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The Gravedancers / Wicked Little Things: After Dark Horrorfest Blu-ray Double Feature Volume 1
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (19th March 2011). |
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The Film
 For all the financial problems “Grindhouse” (2006) ran into after its release, it help set an important trend in the revival of old cult movies and the rebirth of the double feature. While drive-ins had kept the faith, the double feature found new life on home video following the popularity, if not theatre earnings, of “Grindhouse.” Now Horrorfest is joining the party by releasing selections from its annual movie showcase in double feature form on Blu-ray. The first installment came in November of 2006 and I was sure to buy tickets to nearly every showing, spending the day feasting on McRibs and watching horrormovies. Unfortunately most of the movies were disappointments, but the McRib was amazing as always (for my tastebuds, not health). This review marks the first of the four double-feature sets to be reviewed, featuring two of the movies from the first HorrorFest in 2006: “The Gravedancers” (2006) and “Wicked Little Things” (2006). While “Gravedancers” was easily the best, “Wicked Little Things” about sums up the mediocre to terrible quality of the rest of the Horrorfest In “Gravedancers” three friends reunite at the funeral of a mutual friend and after some drinking read an old poem and dance on graves in the cemetery after midnight. Unfortunately grave dancing has consequences, and the trio are haunted by their own individual ghosts who start to take revenge for the dancing on the graves. “Wicked Little Things” is more of your typical zombie fare, set in a small mining town years after an accident killed some child workers. The Tunney family moves down into a nearby house and starts to see the effects of the child miner zombies that have taken over the town. The plots of the film aren’t terribly complex or overwhelmingly original, but suit the double feature billing with hour and a half runtimes and some fun horror to be thrown in the middle. In terms of enjoyment, “Gravedancers” is low budget, but mixes some nice looking ghouls with some hilarious performances and a generally enjoyable plot. With a pyrotechnic child, a rapist and a creepy old woman haunting the protagonists, the effects work is well done for the budget as each character looks fairly distinct and creepy in their own right. What really brings the movie together though is the over the top performance of Tchéky Karyo as Vincent Cochet, a somewhat bumbling paranormal investigator who brings the comedic element to the film. “Gravedancers” is a solid movie until the final 20 minutes, when the film suddenly takes a turn towards “Army of Darkness” (1992) territory. I remember being one of maybe 15 people in my local theatre during the showing at Horrorfest and roaring with laughter of pure joy at the final few minutes of the movie and it is just as enjoyable with each viewing. The final 10 minutes are something to behold. “Wicked Little Things” on the other hand is fairly bland and generic, but it certainly wasn’t the worst of Horrorfest (with the honor going to either “Dark Ride” (2006) or “Penny Dreadful” (2006)). The directing by J.S. Cardone isn’t terribly creepy and doesn’t create a mood that you haven’t seen before. The biggest problem is the meandering plot, that clearly establishes what’s going on in the opening shots but tries too hard to play with audience tensions that it doesn’t become as engaging. With the performances falling flat with the rest of the film, it’s a plodding exercise in zombie filmmaking market that was saturated at the time of the release, but by now the market is in a full blown flood. Overall it’s an interesting pairing from the first Horrorfest, thankfully putting my personal favorite under their main label and without forcing me to remember how bad “Penny Dreadful” or “Dark Ride” were with a rewatch. “Wicked Little Things” and “Gravedancers” make a bit of sense as a double feature, considering both involve the undead with zombies and ghouls respectively. The feature probably would be better served with a pairing of “Gravedancers” and “Unrest” or “The Abandoned” from the same Horrorfest, but any chance to catch “Gravedancers” is a good in my book. It’s a great, entertaining movie by director Mike Mendez that’s somewhat scary but just generally enjoyable and fun. “Wicked Little Things” is watchable, but I’d recommend using the time just to watch “Gravedancers” again. Individual film grade: - “Gravedancers” A- - “Wicked Little Things” D
Video
Both films are presented with AVC MPEG-4 encoding in 1080p 24/fps with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, and are well transferred to the disc. I’m not sure if it speaks more to my memory or the theatre I originally saw the films in but the images look clearer and with better balance than they did then. There are some of the usual flaws you will see with lower budget films in the differening lighting and color quality of some scenes with intrusions of excessive grain or odd coloring because of the schemes of the film, but they’re intermittent and almost add to the low budget flavor of the films.
