Accident Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Accident Blu-ray Movie Review

The accident features a car, but it's still a train wreck.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 20, 2019

Accident is one of those films that relies on such a preposterous concatenation of plot conceits that it quickly becomes hard to take anything very seriously. Unfortunately, writer and director Dan Tandowski seems to be extremely serious about things, which means the only comedy some may glean from the enterprise is definitely of the unintended variety. Jess (Stephanie Schildknecht) and Caroline (Roxane Hayward) are dropped off at a (supposed) Lake Tahoe adjacent bus depot, with the pair planning to visit what sounds like an outdoor music festival being held nearby (as with any number of other elements in this film, certain aspects are left to the imagination). A bit of subterfuge ends up being revealed, whereby the two actually aren’t going to be taking the bus there, but in the meantime that “trick” ends up playing a trick on the girls themselves, and they find themselves stranded. Since it’s already been mentioned in passing that cell phone service is spotty in the area, certain viewers who have a penchant for pretty obvious foreshadowing may already be in eye rolling mode.

There’s a really funny meme that has made the rounds on social media about some guy who picks up a hitchhiker, and the hitchhiker expresses surprise, asking, “How do you know I’m not a serial killer?” The driver responds, “The chances of two serial killers being in one car are astronomical.” Now (minor non-spoiler alert) there aren’t any serial killers at play in Accident (unless you consider a slew of quasi-black ops guys who show up late in the film serial killers), but in yet another predictable plot conceit, two guys who do pick up Caroline and Jess aren’t exactly who they seem to be. Initially Fred (Tyrone Keogh) and Thomas (Keenan Arrison) just seem to be two guys with a really cool car (a “right driver”, perhaps a subliminal clue this film was actually shot in South Africa) who can offer the girls a ride to the festival, but of course there wouldn’t be that much of a story that way.

The fact that Tondowski wastes very little time in getting to “scenery” as documented in screenshot 4 kind of puts the lie to a major plot conceit in Accident, where some over amorous moves on the part of one of the guys in that aforementioned cool car lead to a devastating car accident which leaves everyone badly injured and supposedly completely isolated. A lot of the middle section of the film plays out with the car smashed to bits upside down with the girls trapped inside, and perhaps for this reason Tondowski keeps cutting to flashbacks that supposedly give some additional information, but which end up feeling more interruptive than anything. If you have a bunch of characters in distress in a potentially threatening environment (did I mention that despite this locale being “isolated” there’s live electricity flopping about?), who cares how they got there or what some particular motivations might have been?

Accident has a quartet of extremely photogenic performers at its core, but the writing is ridiculous, and unfortunately the performers' acting abilities may not quite match their physical attributes, meaning things sound perhaps even worse than they may have read on paper. The cutting back and forth between the "car in distress" material and all of the supposed background information tends to make this film feel like its lurching forward in fits and starts.

Things only go from bad to worse when it turns out that the really cool car is the "McGuffin" of the film, and that there is a gaggle of paramilitary types intent on retrieving it (they may not be fully aware of its present state, and, yes, that's a joke). The story just tips over into such ridiculousness at this point that it's almost easy to overlook the fact that supposedly mortally wounded people are miraculously healthy enough all of a sudden to start running through what amounts to a rain soaked jungle once villains start firing guns at them. It's hard to know what to think about a little "sting" in just the final second or two of the film that seems to suggest rather authoritatively that there won't be any sequels featuring some of these characters.

Accident Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Accident is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. This is another outing I haven't been able to track down much technical data on, so I'm once again assuming this transfer was based on a 2K DI of a digitally captured film. The bright daylight material, which comprises the opening scenes as well as most of the flashback material, pops quite nicely throughout here, with solid saturation and typically quite robust detail levels. Unfortunately, a lot of the film takes place in the dark, rainy confines of the ravine where the car ends up after a collision, and many of these scenes suffer from pretty minimal shadow detail and virtually nonexistent fine detail at times, as can perhaps be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review. Some of the dark sequences can get fairly noisy looking at times (see screenshot 19 for one example).

Accident Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Torrential downpours and whipsawing live electric lines help to give Accident's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track some good immersive moments and discrete channel placement of individual effects, but often surround activity kind of ebbs and delivers a baseline background noise element. Weirdly the main accident moment, one that might have employed some pretty significant effects work (and, presumably, bombastic LFE) is played out in slow motion with tamped down sonics, which stylistically is interesting but from an audiophile standpoint may be a tad disappointing. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout and once the film tips over into hyperbolic action adventure mode with helicopters and automatic weapons, things do perk up measurably.

Accident Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:38)

As is the case with most Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored so that trailers for other Well Go USA releases play automatically after the trailer for this film. Those same trailers for other releases also play automatically at disc boot up but can be chapter skipped through.

Accident Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Accident is a product of South Africa (and France, weirdly), which is perhaps hinted at by the use of a "right driver" car in the film. The basic premise here is solid enough, but the execution is pretty ham fisted at times, with less than convincing line readings and a plot that goes from silly to ludicrous faster than a Lamborghini gets from zero to sixty. Video is a little spotty at times due to the prevalence of dark settings, but audio is fine, for those considering a purchase.