6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
15-year-old Lisa lives with her father Bruce, mother Carol and little brother Robbie. However, she is the only one in her family who realises they are repeatedly living out the same day in 1985 - the day before her 16th birthday. As she investigates, she learns that she and her family were killed and and are trapped in the day of their death. She manages to make contact with Olivia, a girl from a family presently living in the house, who helps Lisa discover that previous occupants of her home have met a similar fate. Can Lisa find a way to put a stop to the murders in time to save Olivia and her family?
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Peter Outerbridge, Michelle Nolden, Stephen McHattie, Peter DaCunhaHorror | 100% |
Supernatural | 31% |
Mystery | 6% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In Haunter, Toronto-based director Vincenzo Natali returned to the low-budget roots of his debut feature, Cube (1997), after the relatively generous allowance of his previous film, Splice (2009), which was co-financed by American producers and distributed by Warner Bros. Like both of those films, though, Haunter works within a limited location. Natali's dramatic imagination seems drawn to psychological pressure cookers, where people are confined by circumstances to a place where they're forced to confront their issues and either surmount them or be destroyed. Even Splice, Natali's Cronenberg-esque variation on a creature feature, never quite reached the point where the creature was let loose to ravage the outside world, although that possibility remained open at the end of the film. Natali likes to leave a lot to the viewer's imagination Haunter began with a script by Natali's friend, Brian King, with whom he had worked on Cypher (2002). King asked his former collaborator for an opinion, and the opinion was, "I'd like to make this film!" As the participants describe in the extras, the project came together with uncommon speed, and Natali scored a casting coup by attracting Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) for the crucial lead role of Lisa, the teenage girl with the apparently normal suburban family, who seems to the sole household occupant to notice that something isn't quite right with their daily lives.
Haunter was shot with the Arri Alexa by Canadian cinematographer Jon Joffin (a veteran of The X-Files), and the image has obviously been heavily processed in post-production for a dreamy, otherworldly appearance with fleshtones that are frequently unnatural. Despite the processing, the image remains smooth and detailed, with an absence of video noise and solid blacks that are essential to the darkness of a ghost story like Haunter. The shifts in color palette that indicate different time periods have been precisely calibrated so that the viewer is instantly alerted to the new environment (as if the changes in decor weren't enough). A sequence late in the film that simulates "skipped" frames is so effectively realized that it almost looks like Joffin switched to 35mm (Natali confirms in his commentary that the shots were digital). At an average bitrate of 28.81 Mbps, MPI/IFC has ensured adequate bandwidth for the film's supernatural encounters, which are fast-moving and jaggedly edited. Digital artifacts were non-existent.
Although Haunter takes many liberties with the genre, it is essentially a "haunted house" film, and its sound designers dialed up all the knobs in making theirs a sonically memorable entry contribution. Groans, creaks, roars, dripping water, flames, distant music (usually Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf) are all layered into the soundtrack, along with ordinary domestic sounds, some of them accentuated far above normal. The sound of a hammer clanging recurs as both Lisa's father and Olivia's try to fix their cars, and the swirling fog outside the house sometimes seems to be almost alive. Bass extension can be unusually deep. If you have a powerful subwoofer, you may want to secure any delicate objects. Dialogue is always clear, even when, as is sometimes the case with The Pale Man, it is disembodied. (A PCM 2.0 track is also included.)
Haunter is one of the best contemporary haunted house films I've seen, because it harkens back to an older tradition of building tension by suspense, story and performance, while not being shy about utilizing modern technology and visual strategies to generate shivers and scares. Above all, it never descends to mere "gotcha!" jump effects or indulges in gore for gore's sake. The fears on which it plays lurk in every family, indeed within every individual: namely, that one never knows what monsters may lurk under a seemingly ordinary surface or when they may suddenly show themselves. Highly recommended.
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