Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Cub Blu-ray Movie Review

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the woods...

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 10, 2016

As Cub (2014) opens, a roving point-of-view (POV) shot shows a young woman being chased in the woods. The stalker is a feral boy (think of a muddied and masked Jason Voorhees as an adolescent) who keeps gaining traction on his prey. Illuminated lights suddenly appear but instead of a being an oncoming car, which the petrified lady hopes will be her getaway, it is only a diversion. An outstretched hand grabs the female's neck and there is a wipe to the main credit sequence. This first scene provides a blueprint for the 1980s American horror films and other retro genre titles Jonas Govaerts (in his feature-film debut) will invoke in this indie horror offering from Belgium that is a cross between Friday the 13th (1980) and Lord of the Flies (1963). However, this is not to give the misleading impression that Cub simply recycles stylistic tropes from its cinematic antecedents or presents a mishmash of narrative devices from the slasher genre. Clearly, Govaerts is savvy about incorporating references to films from his youth but he also has fun with them without compromising the dire nature and plot dilemmas that several of his characters find themselves in.

While Cub is largely an ensemble piece, the film is primarily centered around the cub scout, Sam (Maurice Luijten), a precocious and overly curious young lad who gets into more than he expects. Sam is running late for a field trip and his fellow scouts as well as their leaders nearly take off without him. The boys are informed by their supervisors that a young couple were reported to have been harmed by a half boy/half werewolf named Kai (Gill Eeckelaert) roaming the forest that they will visit. The group bravely decides that the trip is worth the risk and they set out for the vast rural terrain in Ardennes, Belgium. Knowledgeable genre fans can predict that the scouts' trek will ultimately lead them to a place not unlike Camp Crystal Lake.

The rite of passage from boys to young men may come at a deadly price.

The scouts are led and guided by the trifecta of Kris (Titus De Voogdt), Peter (Stef Aerts), and Jasmijn (Evelien Bosmans). In a bit of ingenious casting, Govaerts chose actors in their twenties and thirties (rather than teenagers) to portray the camp counselors and while they are older, their performances are convincing. Indeed, the acting is formidably superior to the stereotypical amateurish counselor found in so many teen slasher films. However, while Govaerts enlisted good actors for the roles, the screenplay unevenly develops its characters. For example, a predictable subplot is that one counselor will have an inevitable swoon with Jasmijn while the other will look on with envy. Another weak aspect is that Kris and Peter are too often depicted as Manichean, especially in their relationship to Sam. Kris is generally amicable and understanding of Sam's fears while Peter acts cruelly by berating the young scout. There is also inconsistencies in which Kris and Peter present the story of Kai. At the initial scout gathering, the counselors seem to view Kai as a hidden yet dangerous threat in the woods. When Sam confesses that he saw Kai with his own eyes, Peter asserts that Kai can only come out at night. Later when the scouts are playing a sort of "Capture the Flag" game, Kris reveals that Kai is only really an urban legend.

The movie is most mysterious and suspenseful when subjective POV shots of a possible predator spy on Sam and other characters. There is almost a telepathic, symbiotic relationship between Sam and Kai going on as each tries to understand the other's motives. One nice surprise is the array of elaborate booby traps that could ambush unsuspecting pedestrians. One contraption nearly besieges Agent Jacques Franju (Jean-Michel Balthazar), a corpulent police officer acting as the forest ranger. The "setup" of Jacques's possible fate in the story may remind a viewer of Mr. Garrett, the bumbling security guard (also overweight) in Halloween II (1981), who is all too unaware of the danger lurking in the catacombs of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. Govaerts additionally supplies a visual clue to the "mysterious tent" scene found, for example, in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). Jasmijn supposedly hears a baby wailing inside a yellow tent. Who or what will she discover lurking behind its walls? Govaerts plays with the audience's premeditated expectations of such a scene's construction.

