Better the Devil You Know Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		1.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Better the Devil You Know Blu-ray Movie Review

Turn back, you're going the wrong way...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown July 3, 2010

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." Though it may seem strange to begin a review of a seventh-tier independent film by quoting Ratatouille's foremost restaurant critic, Pixar's wisdom prevails. Better the Devil You Know isn't a good film by any means, and certainly isn't the undiscovered masterpiece its exorbitant pricepoint might suggest, but the fact that it exists, the fact that a group of people committed themselves to a shoestring production and impossible odds, is more meaningful than anything I could ever say about it. I have respect for anyone with a drive and a dream, so kudos for committing it to film and putting it out there, gentlemen. I just wish that dream made a lick of sense.

"I'm not even supposed to be here today."

When jack-of-all-trades writer and film critic Tom Anderson (Tim Beringer, not to be confused with veteran actor Tom Berenger) receives a warning from a long-deceased friend -- a cryptic prophecy involving the fabled Four Horsemen and a lunchtime appointment with death -- he and his wide-eyed cohorts try to devise a plan to escape their fate. Complicating matters is a strange temporal portal on the outskirts of town; one that prevents their passage and, later, conveniently teleports them beyond the bounds of reality. Eventually forced to delve into a barren dreamscape, Tom and his friends have to confront a number of supernatural entities, fend off insanity, unravel the nature of their alternate reality, and ultimately restore balance to... sigh, it doesn't really matter. Jabbering away at each other one minute, battling masked otherworldly executioners the next, Devil's protagonists bumble from scene to scene without any prevailing sense of purpose. Meanwhile, the overarching plot all but disappears, making it increasingly difficult to weed through the cluttered narrative with any amount of certainty. Exhausting and aggravating, the film lags and lurches, leaving any poor soul who blinks, breathes or reasons trailing in the dust.

For every homegrown, independently financed sensation -- Clerks, The Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity, just to name a few -- there are hundreds, if not thousands of failed films lying by the side of the industry highway. What separates those films from others that have fallen in their wake? An understanding, an embrace even, of the limitations of a low budget and limited production values. Kevin Smith tailored every aspect of his debut to his credit cards, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez cleverly incorporated on-the-cheap handheld photography into the very fabric of their story, and Oren Peli discovered new, inventive ways to overcome a host of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, producing nothing short of a modern horror classic. But Better the Devil You Know writer/director Greg Augustine overreaches and overextends, crafting a bizarre blend of Dogma, Donnie Darko and Southland Tales that, by its very nature, requires high-dollar special effects, elaborate sets and costumes, and dozens of talented character actors... none of which Augustine has at his disposal. Swordmen sport fencing gear, Horsemen of the Apocalypse don paper-mache masks, misguided on-screen text evokes everything from 8-bit videogames to amateur arthouse cinema (well, everything except a cohesive vision), and easy-access locales reek of backyard filmmaking. The devil's in the details.

Fundamentally, Better the Devil You Know is just as shaky. Augustine's scrappy script crams slapstick comedy, surrealist fantasy, disconnected iconography, pretentious tragedy, haphazard action, and pithy dialogue into a cinematic meat grinder, and the resulting sludge lacks proper seasoning and palatable consistency. His debt to Kevin Smith and Richard Kelly is undeniable and immeasurable -- a fine pair of filmmakers to emulate -- but his work lacks the wile and wit of the former and the darkly divisive sensibilities of the latter. The entire production follows suit. Beringer and his coagulating co-stars nobly hurl themselves into the fray, desperate to make the scattershot material more digestible, but even their best black-box-theatre preening amounts to little; a virtual who's who of relatives and local townsfolk fill out the supporting cast, but their wooden contributions are largely to the film's detriment; poor pacing takes its toll (Devil's ninety minutes feels more like three hours), while any semblance of story is buried deep beneath an onslaught of ambiguous imagery and flailing subplots; and the film's appearance on the Blu-ray market turns out to be a more engrossing mystery than anything Tom is tasked with tackling. Aspiring small-town filmmakers take note: script smarter, cast smaller, and shoot tighter.

The film's lone saving grace? It's better than Kelly's Southland Tales, a mind-numbing flop that proves studio support, a respectable budget and an A-list cast isn't enough to save every dream. (A statement which, based on the inexplicably positive reader reviews Kelly's sophomore slump has received on our site, may send some of you scurrying to Better the Devil You Know.)

Better the Devil You Know Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Produced and shot on a daydreamer's dime, Better the Devil You Know wears every dollar of its meager budget on its sleeve. Costumes, special effects, makeup, set design, even the disc's home-brewed main menu.... we're not talking Hollywood production values here. Still, Augment Image's 1080p/MPEG-2 transfer isn't half bad, offering those who venture into the Devil's realm an entirely passable presentation. Yes, skintones range from chalky to oversaturated, contrast is terribly inconsistent, and director Greg Augustine and principal photography director Anthony Gagnon's palette is often washed away by untempered sunlight, but most of the transfer's shortcomings are the result of Augustine's limited resources rather than some glaring technical deficiency. Colors are relatively strong and stable, black levels are quite satisfying (dare I say rich and inky on occasion), and fine detailing is far more competent than I expected. Not only do textures tend to impress, object definition is crisp and clean on the whole, and background details are unfettered. Moreover, the image isn't prone to compression mishaps or encoding issues. Errant artifacts, minor aliasing, and bursts of noise do find their way into the presentation, but rarely amount to a major distraction. All things considered, the Blu-ray edition of Better the Devil You Know features a decidedly decent transfer. Low-budget eyesores and antiquated codec notwithstanding, no one will mistake it for a DVD.

Better the Devil You Know Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately, the disc's Dolby Digital stereo track doesn't fare so well. Dialogue is muddy and muffled, slave to every stiff breeze, passing car, and greedy sheet of drywall the cast are forced to contend with. Lines are often overwhelmed by wind or undermined by hiss, and Augustine's synthesized music tends to overpower whatever ominous quips and shallow effects that find their way into the mix. Proper prioritization either wasn't feasible or, ironically, wasn't a priority. The LFE channel and rear speakers have been given the day off as well, leaving little for anyone to get excited about. Given Augustine's limitations, I'm sure Better the Devil You Know sounds about as good as it ever could. But if you're going to release a movie on Blu-ray at a premium price...

Better the Devil You Know Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While the Blu-ray edition of Better the Devil You Know packs more than an hour of special features onto a second disc, there isn't much to dig into. A meandering "Behind the Scenes" documentary (SD, 60 minutes) provides little in the way of production insight, focusing instead on the cast and crew's downtime antics and casual conversations; a batch of "Deleted Scenes" (SD, 15 minutes) serves up more of the same (even though three of the sequences actually work better than many of the scenes that made Augustine's final cut); and a bloated "Theatrical Trailer" (SD, 4 minutes) does little to clear up the plot.

Better the Devil You Know Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Better the Devil You Know isn't an ingenious diamond-in-the-rough or an underfunded intellectual gem. It's the sort of film you'd expect from Echo Bridge or Blue Underground... minus the aforementioned studios' already shabby production values. As a Blu-ray release, it fails as well. Its video transfer is surprisingly sound, but its Dolby Digital stereo mix is awful, its supplemental package is trite, and its pricepoint is shockingly steep. If it could be had for less than ten dollars, I might shrug my shoulders and simply say "buyer beware." As it stands though, Better the Devil You Know doesn't provide anything to offset its cost.