Bluebeard Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Bluebeard Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 13, 2017

Mention the word “twist” to many American moviegoers and you’ll probably get a treatise on what’s gone wrong with M. Night Shyamalan’s career. Though unexpected plot turns have been a staple of film verbiage since carbon arc lights first illuminated celluloid, Shyamalan made his early reputation out of supposedly mind boggling zigzags that upended everything that had gone before and were meant to leave the audience dazzled by the sheer ingenuity of whatever conceit he was exploiting. Bluebeard’s very title hints at one of the supposed surprises in store in Soo- yeon Lee’s sophomore big screen effort (her first film was 2003's The Uninvited), at least for those who are aware of the Charles Perrault source story, but there are other convolutions this film undertakes, especially in its last half hour or so, that not only strain logic but may ultimately make the “big” twist that has come before seem pointless. Bluebeard has a number of intriguing elements, and there’s no denying its claustrophobic, anxiety ridden ambience, but somewhere along the way the film takes one detour too many, leading to potential confusion and frustration. The film follows the day to day struggles of a colonoscopist (there’s an underutilized career in the film world!) named Byun Seung-hoon (Cho Jin-woong), who is adjusting to life at his new clinic in Gangnam (no jokes and/or dance movements, please) after separating from his wife. The clinic is insanely busy, since it’s evidently the only one offering these services in this region, and Seung-hoon is basically one of the walking dead, regularly falling asleep on his bus rides to and from work, though he attends to his professional duties without any problem. He’s renting a room that is located above a local butcher shop, and he’s a little disturbed one day to see the elderly former proprietor of the place who is never named (played by Shin Goo) eating raw pork that’s been left on a table by his son, Jung Sung-geun (Kim Dae-myung), who now runs the family business. There are a number of little vignettes like this in the early part of the film that quite capably develop feelings of both unease and actual disease, with a decrepit, squalid ambience seemingly creeping in from every corner.

Kind of weirdly, Lee, who wrote the film’s screenplay along with directing it, ties hints of climate change into a story of a serial killer marauding through the streets of Gangnam. The film actually opens with a voiceover from “Weather Service” detailing changes in annual weather patterns, with a fleeting shot of what looks like a decapitated body poking up through the frozen crust of the Han River. Later, in one of the film’s more hallucinatory moments, a freak snowstorm covers a bloody Seung-hoon after a horrifying attack. These plot elements are interesting, but really never developed, and so add “color” if no real informational or even subtextual value.

The film goes off on a number of odd tangents, detailing Seung-hoon’s halting relationship with his assistant Mi-yeon (Lee Chung-ah), as well as some of the turmoil that has arisen in the wake of his split with his wife Jo Soo-yung (Yoon See-ah). That dysfunction includes a somewhat fractured relationship with Seung-hoon’s little boy, a kid who, like kids everywhere, would rather stay glued to his cellphone than indulge his father in an actual conversation at a restaurant. When the old man from the butcher shop is brought in for a colonoscopy, everything turns considerably more sinister when, under the effects of the sedative used for the procedure, the old guy starts babbling about chopping up “meat” — meat that soon is revealed to be human remains that have been discarded in various river locations, something that makes news reports of body parts being found all over the place obviously alarming to Seung-hoon. It doesn’t take much to convince the already addled doctor that he’s renting a room from a family of serial killers, and when he seems to have discovered actual evidence of their crimes in the facility’s freezer, he is in a panic as to how to proceed.

Had Lee simply stopped with this element, one which already provides a good deal of paranoiac opportunities, the film might have generated more impact. But a number of sidebars, including an employee siphoning off drugs to sell on the side, as well as the sudden disappearance of Seung- hoon’s estranged wife about halfway through the film suddenly send the story spiraling in a number of different directions, ultimately leading to a loss of tonal (and, frankly, logical) control. A mysterious cop shows up, one who has already been seen in a number of other moments scattered throughout the film, but Seung-hoon, already beset with incessant nightmares (the film too often goes the “is this real or a dream?” route), seems to becoming increasingly detached from reality.

Even here Lee might have prevented some of the dissipation of energy that informs the last part of the film. In a completely unsurprising “reveal”, a lot of what has seemed to be going in turns out not to have been going on, at least if you believe that particular “twist”. Unfortunately, Lee doesn’t leave bad enough alone, and resorts to an insanely long coda, replete with a number of flashbacks, that then twist the initial twist back to something resembling what most folks would have assumed was the actual story. It’s all simply too much, and it also completely contradicts everything that Lee has just presented (twice, in fact). Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that if there are CCTV cameras everywhere in Seoul, and that those cameras caught the culprit in the act, but then another set of CCTV cameras show exactly the opposite going on, what exactly is the viewer supposed to think? It’s like watching Rashomon divorced from its underlying metaphysical and philosophical aspects.

Still, at least as a mood piece, Bluebeard achieves a palpably unsettling quality which may endear it to some horror fans. The film has a really bizarre tone virtually from the get go, and a lot of the film manages to offer a kind of subliminal creepiness that the Koreans seem especially apt in conveying. Performances are generally fine, even if Cho Jin-woong is forced to go Grand Guignol at regular intervals.

Bluebeard Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bluebeard is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Technical data on the film is well nigh impossible to find online (at least it was for me), but this appears to be digitally captured, and a lot of this transfer looks fantastically sharp and well detailed. There are typical but commendably only occasional grading effects employed, toward both the blue and yellow sides of things (seemingly inescapable in horror films these days), though detail levels remain relatively high throughout the palette changes. A lot of the film plays out in very brightly lit environments, and as such fine detail levels tend to be quite high, even in midrange shots. The one recurring problem here is some prevalent banding. Well Go USA's logo frequently displays noticeable banding on its Blu-ray releases, and that's echoed here by a number of other production entity logos that start off the presentation, but even once the film starts, there are moments where clear banding intrudes (pay attention toward the end of the film when car headlights are aimed directly at the camera and there's a very good example). Aside from this recurrent anomaly, though, the transfer is solid and doesn't have any other major issues.

Bluebeard Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bluebeard has an extremely effective if kind of loopily hyperbolic DTS:X track in the original Korean. This is not a subtle sound mix by any stretch of the imagination, and a number of the score choices, while providing unique and rather impressive surround activity, are so over the top that (for me, anyway) they were a distraction. The film has a number of good sound effects, including some ominous low frequency effects, that help to establish an appropriately unsettled mood. Occasional forays into urban environments also provide good opportunities for ambient environmental sounds. Dialogue is rendered very cleanly and with smart prioritization.

Bluebeard Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:34)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA releases, the disc has been authored so that the previews for other Well Go USA releases automatically follow the above supplement.

Bluebeard Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've shared in other reviews how The Sixth Sense's big twist didn't surprise me even one whit, and I have to say I saw the first big twist in Bluebeard coming quite a bit before it was actually presented. The fact that the film just keeps on going for quite a while after that "surprise", reordering events yet another time, may delight some viewers, but my hunch is most will either be confused or just downright fed up with the varying explanations given for everything. If you can ignore the stumbles the film makes in its closing act, a lot of Bluebeard is quite interesting, and it certainly has a palpable mood that's unique and anxiety inducing. Video has a few passing issues, but audio is first rate if a little on the gonzo side at times.