Assassination Nation Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Assassination Nation Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 18, 2018

Writer/Director Sam Levinson's (Another Happy Day) Assassination Nation is a sometimes sobering, occasionally humorous, frequently dark, and extremely violent cautionary tale and deconstruction of the marriage of the modern digital playpen and contemporary humanity. The film plays around with a grotesquely extreme example of what could very well transpire in the real world when a small town is rocked by digital scandal, when people take extreme measures in response to leaked images of sex and sordid revelations that only the phone knows until someone hacks away at the digital ones and zeroes. Then, people begin to hack away at the flesh and blood behind them, because it's all fun and games and the joke of the day until it's their images that are exposed to the world. The film is nonsensical, hyperkinetic, tonally uneven, laborious in its open, fascinating in its middle, and mindless at its end. Yet it's one of those "train wreck" movies from which one cannot look away for its depiction of vapid 21st century life and macabre view of modern society.

Four friends -- Lily (Odessa Young), Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), Bex (Hari Nef), and Em (Abra) -- are typical modern high school girls, sexting, having sex, and living their lives predominantly through their phones. Their small community -- Salem, Massachusetts -- is rocked when the mayor's phone is hacked and his private life, including a number of sordid photographs, appear online and go viral. He is not the only victim to be humiliated. The high school principal's secret digital life and private conversations are revealed to the world as well. While the local youth thrive on poking fun at and discussing the revelations, many adults are disgusted with the town and school leadership. A rift begins to form which grows exponentially when an unidentified hacker leaks half the town's secret, sordid details. Blame eventually falls on the girls -- Lily in particular -- and they find themselves in a bloody confrontation with bloodthirsty townsfolk.

Assassination Nation has been built from borrowed bits and pieces of every edgy, angsty, ultra violent, and hyper real movie of the last twenty years and attempts to somehow mold them all into a unique identity. The film largely fails, thanks in large part to those readily identifiable components that cannot merge together, yielding a tonally uneven structure that sees the movie transition from one permutation to another without much sense of flow or cohesion. Film’s start offers a grating, even disheartening, portrait of modern teenage life which becomes an examination of a small community rocked by digital sex scandal which evolves into an exploration of pain and shame and regret which eventually morphs into madness, as blood is spilled liberally and unapologetically because...who knows why, really why, anyway. A digital Lynch mob looking to protect its own secrets becomes a physical Lynch mob in a climax that resembles something out of a Purge movie. The film is at its best in its middle stretch, but the bookends are largely terrible, the beginning side an irritating, annoying peek into modern culture and the finale a senseless string of brutally violent images.

Levinson clearly has a point, or points, to make in the movie, but what he wants to say is never entirely clear. The film is certainly a commentary on contemporary culture, on vanishing privacy (a fact the girls in the film admit they readily accept, for the most part, which goes against the older generations who are fighting to maintain it). The middle stretch offers particularly interesting opportunities to find cultural critiques, when the lynch mobs form in the digital and real realms alike, when data dumps ruin lives, when real flesh and blood hurts with each post, text, and tweet. It explores the extremes of the interconnection between the real and digital worlds, how today's secrets are no longer secret but merely data files waiting to be exposed. How all of this affects the girls beyond the ultimate push to violence is the most engaging component in the film: how their social lives, their friendships, their thought processes, their approach to the interconnected world and the consequences of what they have done and particularly what they choose to hold as a digital keepsake are concepts that Levinson introduces but doesn't always explore to fruition. He's more concerned with building towards the violence rather than delving into the more rewarding concepts that the film introduces and dances around, kicking the proverbial tires on but refusing to open in any meaningful way.

Assassination Nation Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This is an agreeable image within its sometimes heavily stylized texture. Nicely filmic at times, deliberately soft at others, and occasionally employing two- or three-way screen splits (with the same shot sometimes filling both or all three divisions) are all techniques that keep viewers on their toes as the film rifles through various visual structures and styles. Generally, though, the digitally shot picture offers pleasing, sometimes almost film-like details that reveal firm skin textures, good clothing definition, and satisfying environmental sharpness, again within the movie's visual stylings. Colors are a little flat, lacking the extreme punch and verve of more traditionally edited films, but blood, clothes, hair, eyes, and other examples of standout shades present with impressive accuracy and saturation. Nighttime black levels occasionally appear flat and raised to a purple color, with a sequence around the 72 minute mark a good example. Noise is also a concern in lower light shots, but additional source or encode artifacts are difficult to spot.

Assassination Nation Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Assassination Nation features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Musical delivery is certainly not timid. Bass is deep, front end spread is extreme, and surround integration is regular and aggressive. Clarity is not perfect at all times, but it matches the movie's tonal unevenness. Crowd din when the mayor takes the stage at the 24 minute mark, and again when the principal stands before an angry mob at the 37 minute mark, are amongst highlights for spacial envelopment. Discrete cat calls amongst the din are audible, and the track ensures proper clarity and detail even amongst the sonic madness. Gunfire, crashes, slams, slices, and other action-oriented details spring to life with impressive, but not perfect, delivery in the final act. Bass remains rather prominent and surrounds carry a healthy allotment of sonic content. Dialogue is occasionally muddled (Bex's in particular) and sometimes emanates from other than the center channel to match on-screen placement, particularly during scenes in which split screens are utilized. For the most part, though, it's firm in the center and clarity and prioritization are good, though not perfect.

Assassination Nation Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Assassination Nation contains a few brief extras. The package is highlighted by a handful of deleted and extended scenes. A Movies Anywhere digital copy code is included with purchase. The release ships with an embossed slipcover.

• Deleted/Extended Scenes (1080p, 16:59 total runtime): Included are Regan's Full Take on Hacker (Extended), The Lacey Party - Em's Opinion (Deleted), Nance and Lily Talk (Deleted), Officers Richter and Daniels Respond to a Call at the Lacey's (Deleted), Sarah and Superintendent Sanders - Margie Duncan's Revenge (Deleted), Diamond vs. Johnny (Extended), Greenwald's Party Aftermath (Deleted), and The Girls Kill Johnny (Alternate).
• Gag Reel (1080p, 6:22): Humorous moments from the set.
• Trailers (1080p): Three trailers for the film. Included are Trigger Warnings (1:09), Savage AF (2:31), and Fierce (2:10). All are red band.

Assassination Nation Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Assassination Nation is a film bustling with potential, but it's largely unrealized. It introduces a number of good ideas on modern society, digital interactions, and privacy but seems more concerned with graphically revealing the life and times of modern high schoolers and climaxing with excess violence. The movie is little more than bloody fantasy with a middle that asks more questions than it chooses to answer. Audiences that can wait out the grinding first act will be rewarded with a layered unravelling of the digital and real worlds that ultimately leads towards empty splatter. Universal's Blu-ray delivers good video, excellent audio, and has a few extras on hand. For fans only.