HABIT (2021) (Lionsgate Blu-ray Review)

HABIT (2021)

Label: Lionsgate
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 81 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English, French and Spanish Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 

Director: Janell Shirtcliff

Cast:  Bella Thorne, Libby Mintz, Gavin Rossdale, Hana Lee

This trashy slice of contemporary nunsploitation starts of with a young girl living in Texas who is a big fan of God and Jesus, talking to them on the reg. Then we flash forward a few years later and that sweet young Jesus-freak has turned into sexy party girl named Mads (Bella Thorne, The Babysitter) living in Los Angeles. In need of cash Mads gets a gig running drugs for a former actor turned drug peddler named Eric (played by rock Gavin Rossdale of 90's band Bush, Constantine). Things seem to be looking up for Mads with a steady supply of drugs and cash, but when she and her roommates Evie (Libby Mintz) and Addy (Andreja Pejic, The Girl in the Spider's Web) host drug party her 20K drug cash-stash goes missing. When Mads breaks the news to Eric she tries to be casual about it and play it off cool but Eric freaks out, and with good reason. Later when psychotic drug queen-pin Queenie (Josie Ho, Dream Home) and her quirky henchman Tuff (James Hince, of garage rockers The KIlls) visit Eric looking for their cash they're quite disappointed that it's gone missing, so they torture and kill him.

Realizing that they're next on Queenie's kill-list Mads and her roomies pulls a Sister Act and repurpose their sexy nun costumes from the party the night and luck into finding refuge in a mansion owned by a nun-friendly, blind millionaire named Sunny (Ione Skye, Say Anything). There they do a poor job of laying low, Mads seduces a model-gorgeous young priest (Aarón Díaz) and embark on drug-fueled  escapades with her roomies until Queenie and Tuff finally catch up to them. 

Habit is a fun time if not necessarily a great film, it's wildly uneven but I kind dig that about it. It's super trashy and has an drug-fueled energy to it that I find entertaining. It's also quite stylish and attractively lensed with colorful neon-pastel color scheme and I like the trippy visuals during the myriad of drug binges. Now the drug-fueled plot doesn't have much of any depth to it, but c'mon man, I just shotgunned two Jess Franco films this afternoon and loved them both - you think I care about plot?  Threadbare though it may be it's dressed up with some fun character touches and some life-in-L.A. narration from Bella Thorne, that along with mélange of the seedy characters, drug-culture, and black humor filled dialogue does have a certain Tarantino-lite vibe about it. 

Audio/Video: Habit (2021) arrives on Blu-ray from Lionsgate in 1080p HD framed in a screen-filling 1.78:1 widescreen. It looks aesthetically pleasing on Blu-ray, the image has a lot of garish lighting techniques and filtering that add a soft pastel surreal quality to the proceedings, I dig it. I believe this is a digital shot film and it looks very good, clarity and depth was and wane with the amount of filtering and color-grading being applied to it, but it's colorful and reasonably sharp looking flick on Blu-ray.

Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles. Dialogue always sounds clean and precise with a surround mix that offers nice atmospherics that throw you right into the madness. The score from Paige Stark and Luke Paquin also sounds great as do needle drops from  Duran Duran, Gavin Rossdale and Billy Idol. 

The only extras is a 2-minute trailer for the film and an HD digital copy of the film. The single disc release arrives in an eco-friendly keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork. We also get a slipcover with the same artwork with some metallic and raised features. 

Special Features:

- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) 

- HD Digital Copy 

Habit won't be a movie for all tastes, but for a first-time director it was stylish, trashy good fun with sexy nuns - and do not get a lot of nunsploitation these days; let alone a drug-fueled candy-colored romp like this one. Not a horror film, and not particaurly violent, but a fun, unapologetically sacrilegious popcorn muncher that I would recommend if you're a fan of weird L.A. stories like Netflix's Brand New Cherry Flavor or Under The Silver Lake.  

