Halloween may be over, but horror movies don’t have an offseason. We’ve got four releases even split between major studios (Paramount and Warner Bros./New Line Cinema) and smaller labels (Well Go USA and NEON).
Paramount Scares: Volume 2 is a collection of four thrown together titles much like last year’s set. But that release had a special fifth unnamed title (revealed to be Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) to give it some intrigue in the weeks leading up to release day. Volume 2 drops the surprises and packages Friday the 13th Part 2, Breakdown, World War Z, and Orphan: First Kill. A very odd assortment as I’d only classify two of the four as horror. The other two are thrilling, which isn’t the same as being scary. My own assessment of the four selections was someone at Paramount wanted to give collectors of the first volume a set that included a sequel, a prequel, an adaptation, and an original story. What’s odd is World War Z on 4K comes a year after Shout! Factory released it on the format. Breakdown and Friday the 13th Part 2 were to have solo releases in October, but it seems those are only available in the UK currently. Orphan: First Kill likely wouldn’t have sold well on its own and yet the original Orphan is still MIA on 4K UHD.
Even with the inconsistencies, I still give this a mild recommendation on account of how great Breakdown is as a thriller and First Kill going full camp mode in tweaking the dynamic of the original and putting a spin on “killer kid” horror movies.
Kurt Russell against J.T. Walsh’s truck driver is a different kind of duel, but it is a tight thriller that will make your knuckles as white as Russell’s middle-class collar. We get a man in search for his missing wife (Kathleen Quinlan) after their car breaks down in the middle of the dessert. Simple set up with low stakes, and it’s still Jonathan Mostow’s best work behind the camera. As a bonus we get support from familiar “that guys” M.C. Gainey, Rex Linn, and Jack Noseworthy.
World War Z is a big, bad success. You’ve got Brad Pitt and zombies. What more do you need? How about more characters and a narrative without a singular focus in trying to end a zombie apocalypse. It’s a globe-trotting race against time, but time keeps moving even as the movie ends but doesn’t end. The highlight is seeing CGI-rendered zombies scale over a wall surrounding Jerusalem as panic onlookers run away.
Friday the 13th Part 2 allows Jason to be one with nature at Camp Crystal Lake until counselors and campers disrupt his serenity. I’m more of a fan of the later sequels where Jason is resurrected as a zombie (Part VI: Jason Lives) and eventually faces a psychokinetic teenage girl not named Carrie (Part VII: The New Blood). If you already own the great Shout! Factory Friday the 13th box set you won’t see much of a quality upgrade.
The Paramount Scares: Volume 2 package contains both 4K UHD and Blu-rays for each title. The Blu-rays include the legacy extras at the time of their debuts on the high-def format. Unfortunately, World War Z only offers the theatrical cut in 4K. The unrated cut is still Blu-ray only. The studio has also continued the swag packaging extras by putting each title in special slipcovers to go along with a full-size FANGORIA magazine produced for volume two; four iron-on patches; a glow-in-the-dark enamel pin; a Paramount Scares logo sticker; and a limited-edition poster from Orlando “Mexifunk” Arocena.
NEON’s Cuckoo gives us eastern European weirdness in the Bavarian Alps. Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) moves to a resort following her mother’s death to live with her father, Luis (Marton Csokas), his new wife, Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their mute daughter, Alma (Mila Lieu). A teenager going to live with her estranged father in a remote area of Europe for the summer is distressing in itself. Now add Dan Stevens as the resort owner, a mysterious Hooded Woman that pursues Gretchen at night, and writer-director Tilman Singer’s penchant for exploring mental distress with a flair for ear-piercing shrieks and distortion.
Cuckoo is a slow burner that feels like it is left to heat too long before a third act where weird science takes the wheel. Singer slowly builds the danger until psychological upheaval turns to physical violence and grizzly horror. The highlights are the sound design and effective atmosphere, and Schafer’s intense performance keeps you involved even as the story becomes harder to comprehend.
In spite of its underperformance in theaters, the home release comes with a pair of EPK-style behind-the-scenes features about the production, including on-set interviews with star Hunter Schafer, costume designer Frauke Firl, and production designer Dario Mendez Acosta. Deleted scenes and its theatrical teaser and theatrical trailer are also included.
Exhuma is one of those titles that would likely catch your eye if you were browsing the Foreign section at a Blockbuster video. The cover art shows its principal stars on either side of a chasm where a face emerges. The tagline underneath reads “The Vicious Emerges.” Following The Priests (2015) and Svaha: The Sixth Finger (2019), Jang Jae-hyun was anointed the “Master of the Occult” of K Horror. His latest mood piece continues his fascination with the mystical and past sins, and it goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting. That would be a good thing if it didn’t feel spiritless at times.
Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) is a shaman employed by a wealthy Korean American family to identify the mysterious illness afflicting their newborn son. She and her protégé Yoon Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) uncover a vengeful, multigenerational spirit called the “Grave’s Call.” To remove the evil entity, the shamans will need the assistance of a geomancer, Kim Sang-deok (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik), and mortician, Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin). The promise of a huge sum of money is all the enticement needed for the beleaguered Sang-deok and short on cash Yeong-geun to perform their own brand of ghostbusting.
Geomancy and the selling of burial plots is an odd science and profession to ensure the dead are buried the right way. This is Sang-deok’s trade and his friendship with Yeong-geun suggests the two aren’t above scheming if a profit can be made.
After a difficult first act where the burial plot curse reveals an even bigger enemy, the real story gets going as the quartet faces a force that has been affecting a family for three generations. The expanse of time it takes for Jang Jae-hyun’s story to move forward feels like wasted space. Exhuma is much too fat for supernatural horror. Momentum is strained and I am left to wonder if this wouldn’t have worked better with the geomancer and mortician foremost and then the shaman and her pupil came into the picture.
Exhuma, while an evocatively impressive supernatural tale, has stretches where it detours. You start to feel like taking a dirt nap and wish our quartet acted more like South Korean Kolchaks, stalking the night.
Growing up in the era of slasher horror it was never a question of what team I was on. I was Team Freddy all the way. It might be on account of seeing a fictional horror icon go from child killer to having its own pull-string doll. Then again, it was the ‘80s.
Forty years after it propelled a small distribution company (New Line Cinema) into the stratosphere, Freddy comes back home again with the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street on the 4K UHD format.
Wes Craven based the story on a series of L.A. Times articles about individuals dying from Brugada Syndrome, otherwise known as Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome. One case involved a young man convinced that something in his dreams was coming to kill him. He refused his sleep medication but ultimately succumbed to sleep and later died.
A killer nightmare conceit should have Hollywood studios lining up to make such a horror movie. Nope. Not even Craven’s friend Sean Cunningham, director of the original Friday the 13th, was interested. Craven persisted and Robert Shaye and his company New Line Cinema saw the project’s potential. But I bet even he didn’t envision Craven’s idea would spawn seven sequels, a remake, a TV series, a comic book, and merchandise galore (or is it ga-gore?).
In 1984 or 2024, A Nightmare on Elm Street continues to be a stone cold classic. It’s raw and unapologetic and does for sleeping what Jaws did for swimming. It also wastes no time in getting things moving. The opener already shows our villain making his signature weapon, and we see him in shadow cackling as a petrified teen mazes through a steam room’s catacombs. Nowadays, filmmakers would exposition this to hell and drag things out. But here the parents just gaslight their children about Fred Krueger like it’s nothing to worry about.
Jim Doyle’s mechanical special effects are pretty incredible considering the budget and production constraints. Tina’s death scene is remarkable and likely a major influence on Damien Leone and his Terrifier franchise.
Released a week after Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street was a profitable hit for Shaye’s company and received strong reviews and good word of mouth. Its success saw a sequel rushed into production and released the following year. In spite of poor reviews, ANOES 2: Freddy’s Revenge actually earned a few million more than Craven’s original. The sequels would continue to be profitable until mainstream horror began to decline in the late 1980s/early ‘90s. Still, without the nightmare boogeyman, New Line Cinema wouldn’t have had the necessary capital to give us Seven, Blade, The Lord of the Rings, and horror franchises Final Destination and The Conjuring.
Curiously, for its 4K UHD debut Warner Bros. has opted to not include a remastered Blu-ray (the film was originally released on the format in 2010). As comparison, Warner Archive is releasing John Ford’s The Searchers in 4K UHD with a remastered Blu-ray included. Archival features from the original 2000 DVD are included here in full HD and 1080i. Chief among them is the 50-minute Never Sleep Again documentary, which covers the film’s production and legacy in broad strokes. Next is The House That Freddy Built, a 22-minute piece about the franchise as a whole, its impact on horror, and how it would make New Line Cinema one of the preeminent horror movie studios.
Legacy extras as well and good, but the real reason to check this out in 4K is because American audiences finally get to see the film in all its uncut glory. Prior to this release, only select VHS copies had the film in uncut form. The uncut version only adds about eight seconds of footage, but those added seconds amount to more gore and lingering but quick images of Tina’s and Glen’s deaths. The theatrical version is also on the disc, and the original audio commentaries from 2000 have been ported over.
I get the feeling this release is proving grounds to see if Warner Bros. moves forward with a complete 4K UHD set or decides to lease it to a distributor like Shout! Factory to give us the Nightmare boxed set fans want.
