WILDLING (2018) (Scream Factory/IFC Midnight Blu-ray Review)

WILDLING (2018) 

Label: IFC Midnight/Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 92 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1, English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1) 
Director: Fritz Bohm
Cast: Bel Powley, Brad Dourif, Collin Kelly-Sordelet, James Le Gros, Liv Tyler

Feral coming-of-age story Wildling (2018) opens with an extended prologue wherein a man called "daddy" (Brad Dourif, Child's Play) keeps an adolescent girl named Anna locked-away im a room in his home located deep in the woods, he schools her and tells her fairytales of fearsome clawed creatures called "wildlings" whom he says have eaten all the other children in the world. He also uses hypnosis and brainwashing tactics to keep her unquestioning about her surroundings, feeding her a veggies-only diet, and administering daily injections designed to impede her growth as a women, i.e. keeping her menstruation at bay, for reasons not known. Overtime she grows into a young woman, now played by Bel Powley (A Royal Night Out), and the man becomes so distraught that his attempts to curb her turn to womanhood have failed that he blows his own brains out. In the aftermath the confused young girl ends up at the local hospital where it is revealed that "Daddy" wasn't her father at all, though no one is quite sure where she came from and why he kept the girl locked-up in the first place.

When the young girl is about to be shipped off to local orphanage  the doctors the local sheriff Ellen Cooper (Liv Tyler, The Strangers) steps in and takes temporary custody of the girl, and the young woman takes an immediate liking to Cooper's teenage brother Ray (Collin Kelly-Sordelet), a nice kid who assists her with her understanding of the world, such as convincing her that berries that grow on bushed are in fact not the reincarnated souls of the dead, as her daddy taught her, just one of many lies he filled her head with over the years. As Anna begins to develop as a woman her libido is not all that's triggered, she has some serious feral-tendencies, sprouting not only new body hair but claws and a new set of sharp teeth, making her coming of age a bloody one in more ways than one.

Wildling is a pretty solid creature feature, well-directed by director Fritz Böhm and handsomely shot by cinematographer Toby Oliver (Happy Death Day), this coming of age story is along the lines of Ginger Snaps (2000) by way of The Beast Within (1982) with a smattering of Teeth (2007) and The Woman (2011), a powerful coming of age story wrapped in the trapping of a werewolf film, though not that exactly, this one goes more along the way of an urban legend about feral people, or a certain bigfooted cryptid we all know and love, I really liked where it went. Bel Powley says a lot with very few words, conveying fear, disorientation and feral voracity with her big blue eyes and body language, giving a very good physical performance as the woman turned wildling. The story of a young girl transforming into a woman is a journey already fraught with tribulations, even more so when it entails turning into a hairy wild woman, fending yourself from rape-y teen and being hunted by a group of men out to make sure her kind go extinct.

Dourif gives a good turn her as the creepily caring "daddy", we get some intriguing back story and some strange side characters, including a mysterious woodsman called the wolf man, played by James Le Gros (Phantasm II) whom aids the young woman during her difficult time and fills in some of the back story as well. Liv Tyler also turns in a good performance as the local sheriff, she's not someone I would usually say comes across as cno-nonsense usually, but she commands a degree of authority here while also coming across as caring and nurturing to the character of Anna, but it's Powley that carries the film here, she's pretty great.

The film is plenty bloody but not a gore-fest, the transformative body-horror elements are pretty good though, if teeth falling out of your mouth is a nightmare you have this might be nightmare fuel, but the special effects are mostly relegated to her hairy turn into a wildling, and I thought both the physical and digital effects looked great throughout.     

Audio/Video: Wildling (2018) arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory and IFC Midnight in 1080p HD framed in 2.40:1 widescreen looking great, the digital cinematography looks solid and without blemish, blacks are good and deep, colors are nicely saturated, and the scope lensing nicely capturing the wooded environs of the film. The surround audio gives the film a nicely immersive sound field to play with, plenty of ambient noise and score to fill the surrounds. 

Extras are slim, we get a handful of deleted scenes and outtakes, plus a trailer for the film, the deleted scenes don't offer much but the outtakes include a fun scene of the special effects crew squirting fake bile into Bel Powley mouth and a scene of Liv Tyler riffing on the "I know what goes with ketchup" line. The single disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, the b-side is just a scene from the film and not a reversible artwork option, the disc featuring the same key art as the sleeve, and a slipcover that features a variant of the same artwork with higher contrast, deeper color saturation and a wolf added to the image.

Special Features: 
- Deleted Scenes (6 min) 
- Outtakes (4 min) 
- Trailer (1 min) 

Wildling (2018) is a solid coming of age creature film, if you're a fan of The Beast Within and Ginger Snaps this feral female transformation story is something you're gonna want to checkout, this is definitely one of the best of the IFC Midnight entries so far this year in my opinion. 

THE STRANGERS (2008) (Scream Factory Collector's Edition Blu-ray Review)

THE STRANGERS (2008)

2-Disc Collector's Edition 

Label: Scream Factory
Region: A
Rating: R, Unrated
Duration: 86 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p Widescreen (2:35:1)
Director: Bryan Bertino
Cast: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis,  Gemma Ward, Glenn Howerton

Spooky home invasion film The Strangers (2008) opens with young couple James (Scott Speedman, Underworld) and Kristen (Liv Tyler, Lord of the Rings) driving out to a very out-of-the-way summer home that belongs to the family of James, they've been at a wedding reception for a friend earlier in the night where he proposed to Kristen, who turned him down, so the drive out to the vacation home afterward is an oddly and uncomfortably quiet one. Once at the cabin there's still a palpable tension between them, but that quietness is disturbed by an eerie knock at the door at 4 a.m., it's a young blonde woman looking for someone named Tamara. They tell her she has the wrong house and she leaves, but not before saying that she will see them later, and she's not lying either.

