Bereavement (2010/Anchor Bay)/Blood Simple
(1985/MGM)/The Entitled (2011/Anchor
Bay)/A Horrible Way To Die
(2011/Anchor Bay)/The Perfect Host
(2010/Magnolia/Blu-rays)
Picture: B-/B-/B-/C+/B- Sound: B- Extras: D/C+/C/C-/C+ Films: D/B-/C+/C-/C+
Sometimes
thrillers work and more often they do not, as these five releases will show.
Stevan
Mena’s Bereavement (2010) is a very
belated and highly unnecessary prequel to the overrated Malevolence (2004) which we did not care for much when it came out a
good few years ago. I did not like it
and thought it was dumb, as did one of our Horror experts at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2561/Malevolence+(Divimax)
The
prequel wants to tell the unnecessary back story about the killer and is really
a torture porn piece trying to imitate John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) in the most idiotic ways. Wow is this bad and pointless, with Mr. Mena
highly overrated and obviously oblivious to the concept of suspense. Extras include his feature length audio
commentary (try not to laugh if you dare listen it), two featurettes, TV Spot,
Still Montage, lame Deleted Scenes that are as generic as the feature and a
Theatrical Trailer.
Though I
was not as impressed when it arrived on screens years ago, The Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1985) was at least
ambitious and had a sense of energy, though I would argue that the team was
just finding their way. The tricky
murder thriller has Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, John Getz, Samm-Art Williams
and the great M. Emmet Walsh in this tale of robbery, cheating and murder. Not everything works, but it has actual Film,
Noir elements beyond look and imitation.
You should just see it, as anything else I say will ruin it. A Theatrical Trailer and feature length audio
commentary with “Kenneth Loring of Forever Young Films” are the extras.
Aaron
Woodley’s The Entitled (2011) had
potential as a young man (Kevin Zegers) needing money badly decides to hatch a
plot to kidnap the children of three rich men, get a million dollars each from
them and get away without a trace. At
first, he is portrayed as sympathetic, but he is slowly revealed as a terrible
person and the people he hangs with make it worse. The film deals somewhat with socio-economic
division, but gets more caught up in its thriller aspect, which eventually
becomes formulaic, silly and dumb when it had the potential to be more or even
as good as Blood Simple. Victor Garber and Ray Liotta are among the
supporting cast, but this starts falling apart midway and never recovers. Extras include an Alternate Ending that was
better and a behind the scenes featurette.
Adam
Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die
(2011) is a horrible thriller to watch as a serial killer (wow, we have not
heard from one of those in a while… like two weeks ago?) gets loose from being
held and continues his killing spree.
Too bad it is every single bad such film and TV production we have
suffered through in the last 20 years!
This could have been at least a good thriller with its unknown cast, but
it is as generic as they get and is best skipped. Extras include feature length audio commentary
with Wingard and Producer Simon Barrett and a superfluous behind the scenes
featurette.
At but
not least in the least is Nick Tomnay’s The
Perfect Host (2010), with Clayne Crawford as a desperate young thief who
has stolen in trouble, the law knows who he is, so he goes to a suburb to hide
out and does this by trying to con people into letting him in their house. He gets lucky to catch an older man (David
Hyde Pierce) who intends to have some friends over for dinner, but he threatens
him to cancel dinner so he can stay there until things cool down. However, he overplays his threats and the
owner of the house (Pierce) may get the upper hand and have a few secrets of
his own.
Though
not a great script, Crawford is not bad, but Pierce is an underrated actor and
gives a really great performance here. I
will not say much else as to ruin the various surprises in store for viewers,
but I was pleasantly surprised and the makers have a sense of humor that even
gets clever and coy. One of the best
gestures is having the great singer Helen Reddy (I Am Woman, Angie Baby)
as the nebby neighbor who knows something bad is going on but does not
immediately catch on. I’ll stop there,
but it is definitely worth a look, even when it sometimes is familiar. Extras include a trailer, HDNet piece on it
and making of featurette.
All five
Blu-rays have 1080p digital High Definition image transfers, looking good but
not always great. The poorest is Horrible in a noisy, weak, and often
soft 1.78 X 1 transfer. Blood Simple is restored and holds its
own against all of them at 1.85 X 1 with an AVC @ 39 MBPS transfer that even
has some nice shots looking better than I have ever seen the film look
before. Bereavement and Entitled
are 2.35 X 1, while Host is also
1.78 X 1. For a change, only one film
has a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix and that is Host, as Blood Simple offers a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 lossless mix
with Pro Logic surrounds that is warmer than expected, Bereavement and Horrible
offer Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixes and Entitled
surprisingly offers only a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. However, the sound is evenly matched in all
five cases with dialogue and quiet as much as anything, though the sound
punches up when the scene calls for it in music or sound effects.
- Nicholas Sheffo