Exposed Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		1.5

Exposed Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 15, 2016

Note: A couple of salient plot points are unavoidable in discussing Exposed. Those who are sensitive to potential spoilers are encouraged to skip down to the technical portion of the review, below.

As sometimes happens in the reviewing game, either due to the sheer numbers of “product” being released, or to some other vagaries of chance and/or fate, a film can seem weirdly similar in one way or another to some other outing only recently reviewed. That turned out to be the case with Exposed, a pretty lackluster supposed mystery thriller with Keanu Reeves doing the hangdog detective bit trying to figure who murdered his former partner. But the “real” subtext of Exposed turns out to involve a pretty young woman named Isabel (Ana De Armas), a seemingly rational Latina who is suddenly troubled by some alarming visions, often featuring bizarre albino (or albino- esque) figures who almost seem like the yōkai of Japanese folklore. When the plot mechanics finally reveal a hidden world of childhood sexual abuse, I couldn’t help but think of my recently reviewed The Witch Who Came from the Sea, a patently odd and often quite hallucinatory enterprise that features a (maybe somewhat older) woman who is similarly traumatized by some long ago actions by her father. The Witch Who Came from the Sea deals overtly with its heroine’s mental state, detailing right off the bat what is eventually shown to be a psyche so roiling that reality and fantasy frequently intertwine. Exposed is considerably more discursive in getting around to this more or less same revelation, but in this case the misdirection is so inartfully handled that it ends up being less intriguing than simply outright confusing.

Is Declan Dale the new Alan Smithee? According to some online sources, the film’s credited producer and director is not in fact the alliterative Mr. Dale but instead one Gee Malik Linton, who also provided the film’s screenplay, but who evidently had his name (mostly) removed when some kind of tinkering was applied to his project without his approval. In another kind of weird symbiosis with one of the other films accompanying The Witch Who Came from the Sea in Arrow’s American Horror Project Vol. 1, namely The Premonition, what initially began as one kind of story evidently pretty seriously morphed somewhere along the way, leaving the narrative in this particular case in tatters. Interestingly, the changes here are in some ways the inverse of what happened to The Premonition. In that long ago film, a fairly straightforward revenge scenario was infused with a whole paranormal or supernatural aspect. Here, in Exposed, patently bizarre remnants of a paranormal or supernatural aspect remain, albeit in dribs and drabs, with whatever supporting context for these elements being shorn from the proceedings. The upshot is, again, manifestly confusing at times.

The film’s opening editing, while extremely clunky, actually ends up making at least a little sense once a series of supposedly mind blowing “twists” is revealed much later in the game. But the viewer is introduced first to Isabel, who is awaiting her husband’s return from a tour in Iraq, but who spends a lot of time with his closeknit family, including his brother José (Ismael Cruz Cordova). Isabel leaves a noisy club one evening and José walks her most of the way to her subway stop. She then proceeds alone through a ridiculously long hallway whose sheer length makes the whole sequence quasi-hallucinatory. That dreamlike ambience only increases once Isabel is actually at the stop, where posters feature huge looming eyes and suddenly an albino like creature appears and seems to float over the tracks. Well, all righty then.

Meanwhile, detective Scotty Galban (Keanu Reeves, not looking particularly healthy throughout this film) is investigating the nasty murder of his partner, an investigation which ultimately leads him down the path of potential corruption in his precinct, as well as to his partner’s pretty widow Janine Cullen (Mira Sorvino). The partner had supposedly been working on some gang ties and had been using various informants, and a series of none too clear connections ultimately leads him to Isabel when some other leads don’t pan out. In the meantime a personal tragedy in Isabel’s life has led to some upending of her home situation, which in turn further plays into the increasingly melodramatic ambience of the film.

There’s some decently intriguing material wafting in and through Exposed, but things went seriously off the rails here at some point. Whether it was during production (or even pre-production at the writing stage) or at some indeterminate later point is unclear, but what’s left is an often baffling mix of near magical realism and other, more mundane, procedural elements. The “reveal” is also not especially artfully handled, and one major “twist” involving a little girl under Isabel’s charge is especially manipulative and may well end up making some viewers feel like they’ve been willfully cheated.

Exposed Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Exposed is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The IMDb lists this as a digital shoot with Arri Alexa cameras, and it has the sleek, smooth appearance which is a hallmark of this format. Much of the film offers excellent levels of detail, and some of the spookier elements with the white faced spectral entities look wonderfully outré, certainly one of the film's more striking visual conceits. Much of the film takes place in dimly lit interior environments, or actually during nighttime, and there's some typical digital "murk" in these scenes where shadow detail may leave a little bit to be desired at times. Many of the scenes involving Isabel have been graded toward a kind of sickly yellow color, and detail levels are a bit less fulsome in these moments as well. Generally speaking, though, the imagery is precise and sharp, with no stability issues and no compression anomalies to confront.

Exposed Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Exposed's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track gets a fitful workout now and again in various moments throughout the film, with some good floorboard rattling lower frequencies in the first club scene, and some excellent immersion in some claustrophobic environments later, like the subway platform that turns out to be a central location for what's "really" going on. The urban environment also provides opportunities for realistic sounding ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is cleanly presented and is always well prioritized on this problem free track.

Exposed Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Exposed (1080i; 12:08) is standard issue EPK material with interviews, behind the scenes footage and snippets from the film.


• Cast Interviews

  Keanu Reeves (1080i; 8:05)

  Mira Sorvino (1080p; 6:16)

  Ana De Armas (1080i; 3:30)

  Chris McDonald (1080i; 4:01)

  Michael Rispoli (1080p; 3:29)

  BigDaddy Kane (1080i; 3:57)

• Exposed Trailer (1080p; 2:08)

Exposed Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Exposed could have used some help somewhere along the way, for it's largely a shambles, though there are some intriguing elements still struggling to get through the morass here. Technical merits are generally strong for those considering a purchase.