Composer Steve Moore's ominous and atmospheric score is a key element in establishing the film's mood. Cub's publicity materials cite John Carpenter's oeuvre and Dario Argento's band, Goblin, as stylistic influences but an even more recent precedent is the score for It Follows (2014) by Disasterpeace (aka Rich Vreeland). Like the music heard in that David Robert Mitchell film, rhythmic synthesizers signify an imminent, foreboding presence. Cub also features throbbing beats reminiscent of the bell/heartbeat and oscillating synths Carpenter utilized to great dramatic effect in The Fog (1980). The last act of Cub is a genuinely creepy and terrifying experience sustained in large part by Moore's instrumentation.

Cub Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cub appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of approximately 2.39:1 on this AVC-encoded BD-25 courtesy of Artsploitation Films. The film was photographed by Nicolas Karakatsanis (Bullhead, The Drop), who creates a stark contrast between daylight and nighttime scenes. Colors possess a warm texture during day-lit shots; there is a kind of yellow glow on the actors' bodies. The densely packed vegetation in the countryside assumes a dark green look (it appears almost turquoise at night). Some evening scenes incorporate very little light but in its sparse use, Karakatsanis is able to accent small essential details in the frame that the lay viewer can discern. The disc transfer splendidly replicates these very different aesthetic patterns. The print used is in virtually spotless condition. For the extremely dark shots, a modicum of low level noise is visible but it's not a recurring distraction. Given the small collection of mostly standard-definition bonus materials on the disc, Artsploitation could have given the main feature a maxed-out bitrate but the authoring and compression is only above average. The optional white subtitles are a bit of a disappointment. They're presented in a relatively small font size and appear that they were lifted from a DVD master with a lower resolution. Ideally, labels should use a clear white sans serif typeface with a medium-sized font. (Artsploitation used a little bigger font in their theatrical trailer of Cub.) The label could also move the text down to the black border so it's not covering any portion of the image. The film has been divided up into eight chapter stops.

Cub Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Thankfully, Artsploitation has included an extremely active DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (and not just a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 track, as the back cover states). During the movie's opening, the subwoofer made the floor of my home theater rumble. Music, ambience, and nature sounds are given terrific dimensionality. The overall soundscape is wonderfully spread out across the front and surround channels. The deep bass also made my theater floor shake. The film contains spoken dialog in Flemish, French, and Dutch languages. For a movie with a small-scale budget, the sound track recording is impressive. There are maybe only a couple instances where you have to turn up the volume to hear certain utterances but dialog is mainly clear and legible throughout.

Cub Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Artsploitation has included only a small set of extras. First up are two deleted scenes presented in non-anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen (Dolby Digital 2.0). "Deleted Scene #1" (3:25) is definitely the most significant and substantial as it adds exposition to Sam's home life. "Deleted Scene #2" (1:15) runs shorter and upon concluding, it keeps going with a black screen for about two minutes. (It should have stopped and returned to the Extras page.) "VFX Reel" presents conceptual art to final film comparisons for seven scenes. In this three-minute piece, it shows the transformation of establishing shots as they progress from plates and matte paintings to fully realized images through the wizardry of 3D animation and CGI techniques. Of Cats & Women is a 2007 short directed by Jonas Govaerts presented here in a extremely wide ratio (possibly around 2.76:1) with English subtitles. It runs over thirteen minutes and includes a seminal scene that is a progenitor for Cub. Lastly, we find trailers for Cub, Bloody Knuckles, Der Samurai, and The Treatment. Like its release of Bloody Knuckles, Artsploitation has not provided full BD-J functionality. Users will be redirected to separate pages when they click on the Chapters and Extras icons (i.e., they don't pop up on the main menu).

Cub Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cub was an independently financed production that drew a portion of its production budget from crowd-sourced funds. Overall, the total product is very good. Instead of merely paying homage to a series of horror and slasher films (which it is indebted to and acknowledges), the film tells its own dark and unsettling tale of prepubescent adolescents who get their baptism by fire at summer camp. Artsploitation delivers a mostly problem-free video transfer along with a hyperactive sound mix. Supplements are skimpy and could have benefited from at least some B-roll footage and a making-of doc. It would have been a treat to hear Jonas Govaerts deliver an audio commentary. The complete package earns a pretty strong recommendation.