Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 83 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0, 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Chad Archibald
Cast: Aidan Devine, Ava Preston, Jess Salgueiro, Ari Millen, Brandon McKnight, Michael Reventar, Adam Christie, Raffaele Brereton, Tavaree Daniel-Simms, Moe Jeudy-Lamou
Director Chad Archibald and Black Fawn Films have been toiling away making some quality indie horror films the past few years, first coming to my attention via the Wes Craven-ish bogeyman film The Drownsman (2014) and the extra-terrestrial thriller Ejecta (2015) - both of which I liked but didn't exactly love. However, it was his next film Bite (2015) that I straight-up loved, a body horror entry with some really gross special effects, it was an overall tighter and more well-crafted film all around. This brings us to his latest film, I'll Take Your Dead (2018), starring Aidan Devine (Wolf Cop) as a rural farmer named William who lives on an isolated parcel of land with his precocious twelve-year old daughter Gloria (Ava Preston, TV's The Strain). William has a macabre side business her operates out of his basement, criminals bring him dead bodies and pay him money to make them go away. Using a bathtub full of acid and variety of knives and bone-saws he hacks up the corpses and makes them disappear, never to be seen again.
His daughter is aware of what's happening down in the basement, she even helps out a bit, but she loves her father and thinks of him as a good man who happens to do bad things, and sure enough he does seem to be a good father. He's caring and considerate but also strict, and in that strange line of work I guess you would have to have clear boundaries, which is kind of were William screws up later. With such gruesome things happening in the home the young girl's been touched by the macabre herself, seeing ghosts of those who have been dismembered in the home, and at first it's sort of implied these could just be manifestations of her mind, not necessarily a real sixth sense sort of thing.
We learn that William has developed a bit of a reputation among the local criminal community, they've dubbed him the "candy butcher", with wild rumors of cannibalism and bathing in a tub full of human blood.
These rumors are discussed by a local crew of hoods led by Reggie (Ari Millen, Orphan Black) who show up at William's farm with a trio of bodies to dispose of. Things start-off on a bad note, one of the dead is a teen, which violates William's personal code of conduct - no kids. But when they throw money and a veiled threat aimed at his daughter he reluctantly accepts the disposal contract. Preparing the bodies down in the basement a young woman among the corpses, Jackie (Jess Salgueiro, Channel Zero), springs to life, not quite as dead as she at first seemed. This puts William in a weird position, he's not a killer, he's a disposer, and it's this conflict that leads into a messy unraveling of things.
I'll Take Your Dead is a film with rich characters and drama that really hook you right from the get-go, but it's also macabre and gruesome, infused with an intriguing
supernatural element, and well-shot with moody cinematography. The main cast is solid through and through, there's not a weak link in the bunch, the human drama highlighted not just by the warm but strange father and daughter relationship, but also with the daughter reaching out for a female role model in an unlikely place. Then we have Ari Millen as the big bad, playing a low-life criminal to the hilt, it's all good stuff.
Audio/Video: I'll Take Your Dead arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory presenting the film in 1080p HD framed in 2.35:1 widescreen. The image of this digitally shot film is sharp and crisp looking throughout, but the colors here are a bit cold and muted by design, the disc backs that up with solid black levels. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 with optional English subtitles. Everything is well-balanced with good fidelity, no issues with distortion or wonkiness to be found, a solid presentation.
Extras include a 8-min making of featurette, 11-min of deleted scenes, a 4-min script-to-screen comparison, and a pair of trailers for the film. The single-disc release comes in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a reversible sleeve of artwork and a slipcase. The reversible artwork is alright looking, but I do think it's a bit of a shame that Scream didn't commission an new illustrated artwork for this in-house indie.
Special Features:
- Behind-The-Scenes Featurette (9 min) HD
- Deleted Scenes (11 min) HD
- Script-To-Screen Comparison (4 min) HD
- Trailers (4 min) HD
I'll Take Your Dead (2018) is the best-directed film yet from director Chad Archibald, though the gooey Cronenberg-ian body-horror film Bite is still my personal favorite, that's just my sweet-spot.I'll be keen to see what's comes next for Archibald, till then I give this Blu-ray from Scream Factory a solid recommend for those looking for a macabre supernatural thriller.
