover art (see side cover image), but after the BP/Halliburton fiasco,
this seems even worse than it began as.
William Forsythe is among the wasted cast. The
Dark Lurking is a blatant Alien
rip-off that thinks by adding gunfire throughout and more gruesome graphics
that it is somehow updating the original or the genre. It is instead a yawner with nowhere to go and
its release is just trying to capitalize on the upcoming Alien Anthology
release on Blu-ray. Demeking – The Sea Monster is a sort of tribute to the original Gamera films (implied, those films are reviewed
elsewhere on this site) as a young man grows up expecting its title monster to
show up, but is he imagining this or are his instincts correct? It has some amusing moments, but its full
potential is sadly unrealized. Psycho Shark is only 66 minutes long
and wants to be a surreal take (spoof?) of a film like Jaws, but also like other Japanese productions in the genre. It just never works and should be thought of
as more of a short that went on too long.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image (2.35 X 1 on Lurking) is weak across the board, all
in their own ways, all originating in digital video that is usually low
definition or barely HD. Video Black is
an issue, along with detail, though Demeking
has the best color. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo is very limited in all cases to the poor quality of the recording,
except for Rig with its 5.1 mix that
is more like stretched-out stereo that sounds harsher than it should. Boxes
has especially bad audio with unintended weak points and dropouts.
Extras are few in all cases with trailers included, while Boxes adds Bloopers, Rig has a behind the scenes featurette
and feature length audio commentary and Lurking
has stills, Neitherworld short and a behind the scenes featurette.
- Nicholas Sheffo