Bound to Vengeance Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Bound to Vengeance Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 30, 2015

There have been any number of extremely disturbing films about women being held captive by various insane men, films as different in tone and approach as The Lovely Bones or a film which is already generating significant Oscar buzz for star Brie Larson, Room. One of the most disturbing films in this troubling subgenre is William Wyler’s sole foray into “horror” territory, the riveting 1965 outing The Collector, a film which works up considerable emotional involvement with very few trappings of a traditional horror entry. If only Bound to Vengeance’s director José Manuel Cravioto had the same restraint as Wyler, or even the weirdly hallucinogenic lyricism of Peter Jackson, perhaps his film would have managed to be more than a series of vignettes built around various horrifying indignities suffered by not one, but a whole coterie, of women who have been captured and imprisoned by an obviously insane perpetrator. The film wants to pretend it’s exploring various psychological traumas experienced by the victims, but my hunch is there’s going to be relatively little Stockholm Syndrome on the part of most viewers, many of whom will choose to escape this particular confinement by simply turning the Blu-ray off.

Bound to Vengeance evidently screened theatrically as Reversal, and one of the film’s few innovations comes very early, when abductee Eve (Tina Ivlev) gives her victimizer Phil (Richard Tyson) the business end of a brick to the skull, making him the captive. However, Eve soon discovers that she’s not the only woman Phil has sequestered away at various locations, and so she’s forced to make a deal with the devil in order to free the other damsels in distress. It’s all patently silly and contrived, and only becomes more so as the film devolves into near torture porn once Eve begins to find various victims. A supposed “twist” in the late going will be patently obvious to all but the most undemanding viewer.

Bound to Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bound to Vengeance is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The fact that the vast majority of the film takes place in dark or dimly lit environments means that most of this presentation is fairly murky looking, with only average levels of detail and sharpness on display. There are frequent interstitials of supposed camera phone footage, and despite the ostensible lo-fi ambience of that format, the brightly lit sequences actually pop better than much of the rest of the film. Lighting choices and actual color grading strategies offer some variety but again tend to deplete the image of fine detail in all but close-ups.

Bound to Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bound to Vengeance's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track offers some good surround activity when Simon Boswell's electronically infused score supports various sequences. The film's sound design is surprisingly subtle at times, despite some hyperbolic elements like screaming and such, with good attention paid to ambient environmental sounds. Dialogue (such as it is) is presented cleanly and is well priortized.

Bound to Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:37)

Bound to Vengeance Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bound to Vengeance is, like some other films about women being held captive, fairly disturbing, but it's also too trashy to ever seem like much more than a typical exploitation flick. The film probably would have been more effective without any perceived high falutin' political and/or philosophical attributes. Horror fans may find enough blood and guts here to warrant a look, and for those folks, video quality is very good and audio quality is excellent.