Haunted: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Haunted: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Get it before it disappears.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III January 14, 2025

Matthew Fox is perhaps best known for his small-screen performances in both Party of Five and of course Lost... but smack-dab between those popular productions lies a substantially lesser-known one called Haunted, created by Andrew Cosby and Rich Ramage for UPN in 2002. Unfortunately this unique horror/drama lasted only seven episodes before it was prematurely cancelled, but various labels thankfully later released it on DVD and Blu-ray. It's been readily available for quite some time but has been teetering on the edge of "OOP" in recent months, which means that Kino's two-disc Blu-ray set is still fairly easy to get at a reasonable price and thus well worth tracking down.

For new viewers, Haunted's premise of "private investigator speaks with the dead" may sound somewhat quaint but it stood out admirably from the TV landscape of 2002, when then-dominant shows like The Sopranos, 24, and The Shield pushed boundaries for content and creativity but generally kept things down to earth. Haunted leans much closer into psychological thriller territory and shares a little bit of DNA with Six Feet Under and certainly Chris Carter's work (more Millennium than The X-Files), since it's not afraid to go for genuine scares and shares a music composer in Mark Snow. Essentially, Haunted follows former police officer Frank Taylor (Fox) during a particularly low point in his life, two years after the still- unsolved disappearance of his young son and the subsequent end of his idyllic marriage to lovely Jessica Manning (Lynn Collins), who works as an assistant District Attorney. Now serving as a private investigator, Frank suffers a near-fatal injury while apprehending Simon Dunn (John Mann) and technically dies on the operating table... but he's miraculously revived after a quick trip though a limbo-like spirit world where Frank sees his missing son.

Not surprisingly, Frank is now a changed man. Almost everyone notices a difference in him during the next few days and weeks, from Jessica to a local pawn shop owner and former thief-turned-friend Dante (Michael Irby) as well as Frank's former partner Marcus Bradshaw (Russell Hornsby), who he occasionally reunites with on interlocking police cases. But it's not just in the sense that Frank has a renewed outlook on life; rather, he's tormented by sights, sounds, and experiences with the spirit world that no one else can detect. Unwelcome visits from Simon, who was killed in the same altercation that left Frank near death, are the stuff of nightmares. You'd think that this kind of sixth sense might affect certain aspects of Frank's work and it does (lack of sleep, for one thing), but it also gives him a unique advantage in solving both missing persons and murder cases by literally communicating with the other side for clues and direction. Almost immediately, he's considered something of a savant and builds a reputation for his ability to solve cases with unparalleled speed and accuracy... but unfortunately, the price Frank pays might be his own mental health.

This was my first real time through Haunted start to finish, and it's an engaging series loaded with atmosphere that delivers more than a few terrific scares along the way. Matthew Fox's lead performance basically carries the show, as supporting characters are limited in both number and screen time, while occasional guest stars appear such as Zachary Quinto (fairly early in his career) and P.J. Byrne as well as musicians including Billie Joe Armstrong, Mya, and Colleen "Vitamin C" Fitzpatrick. While I'll admit that the show's main supporting characters aren't very well used in the first few stories, they soon come into their own and help to flesh out certain episodes that wouldn't have worked as solo outings. Beat for beat, Haunted falls into a few small trappings that typically affect shows just finding their legs, from occasional throwaway episodes to lightly missed opportunities, but does a commendable job of succeeding more often than not. This being a prematurely cancelled show, there are of course several strings left untied... but I dare say that Haunted really seemed to be going places and, had it continued into a second season -- or hell, even one complete season -- it would've had decent staying power and we might have gotten a different Jack Shephard on Lost.

Kino's two-disc Blu-ray presentation of Haunted follows a smaller studio's DVD release from 2010, which maintained what might very well be the show's original 1.33:1 TV broadcast aspect ratio. This Blu-ray crops it to 1.78:1, which Haunted seems to have been shot safely for, offering an obvious uptick in perceivable video quality with the caveat that there's technically less information on display and it's been magnified a little. While nothing else stands out about this release (plain-wrap lossless 2.0 audio, no extras, and not even subtitles), Haunted still remains an otherwise solid effort that includes all seven original episodes as well as four more that didn't air during its brief original run.

DISC ONE: Pilot, "Grievous Angels", "Fidelity", "Abby", "Blind Witness", "Nocturne"

DISC TWO: "A Three-Hour Tour", "Nexus"*, "Simon Redux"* , "Last Call"*, "Seeking Asylum"*

* - Indicates unaired episode

Haunted: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I'm a bit torn on the 1080p presentation of Haunted on Kino's Blu-ray which, as mentioned earlier, crops the original broadcast and DVD's 4x3 aspect ratio to a presumably safe-shot 1.78:1 widescreen. Framing- wise, it's a bit tight here and there with a few lightly trimmed heads and uncomfortable close-ups, but nothing of real importance is lost entirely. Where it does brings things down a bit is its treatment of the show's ample film grain levels, which are always present but occasionally threaten to fully overtake certain underlit scenes. Kino's iffy encoding job, combined with essentially magnifying its source image by about 30%, makes some of the thickest grain levels look even more like clumpy noise while obvious macro blocking rears its ugly head on many occasions, and in partially the same way that we saw with Mill Creek's treatment of The Shield. Shadow detail is also a hit-or-miss situation, with some of these similarly dark scenes succumbing to occasional but similarly apparent amounts of black crush. (Please also note that these issues seem to be more present in earlier episodes, especially the first few, but they never completely go away.)

This is far from a disaster, of course: I prefer clumpy noise, compression artifacts, or sporadic shadow detail hiccups to an excessively processed image, and in any case these problems won't be all that noticeable on small to medium-sized displays. Colors are generally well-represented, even with the show's particularly stylized color palette in mind, while image detail holds steady in favorable conditions. Haunted is simply a somewhat scruffy-looking series by design, again sharing more than a few visual similarities to The Shield and Chris Carter's 1990s output including Millennium, placing it squarely in-the-moment with a specific visual identity that perhaps wouldn't ever look "pristine" on home video. With those caveats established, as well as the inevitable realization that it'll never be redone on Blu-ray or 4K, this is still a very watchable Blu-ray presentation that, occasional faults and all, you'll get used to in a couple of episodes.

Haunted: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio audio, on the other hand, seems to be a faithful port of the original mix and I've got no issues with it at all. Dialogue is generally clean and crisp, more than a few sonic surprises are used to fill out the edges, and clear separation is present at key moments. Haunted's subject matter routinely lends itself to eerie atmospherics and, within format boundaries, it doesn't disappoint. Obviously an optional 5.1 remix could've been employed to liven things up even more... but since we only get one choice here, I'm glad it's the genuine article.

Sadly, no optional subtitles are included here. This may be a deal- breaker for some and it's definitely disappointing, since I'd long thought that English/SDH subs were all but mandatory on all but the smallest boutique releases.

Haunted: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This two-disc release ships in a dual-hubbed keepcase with a slipcase and promotional insert. No extras are included.

Haunted: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Andrew Cosby and Rich Ramage's Haunted is a solid little slice of early 2000s television; it was sadly cancelled before getting a chance to grow, but still stands as a surprisingly effective half-season of psychological drama led by Matthew Fox's capable performance. While Kino's Blu-ray might not seem impressive on the surface -- occasionally iffy video, "plain" 2.0 audio, and no extras or even subtitles -- it absolutely gets by on two things: the strength of the show itself and the realization that we'll likely never get a better release in the future (and, from a similar angle, that we actually got it on Blu-ray at all). It's thus Recommended for fans and first-timers alike, so get it while you still can.