James leaves to go by some smokes and Kristen is left alone, she lights up the fireplace but the place begins to fill with smoke setting off the smoke detector, she manages to knock the squealing smoke detector off the ceiling, but then there's another knock at the door, this time it's someone wearing a creepy doll mask. Scared she closes the door and locks it, but then realizes that certain things have been moved around inside the house, the smoke detector she left on the floor has been moved to a chair and her cell phone she left charging has altogether disappeared. Frantic and unnerved she is out-of-her-mind with fright by the time James retirns, and while he doesn't seem to believe her at first he eventually comes around when he realizes there are three masked strangers prowling around outside, we have  Dollface (Gemma Ward), Man in the Mask (Kip Weeks) and Pin-up girl (Laura Margolis), three very quiet and creepy strangers who fully intend on harming the young couple for reasons unknown, surrounding the home and tainting the couple, it's a nerve-shredding encounter. 

This slice of home invasion is so very thick with dread and atmosphere, the rural and isolated setting is perfect, the lighting is creepy, looking at times like it's lit by only candles, and the three motiveless masked-killers lurking around are absolutely terrifying. The burlap sack masked killer was the most terrifying to me, bringing to mind Jason from Friday the Thirteenth Part 2 or Scarecrow from Batman. The violence in this one is not too shabby either, we get an unfortunate shotgun blast to the face and some vicious stabbings, but it's not a gore film, this is a deep tension film. What works for it is the unsettling creepiness of the masked characters, the hopeless situation the faltering lovers find themselves in, but working against it are some bad decisions made by our protagonists in the face of mortal danger. At one point they find a gun and some ammo, it's a great opportunity for survival but don't handle the situation with a great deal of thought in my opinion, they really fuck it up actually, but these are average people, not tactical strategists, so maybe that's more realistic. There's a nice homage to a slasher classic when the Man in a Mask emerges from a shadowy hallway behind Kristen, she doesn't even notice him, but the way he emerges and disappears reminded me of a similar scene from John Carpenter's Halloween, it gave me goosebumps. 

This is a film I dragged my non-horror loving wife to back when it hit the theaters originally, she was digging her nails into my arm the whole time, and was actually pretty stressed out by the ordeal and the unhappy ending of it all. The movie is a serious downer, and I think that settled on me even more this time around, it's a real gut-punch of a home invasion flick, though that seems to be par for the course with the home invasion movies, it does not usually end well for the good guys. The movie is well shot and stylish, with a great score and sound design that amps up the tension and melancholy of the movie. 

Audio/Video: The Strangers (2008) arrives on 2-disc Blu-ray from Scream Factory, both he theatrical and unrated versions coming from a new HD master of the 2K digital intermediate - the image looks great, this is a dark film and the shadow detail and black levels look solid through and through, the dark shadowy imagery really sets a proper tone for this one. Audio includes the option of both DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 and Surround 5.1, the sound design for this one is pretty awesome with some wonderful use of the surrounds, so crank up that surround and get ready to be creeped out and scared in equal measure, optional English subtitles are provided. 

Onto the extras we begin with disc one which features the theatrical cut of the film and the old extras from he original release, these include The Element of Terror and Strangers at the Door featurettes, deleted scenes, plus the theatrical trailer and TV spots. Disc two contains the unrated cut of the film plus a host of new extras adding up to about 81-minutes worth of new stuff. New stuff includes a 30-minute interview with writer/director Bryan Bertino, 11-min with Kip Weeks, 12-min with  actress Laura Margolis and 21-min with editor Kevin Greutert, plus a image gallery.  

The 2-disc Blu-ray release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork, a cool new illustration by the CRP Group and one of the original movie posters on the reverse side.  The discs themselves features the new illustration on one and a scene from the film on the other, of Sack Head emerging from the darkness behind Kristen. This release also comes with a slipcover (o-card) featuring the new illustration. 

Special Features:
- NEW HD master of the theatrical cut taken from the 2K digital intermediate 
- The Element of Terror – interviews with the cast and crew (9 min) 
- Strangers at the Door – interviews with writer/director Bryan Bertino and the cast (`10 min) 
- Deleted Scenes (5 min) 
- TV Spots (2 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min) 
- NEW HD master of the unrated cut taken from the 2K digital intermediate 
- NEW Defining Moments – an interview with writer/director Bryan Bertino (30 min) 
- NEW All the Right Moves – an interview with actor Kip Weeks (Man in the Mask) (12 min) 
- NEW Brains and Brawn – an interview with actress Laura Margolis (Pin Up Girl) (14 min) 
- NEW Deep Cuts - an interview with editor Kevin Greutert (21 min) 
- Still Gallery (4 min) 

The Strangers (2008) holds up exquisitely even after repeat viewings, the atmosphere and dread generated by this eerie home invasion thriller is top notch, a classic of the sub genre in my opinion. The new 2-disc Blu-ray from Scream Factory looks and sounds great and the new extras are enjoyable, if you're wondering of you should double-dip all I can say is the new extras are very good, and if you don't already the previous Blu-ray this is a high recommend.