ATM
(2012/IFC Midnight Blu-ray)/Dead Season
(2012/Image DVD)/Detention
(2011/Sony Blu-ray)/Meeting Evil
(2012/Sony DVD)/Student Bodies
(1981/Legend DVD)
Picture: B-/C/B-/C/C+ Sound: B-/C+/B-/C+/C+ Extras: C/C-/C-/D/D Main Programs: C+/C-/C-/C+/C
Here is a
new set of horror thrillers, some of which have some humor and two of which are
outright satires.
David
Brooks’ ATM (2012) is the first of
two thrillers here that have their moments and could have been great, but don’t
work all the way, though they came close to being really good. Brian Geraghty is a shy office worker who is
interested in a co-worker (Alice Eve), but cannot get the nerve up to talk to
her. The office loudmouth (Josh Peck)
picks on him and every other male in the office to keep up his bravado and be
generally obnoxious. He also likes to
act and be co-dependent.
When the
shy guy talks to the pretty co-worker at the party, he lands up driving her
home, but loudmouth insists on getting a ride home which is in the other direction. Then he wants to get pizza, then he has no
money and with no one else having cash, they go to a stand-alone ATM
station. From there, they are tormented
by a mysterious figure in a winter coat hood.
At first, it seems like a joke, but this unknown man is a killer and
they are trapped.
Writer
Chris Sparkling previously penned the “stuck-in-a-movie” Buried with Ryan
Reynolds (reviewed elsewhere on this site), which did not work too well, but
here he makes a smart move to make the stuck place more realistic and less
obviously restricting. Brooks does a
decent job of directing and there is some suspense here, but both are not able
to exceed the genre, even when they are doing the slasher predator thriller
thing well. They are also doing it
better than most of late to their credit.
However,
the ultimate reason to see this is the three leads that give fine performances
and meld well together. They all have
great futures in acting if they can find the roles. Though inconsistent, ATM is definitely worth a look, especially for fans of this kind of
film.
Extras
include an edited and unedited director’s version of the film, trailer and
making of featurette.
Adam
Deyoe’s Dead Season (2012) is yet
another poor zombie film, though this one actually started out with some
promise for a few minutes, but when all is said and done, it is yet another
generic take-off (or rip-off) of the original Romero sequels Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead without any point
except to chop up half-living bodies. It
takes itself and the audience seriously, but that fails to matter when it falls
apart early on and never recovers like hundreds of recently zombie releases
like it. Only hardcore zombie fans
should even bother.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track, Trailer, Deleted
Scenes/Outtakes and a Making Of featurette.
Joseph
Kahn is a really bad filmmaker. A Music
Video director, the idea of narrative structure is always beyond his grasp and
he knows it, though that is no excuse to go to try and be a better
director. With Detention (2011), he repeats the endless mistakes of his previous
features (the young students here know and bash his 2004 feature debut Torque (you forgot that one too? It is reviewed elsewhere on this site.) though
it was a bomb and no one their age would have seen it let alone remembered it
seven years later like the rest of us) where flash fills in the endless spaces
left by a very bad script.
This
begins as a crude comedy where characters can write letters and words in the
air throughout (think Zombieland as
the anti-Electric Company) and it
seems like it will be a teen comedy about a young guy being bullied while still
trying to get the girl, until a killer turns out to be on the loose. Thus, Kahn takes on three genres (horror,
comedy, teen tales) and cannot make either of them work.
Dane Cook
shows up (and is wasted by both being here and not seen enough to boot) as the
wacky school principle, but Kahn and company are out to rip off anything and
everything they can to make this work and just keep digging a bigger hole for
themselves al the way to ripping off Donnie
Darko (also reviewed on this site) to the point that this is a non-stop
mess from a man whose Music Videos are usually bad too.
The only
thing this has going for it are some actors who can act (note I said some) and
color literacy in the visuals we see too little of these days. Otherwise, watching Detention is like serving it… in hell. Extras include screen tests and three
featurettes.
If you
want to see how a real horror slasher comedy can work, and few do, you can at
least see Mickey Rose’s Student Bodies
(1981) which we already covered on Blu-ray at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11427/Savage+Weekend/Bloody+Birthday/St
Though I
do not think it is great, it was one of the first; it is from the original era
of the genre and has some good moments.
Like the Blu-ray, this DVD has no extras, but anyone who likes slasher
films should see this one at least once.
Finally
we have Chris Fisher’s Meeting Evil
(2012) which is the other near-miss thriller that almost worked here. Luke Wilson is a family man who is having as
bad day when an odd stranger (Samuel L. Jackson) shows up to get his help as
his car has broken down in front of their house, This begins an odyssey of one bad event after
another, the kind the husband and father should have quickly walked away from. At first, him staying seems reasonable, but
it gets played out quickly and the script loses some credibility permanently.
However,
the actors are good and convincing, though we have seen Jackson play this darkly witty predator
before in variations, but the worst thing is that this has some great new ideas
and maybe a few points. Unfortunately,
it saves them for the last 5 – 10 minutes instead of integrating them into the
storyline earlier and this falls through badly and sadly. Why the lame Sixth Sense approach, who knows, but it was a very bad choice
here. Still, this is worth a look just
to see what worked and almost worked.
There are
no extras.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on ATM and 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Detention are about even for playback
quality and performance, but both have detail limits, some motion blur and
other style choices that hold them back.
ATM is the most naturalistic
and best shot title here, while Detention is saved by its color, especially
with its endless (and endlessly bad) digital work.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 DVDs have especially soft images, though the
oldest, Bodies, actually has better
color and a slightly more solid, realized look.
The others are HD shoots and the tradedowns here are a bit weak. I wonder how much better the Blu-rays look in
those cases.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on the ATM and Detention
Blu-rays are sonically the best here, but ATM
has a very slight edge by being more consistent, better recorded and
better-edited. Neither have consistent
soundfields, but at least ATM has silences whose break-up of its soundfield
makes sense. Detention can be harsh and even a little shrill in playback. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on Season and Evil never achieve great soundfields and might as well be simple
stereo, though we wonder if they would sound better in lossless mixes. As a
result, the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Student is almost their equal with a good clean-up of the original
theatrical mono track.
- Nicholas Sheffo