Audio
The solitary audio track on each film is an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit that again shines brighter than the theatrical presentations. The movement of sound and the effects come through fairly well, as do the odd horror sound effects that come up in each film. “Gravedancers” has the stronger score and plays more with bizarre ghost effects, while “Wicked Little Things” plays more with ambient creepy noises to give it a more mystical feel. Even if the movies have different levels of success you have two credible and quality audio tracks that are well put together. Each film also has English, English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
The disc is setup with a double-feature on one disc, with unfortunately no option to play the two films back to back. Instead there is a nice menu of a run-down movie theatre front with an option to choose between the two films. Once you select a film, the special features are listed for that film only, with the option of switching to the other. For organization’s sake, I’ve listed the special features under the general heading of each film. “Gravedancers” First up is the filmmakers audio commentary with director Mike Mendez and composer Joseph Bishara. It’s a great energetic comedy, bluntly honest and in very good humor as Mendez and Bishara talk about the mistakes they made in the film, how producers influenced the final product (like crafting the opening scene that he fought to take out of the film completely). They even craft a lamp-based drinking game for the film. Besides the entertainment value, it’s still a good technical commentary about the continuity errors, subtle digital effects, even stock shots that they bought from Sony because of their budget constraints. It' a really solid and enjoyable commentary that’s worth the time to take in. There’s also the featurette “A Grave Undertaking” which runs for 13 minutes and 41 seconds. This serves as the making of for the film speaking with the major actors Dominic Purcell, Tchéky Karyo, Josie Maran, Claire Cramer and Marcus Thomas on set as well as producer Bart Rosenblatt, director Mike Mendez and other crewmembers. It’s a good mix of behind-the-scenes footage and talking head interviews, with some great peeks at the make-up application process. The make-up looks far worse in the standard definition handheld camera quality that they used to film the featurette, but its still a good behind-the-scenes look at the film. What’s interesting is that there’s actually a commentary track to the featurette, with producer Laurence Elmer Fuhrmann Jr. who doesn’t appear prominently in the featurette or film commentary so his voice gets added here. It’s not so much a commentary to the clip as it is an additional production story to how the film got put together, from the initial producing process of creating a demo trailer and script to completion. While still filled with good information, it’s a last minute add on of a story they forgot to tell in the featurette. There are also a deleted scenes reel, played all together for 11 minutes and 19 seconds with no labels on them. In the scenes Marcus tries to get into the cemetery and is stopped by a cop, Harris is handed a note, Harris comes home to a creepy house, Harris and Allison share dinner, Allison’s covers mysteriously get taken off, Harris gets a call, a goofy cat scare, Culpepper and Cochet share a laugh, Kira and Allison make up, the group prepares to dig, and Cochet confronts Culpepper. Following pattern, there’s a commentary on the scenes too, with director Mike Mendez where he gives his reasoning for cutting each scene in the film, calling out executive notes on the film for scenes he filmed and then wound up cutting that were pointless, even naming and apologizing to local actors who got cut from the film. “Making the Ghosts” featurette runs for 12 minutes and 19 seconds. It’s somewhere between featurette and narrated photograllery, with director Mendez talking about the evolution of the different make-up applications and looks for the different characters. There's some good insight on the design process, as well as thinking about the design of the costume itself that has to match the desired conditions, like crafting the mask for the fire kid and considering pyrotechnics that have to interact with the different materials they use. It’s really a great featurette on the process, mixing photos of the different pieces, with some behind-the-scenes video of application. For anyone remotely interested in special effects it’s a nice touch to the film that shows off how they put it all together. “Storyboard Galleries” reel runs for 3 minutes, and is more of a side-by-side comparison between the raw footage to the final scene. It looks at how it was storyboarded. It’s a nice brief look at the process, but not really a gallery. Next is the original theatrical trailer which runs 2 minutes and 58 seconds. This is the much discussed piece that was used to pull together funding for the film featuring none of the same actors, at least in the same roles, used to gather interest in the film. It’s a great trailer and insight into how the movie got put together, and how aspects of the film changed. Of course there’s also commentary on the trailer. The commentator doesn’t introduce themselves, but it sounds like director Mendez who tells some of the story you hear from Fuhrmann Jr., but more addressing how the film got changed from the trailer to the actual film and what he thought went better. “Wicked Little Things” Again we have an audio commentary, here with Director J.S. Cardone and actress Lori Heuring. The two do a nice job of talking through the movie, but don’t sound terribly energized by the film. There’s some nice pieces of information in the commentary but Cardone’s tone seems to meander through the film. Heuring adds some energy at points, but for the most part plays Flavor Flav, accentuating and hyping statements by Cardone. Bonus trailers featured on the disc are: - “After Dark Originals” runs for 35 seconds. - “My Bloody Valentine 3D” runs for 1 minute and 25 seconds. - “Daybreakers” runs for 2 minutes and 32 seconds. - “The Haunting in Connecticut” runs for 2 minutes and 31 seconds. - “Cabin Fever” runs for 1 minute and 28 seconds. - “Lionsgate Blu-Ray” spot runs for 1 minute and 7 seconds. Individual extras grade: - “Gravedancers” A - “Wicked Little Things” D
Packaging
Both films are on a single disc in standard Blu-ray case.
Overall
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