Screenshots from the Blu-ray: 

Extras: 

DVD Review: BATH SALT ZOMBIES (2012)

BATH SALT ZOMBIES (2012) 

Label: Aggronautix / MVD Visual 

Region: 0 NTSC 

Rating: Unrated
Duration: 90 mins
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0
Video: 16:9 Widescreen
Director: Dustin Mills
Cast: Brandon Salkil, Josh Eal, Ethan Holey, Dave Parker, Jackie McKown

Synopsis: The bath salts epidemic facing the southern and mid-western US has been stifled by an unprecedented government crackdown. This has led to a tremendous amount of surplus stock hidden by black market dealers, and a migration of those dealers to the northeast. In New York City, potent strands have surfaced and have attracted the most devoted bath salt junkies. A young aspiring chemist has developed an even stronger batch... but something has gone horribly wrong. The new ultra potent bath salt batch has revealed a major side effect: It turns users into violent flesh seeking ZOMBIES!

The Film: Gotta love this slice of indie horror exploitation from the demented mind of Dustin Mills who brought us The Puppet Monster Massacre (2010).  The idea is tore straight from the front page of the national news. You may recall last May that a deranged man under the influence of the street drug known as bath salts stripped down nude and stalked the streets where he attacked and ate the face off a homeless man in Miami. It was a shocking and ultra-violent event and Dustin Mills jumps on the timely and gruesome subject and filters it through his wonderfully psychotic mind.

The basic story has a few elements, the first being a super addictive strain of the drug known as bath salts created by a chemist known as The Chet (Dave Parker) and his partner "Bubbles (Ethan Holey) who slings the cigarette form of the drug on the streets. The second elements is an ass-kicking Agent Forester (Josh Eal) of the DEA who's on a one-man mission to eradicate salts from the streets. Lastly, we have an unfortunate drug addict named Ritchie (Brandon Salkil) who experiences the awful side effects of the super addictive salts first-hand, a ravenous hunger for human flesh. 

Bath salt Zombies is definitely a low-budget affair but it's packed with wit, gristle and outrageous gore from pretty much the start to finish, for a lo-fi feature it looks pretty sweet, if peppered with some stylized but schlocky digital effects. The film starts of nicely with a fun animated anti-drug PSA about the menace of bath salts with awesome 40's style fast-talking narration, the style reminded me a bit of Jimmy Screamerclauz's Where the Dead Go To Die (2011), particularly when the winged-Satan shows up! It's a great start that really sets up what you're in store for here, a deviant drug culture zombie film that goes places you might not expect. 

 A lot of the thematic elements brought to mind some great trash cinema of yesteryear, it's a nice mash-up of ideas sourced from some classic horror dark-comedies. Not unlike the  "super crack" from Frank Henenelotter's Frankenooker (1990) we get a super addictive drug with catastrophic effects, maybe throw in a bit of J. Michael Muro's Street Trash (1987) in there, too. The drug itself is made from a weapons grade chemical lost by the military en route to disposal that winds up in the wrong hands, that part brought to mind Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead (1986). The film is not copying any one of 'em but instead shares a few common threads, I loved the way Mills mashes 'em up and brings an energy and attitude to the film that's undeniable, if anything it definitely carries with it the same spirit as these three films. The look of bath salt zombies are pretty simplistic but just effective enough, once they smoke the salts the junkies are stricken with a toothy-grin that reminded me of the Batman comics when the Joker would spread his Joker venom, only here the effect is compounded by a redness around the eyes and a lust for human flesh. The acting is a bit spotty but appropriate for the type of film we're watching and I loved the effects, some of the digital stuff was sub-par but, like the acting, appropriate for the low-budget zombie romp.

Add to the cock shredding, head ripping, and intestine spewing fun some generous female nudity and a raging punk soundtrack featuring The Dwarves, Antiseen, The Meatmen, The Murder Junkies and The Gaggers and you have a three-chord fueled drug addled zombie massacre that makes for quite an entertaining watch, when it comes to low-budget face-eating cannibal films this is at the top o' the heap this year, a fun trashy zombie romp, good stuff.  3 Outta 5 

DVD Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary
- Trailer (1:04)