11/11/11 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

11/11/11 Blu-ray Movie Review

Bad Omen.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 6, 2018

The thing about numerology is that those who practice it can turn any data set into any prophecy that fits their agenda. The thing about The Asylum is that it can turn any point of interest into a lousy movie. The two collide in 11/11/11, a poor man's Horror movie about the then-approaching date (a date the world obviously survived, somehow, probably thanks to last-minute intervention by the Pleiadians). No satanic takeover, no end of days ("is that Eastern time?") prophecies making an appearance to wipe out the world. Things moved along that day, like any other. This reviewer published reviews for Spy Kids: All the Time in the World and 30 Minutes or Less (both of which deal with "time" in their titles...WHAT DOES IT MEAN???). Maybe all the bad stuff is supposed to happen in 2111. Or maybe it happened way back in the year 1111 and this is all just a fake reality inside The Matrix. Who knows. Or maybe modern calendars are way off and the real doomsday is actually...gulp...tomorrow! As in any tomorrow, like tomorrow tomorrow or two days before the day after tomorrow or whatever the tomorrow is for whatever date you're reading this. Or something. But the optics of the date are at least interesting, what with all the straight line verticals in play. Too bad this movie falls horizontal.

College professor Jack Vales (Jon Briddell) is moving his wife Melissa (Erin Coker) and son Nat (Hayden Byerly) to a new home when he takes a new job at a university. The house is nice enough and the neighborhood seems friendly, but strange things are afoot. The numbers making up the house's address add up to 11. Nat is going to turn 11 on November 11, 2011. When the pregnant Melissa is ordered to stay in bed to ward off the ill effects of preeclampsia, the family hires a new babysitter (Aurelia Scheppers) who does her best to bring out the devil inside Nat. Meanwhile, local townsfolk devil worshipers angle for the same.

For those keeping track, The Asylum's track record is not great. The studio specializes in bottom-of-the-barrel direct-to-video films that look to capitalize on something, usually a big blockbuster but sometimes just something of recognizable significance that might make for a "good" movie. 11/11/11 is fairly typical of the studio's productions: lousy in most every way but oddly watchable in a pinch. That said, the movie struggles to build narrative cohesion. It’s scattershot, with random pieces vying for audience attention but none of it amounts to much. The movie is not overdone, however, its just that the filmmakers demonstrate little ability to connect a movie together, never mind with an audience. There's little evidence here that anyone involved understands how to shape and tell a story. 11/11/11 is in the information business. The filmmakers appear to want to dump a lot of characters and ideas into the movie: a book on "11" numerology, a smoke-filled van filled with various side characters who are conspiring to do something or other, the crazy old lady next door, the slow bicycle rider, the mother who is bedridden because she has preeclampsia. The movie introduces a lot of pieces, but even by the climax when there's an effort to bring most of them together, there's no real sense of how or why they connect other than that they share the same screen.

In the film's defense, many lower tier Horror films struggle with the same problems. 11/11/11 simply plays the field and mimics other films on a crude, superficial level but lacks the know-how backbone that make even lesser generic pictures helmed by more accomplished filmmakers (and bigger budgets) more appealing simply by the power of greater cohesion. Add relatively poor acting, lower grade special effects (on which the film is thankfully not reliant), small mistakes (shell casings don't match those that would eject from the gun used at the beginning of the movie), and practical effects that are a tough sell (punches and kicks are poorly sold), and it's clear that The Asylum doesn't sweat the details. That the movie plays from a defined starting point to a defined endpoint seems the only goal with something resembling "scary" and referencing the title all that really matters in the 80-some minutes in between.

11/11/11 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

11/11/11 features the MPEG-2 encode and 1080p resolution. The image is very flat; the modest digital source photography is very unforgiving in that regard, but the trade-off is razor-sharp detailing across the spectrum, including presenting facial complexities such as hair, pores, and sweat with efficiency and ease. The image is crisp across the board, beneficial for more complex environments which really don't extend too far beyond the family's house but are of help in revealing its various rooms and the locations immediately surrounding the dwelling. Colors are fine. The movie is rather bleak in spots but the palette appears fairly accurate given the movie's visual accommodations. Skin tones are reflective of surrounding contrast and lightning conditions. Black levels are healthy enough. Mild noise creeps into lower light scenes and dense macroblocking is visible in some of the shots inside a smoky van, but the image is otherwise good to go on its essentials.

11/11/11 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

11/11/11's lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack struggles in every facet. Dialogue never commands the stage as it should, and neither does music, for that matter. It's timid, frail, and rarely reaches all that far along the front. Surround usage of any kind is sparse. Action scenes don't gain much intensity, low end effect, or surround implementation.

11/11/11 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

11/11/11 contains a featurette, a gag reel, and some trailers. The menu is of DVD era presentation.

• Making of Featurette (1080p, 5:07): Keith Allan discusses working on his first directorial feature, cast and crew discuss the meaning of "11/11/11," making various scenes, and more.
• Gag Reel (1080p, 1:31).
• Trailers (1080p): Previews for 3 Musketeers, 2012: Zombie Apocalypse, Dragon Crusaders, A Haunting in Salem, 11/11/11 Born Bad Uncut, 2012: Ice Age, Almighty Thor, and Barely Legal.

11/11/11 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

11/11/11 is a cruddy bottom-of-the-barrel Horror film that's good for a few laughs but little more. It's sluggish even at less than 90 minutes, the story is not so much incoherent but certainly too busy and unfocused, characters are bland and acting isn't far behind, and production values have been skimped in an effort to trim budget. This is a typical Asylum venture which means fans of bad cinema should give it a whirl while more demanding cinephiles should create some distance between themselves and this movie. The Blu-ray delivers serviceable video, audio that scrapes by, and a couple of extras. Skip it unless it's for bad movie night.