Don't Grow Up Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Don't Grow Up Blu-ray Movie Review

Stuck in the Middle with You

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 18, 2018

Don't Grow Up ("DGU") is a great premise that needs a better script and a more thorough build-out than it gets in French director Thierry Poiraud's horror film, an English-language project first seen in European markets in 2015 and now being released in the U.S. through Shudder, the horror streaming service owned by the AMC network and RLJ Entertainment. Shudder is slowly venturing into Blu-ray, and its new disc presents DGU to best advantage, but it can't overcome the film's inherent flaws.

Fans of the original Star Trek will remember the episode entitled "Miri", in which an Earth-like planet is infected with a virus that causes all the adults to go homicidally insane before they die, and the children who survive live in terror of growing up. DGU transfers that scenario to a fictional resort island off the northern English coast (though it omits "Miri's" time-bending wrinkle in which the virus also slows growth to a crawl, so that the planet's youngsters are hundreds of years old when the Enterprise finds them). DGU attempts to build a zombie variation on "Miri's" notion by having six teenagers on the edge of adulthood awaken to a world in which the adult population is trying to kill them—and they never know when anyone may cross the wavering threshold to adulthood that will cause one or more of them to "turn". Bleeding from the ears is the first visible sign, but it is preceded by subtle changes in attitude. Some of the pre-teen survivors have banded together for protection, and the most proactive among them have adopted a simple policy of preemptively shooting anyone old enough to pose a potential threat.

DGU's fundamental flaw is its setting, a fictional resort island where the buildings are far too big for the sparse population and the six protagonists/victims have to treat as normal a world that the viewer finds bizarre from the outset. In a film like 28 Days Later, by contrast, Cillian Murphy's survivor knows there's something wrong the instant he awakens in a London hospital with deserted corridors and exits into city streets that are empty instead of bustling. DGU's teens accept as routine that they're the sole inhabitants of a sprawling youth home that appears to have been built to house a hundred or more of the abandoned, troubled and orphaned, and apparently there's only one adult attendant, whose car is glimpsed speeding away at the film's opening. It's only when the youngsters venture into town that they realize what's happening, and even then they don't question the empty shops and streets until they encounter a few crazed grownups. It's hard to build suspense with creepy surroundings that the characters utterly ignore. If they're not unsettled, why should we be?

DGU was shot in Spain's Canary Islands, and director Poraud has sought out every eerily beautiful and deserted landscape he can find, but those vistas aren't especially frightening if emptiness is their normal state (which appears to be the case). Marie Garel-Weiss's screenplay only scratches the surface of the characters and their relationships, and Poraud doesn't do enough with the script's various encounters between the central six and a variety of older and younger inhabitants to fill out an entire movie. Even at 81 minutes, DGU feels like a short film padded to feature length with extended credits (both opening and closing) and shots and scenes that last too long to sustain the kind of tension that a horror film needs. The young British cast is game and shows talent, but they're betrayed by failures of exposition and the director's tin ear (eye?) for atmosphere.

Don't Grow Up Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Don't Grow Up was photographed by Matias Boucard, making his feature debut as a cinematographer after shooting numerous shorts and other credits that include executive producing Pixels. It's a clean, sharp and detailed image, typical of digital capture (with the Arri Alexa XT, according to IMDb). The palette tends toward the understated and undersaturated, whether in the expansive landscape shots or in institutional indoors and, as a result, the occasional flash of bright red blood is more arresting. Video inserts of the characters being interviewed (by whom is never clear) are appropriately distressed. Shudder has mastered the film on Blu-ray with an average bitrate of 25 Mbps, with a capable encode

Don't Grow Up Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

DGU's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is serviceable but unremarkable, with surround activity primarily devoted to ambiance and an expansion of the thriller/horror score by Jesús Díaz and Fletcher Ventura. The dialogue is sometimes buried in the mix and blurred, which is especially a problem in a tale where spoken words contain essential exposition.

Don't Grow Up Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras are brief and promotional. Note that, for this release, Shudder appears to have borrowed Magnolia Home Entertainment's menu and authoring style, right down to the pointless inclusion of a BD-Live feature without any content. In addition, two of the titles with introductory trailers are Magnolia's.

• Making of Don't Grow Up (1080p; 2.38:1; 2:32).



• On the Set: Languages and the Director (1080p; 2.38:1; 3:30).



• Inside the Group: Cast and Characters (1080p; 2.38:1; 2:50).



• Don't Grow Up Trailer (1080p; 2.38:1; 1:11).



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Dead Shack, Found Footage 3D, Marrowbone and Higher Power, plus the promotional spots for the Charity Network and AXS TV that are customarily found on discs from Magnolia Home Entertainment. However, unlike Magnolia titles, Don't Grow Up does not contain an option to play these trailers from the "Special Features" menu.



• BD-Live: "Check back later for updates."

Don't Grow Up Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

DGU has an interesting, if derivative, premise, and its young cast is appealing, but its script needed more work, and its director's visual choices sabotage his intentions. Rent (or stream) if interested.