Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Barricade Blu-ray Movie Review

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 15, 2014

After the conclusion of the hit sitcom Will & Grace, star Eric McCormack set about reinventing himself so that his future career wouldn't be hemmed in by the familiar character he had played for eight seasons. He went on the New York stage as one of Neil LaBute's duplicitous womanizers in the play Some Girl(s). He co-starred as a slimy senator seeking the presidency in a Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's classic, The Best Man. He played a strait-laced family man in the short-lived TNT series Trust Me, before landing a steady job as a schizophrenic doctor on the current TNT series Perception.

In the process, McCormack also tried a few genre films, including the 2012 thriller Barricade, one of the rare productions by WWE Studios that did not feature a former wrestling star. Filmed in Canada, with exteriors shot in British Columbia's remote Manning Park, Barricade is a minor exercise that is interesting primarily for McCormack's presence and the rapport he establishes with the young actors playing his children. Everyone involved seems to have understood that the core of the story is a father's troubled relationship with his children. Get that right, and minor flaws can be forgiven.

An opening scene establishes the Shade family. Terance (McCormack) is a hard-working psychologist whose wife, Leah (Jody Thompson), wants him to spend more time with their son, Jake, and daughter, Cynthia (Ryan Grantham and Conner Dwelly). Terance demurs, saying he's good at earning a living, but Leah is better at everything else, including the parent stuff. She suggests a family getaway to the remote cabin in the woods which she remembers fondly from childhood vacations. Terance reluctantly (and, one suspects, insincerely) agrees.

A year later, we find Terance, Jake and Cynthia driving along remote highways toward the cabin of which Leah spoke. Leah is not with them. The reasons for her absence only gradually emerge, but there is a pall over the mood in the car.

At a gas station and general store, the Shades stop to pick up keys from Mr. Howes (Donnelly Rhodes, Battlestar Galactica 's reliable Doc Cottle), who wears many hats, including that of the local sheriff. Howes is old enough to remember Leah Shade as a little girl, and he comments to Terance how much the children resemble her. At Terance's request, he has stocked the cabin with the kids' favorite foods and prepped it with Christmas decorations—none of which makes the place any less spooky when the Shade family arrives at the isolated forest locale in the pitch-black night.

Shortly after the Shades arrive, a massive blizzard moves in, transforming the entire region into a winter wonderland—or, depending on your point of view, a silent tomb. The Shades' SUV vanishes under a snowdrift, and Terance can't free it to drive Jake to a doctor when he begins coughing and running a fever. Soon the entire family is coughing. Meanwhile, screenwriter Michaelbrent Collings and director Andrew Currie run through the full array of old dark house tropes and motifs: flickering lights, strange noises, shadowy basements, locked attics, unknown figures in the woods (and at the window), a tool shed filled with menacing sharp objects, mysterious footprints in the snow, objects rearranged by an unseen presence—and many more.

Terance Shade doesn't handle any of this well, but then again who would when they're sick with cough and fever—or is it something else? Are the cough and fever merely physical manifestations of psychological issues? (Physician, heal thyself.) Terance's memories of happier times return in framents, along with jagged inserts of other events. He also seems to be losing time, which raises a red flag about what happens during those missing hours.

Currie obviously expects his viewers to be running through every scenario they've accumulated from watching other movies, and he gives them evidence both for and against every imaginable possibility: Demonic possession? Split personality? Poltergeist? Someone who sees dead people? Alien invasion? Cult? Animal spirits? Terance married a demon who's come back to claim her spawn? The problem with so many teases is that no resolution can possibly satisfy the lengthy buildup. The ending that Collings has written probably made perfect sense on the page, but at a gut level it can't help but leave the viewer feeling cheated. Despite the valiant efforts of his cast, Currie can't find a way to make the payoff worth the wait.

Barricade Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Barricade was shot on film by Robert Aschmann (Showtime's The L Word) and finished on a digital intermediate. As presented on RLJ/Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, it's a dark film, really dark, as if Aschmann and director Currie were literally trying to immerse the audience into the same state of confusion as the characters. Much of the film takes place either at night or inside dark interiors, and the blacks tend to be more gray than black. However, this probably isn't a flaw in the Blu-ray, as everything that needs to be seen for the sake of the story remains visible. I suspect that the DI colorist had to compensate for issues in the original lighting and made the most of what was there, brightening the image where necessary and sacrificing shadow detail in the process. It's not a beautiful picture, but it serves its purpose.

In well-lit scenes, detail is well-rendered and colors are natural and properly saturated. Perhaps the most unfortunate side effect of the image's shortcomings is the failure to capture any truly spectacular views of Manning Park, which is the subject of a featurette in the extras. Having made the trek to that remote location for the film's exteriors, the crew could at least have gotten some great vistas, but too many of the outdoor shots fade into greyish darkness.

At an average bitrate of 18.98 Mbps, Barricade might appear to flirt with overcompression, but those long dark passages provide a wealth of redundancy for a skilled compressionist and an advanced codec.

Barricade Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Barricade's 5.1 surround mix, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, takes full advantage of every opportunity to make you jump with a sudden burst of noise from one direction or another. Even before the Shade family reaches the cabin, they have several encounters that are intensified by sound effects. Once there, they never know (and neither does the audience) when some unexpected noise will assault them like an unwelcome visitor, including, of course, the cold winds from the blizzard outside. Many of the sounds, especially odd pounding from various directions, reverberate with deep bass tones—or maybe that's just the Shade family's terror being expressed subjectively by the soundtrack? Whatever the case, consider reducing the volume if your system doesn't have a subwoofer.

Dialogue is generally clear and largely functional, because no one knows what the hell is happening. The appropriately overwrought score is credited to Trevor Morris.

Barricade Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Most of the same participants are interviewed in the various featurettes, including McCormack, Grantham and Dwelly, director Currie, screenwriter Collings and producer Michael Pavone.

• Breaking Type: Eric McCormack (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:03): McCormack talks about the appeal of a script like Barricade at the point in his career where the opportunity arose. He and his young co-stars also describe how they worked together to create a believable family.



• Whiteout: A Snowstorm of Special Effects (1080i; 1.78:1; 6:38): Currie and the production team describe the various techniques and varieties of snow (real and artificial) used to create the blizzard effect. Even though the exteriors were shot in wintry British Columbia, the key thing to remember (as McCormack notes) is that everything in a movie has to be controlled. Also, to satisfy the requirements for filming in Manning Park, everything had to be environmentally safe.



• Blueprint to Horror: Cabin (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:55): The film's production designer provides a tour of the sets constructed on a soundstage to represent the cabin interiors.



• Manning Park (1080i; 1.78:1; 5:26): The production team describes the rigors of shooting in remote Manning Park, where cameras had to be transported on sleds.



• Photo Gallery (1080p; 1.78:1): Forty-nine stills; these should not be viewed until after seeing the film.



• Bonus Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for additional titles from WWE Studios: Bending the Rules, The Chaperone, Inside Out, Knucklehead, Legendary, No Holds Barred, The Reunion and That's What I Am. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Barricade Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Barricade is a trifle, the kind of film you might encounter on late-night cable and wonder, "Where did that come from?" McCormack is better than the material, and he keeps the film watchable through both his own performance and the inspiration he provides to his young co-stars. The Blu-ray is nothing special to look at, but I suspect the film wasn't either. Worth at least a rental, and more if the story grabs you.