Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Haunter Blu-ray Movie Review

Death Becomes Them

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 9, 2014

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.

Sixteen-year-old Lisa (Breslin) is the only member of her family who realizes that every day in their home is the same day in 1986. President Ronald Reagan is always making the same speech on TV. Lisa's little brother, Robbie (Peter DaCunha), awakens her every morning with the same broadcast over a walkie-talkie. Her father, Bruce (Peter Outerbridge), is always just on the verge of getting the car fixed so that the family can go out the next day for Lisa's birthday (which never arrives). Her mother, Carol (Michelle Nolden), perpetually cooks the same meals of pancakes for breakfast, maccaroni and cheese for lunch and meatloaf for dinner, always sends Lisa to the basement to do laundry, and routinely questions her about missing clothes. No one but Lisa notices that these actions recur like the family's personal version of Groundhog Day. When she tries to talk to her parents about it, they think she's just suffering from teenage angst.

Natali has already hinted at Lisa's dilemma in a credit sequence featuring a butterfly collection of the sort that, ever since The Collector, connotes something evil. As Lisa encounters ghostly emanations in her home—shadowy figures, mysterious passageways, odd sounds in the distance—and realizes that there's nothing outside except fog, she begins to suspect that they are all trapped in some sort of limbo. That's when a knock is heard at the door, and a man arrives who claims to be from the phone company and is there about the perpetually broken phones, except that he's someone else. He's a figure known as The Pale Man (angular-faced character actor Stephen McHattie, who played a memorable serial killer in A History of Violence). Whoever The Pale Man is, he seems to have power over everything and everyone in Lisa's world, and he warns her to behave herself.

Borrowing elements from the Brothers Grimm, A Nightmare on Elm Street and contemporary Japanese horror films, Natali's film shifts between time periods and dimensions of reality, as Lisa struggles to save herself and her family from The Pale Man. In the process, she meets—"bonds with" would be more accurate—Olivia (Eleanor Zichy), another sixteen-year-old in an era of iPads and digital photographs, who is also trying to save her family from threatening circumstances that Lisa finds strangely familiar. Then she encounters Frances (Samantha Weinstein), a girl from the 1950s, who may hold the key to defeating The Pale Man.

Haunter doesn't contain gore or major violence. Natali is aiming for psychological terror. For viewers willing to follow him on the adventure, he has constructed an effective thrill ride, with much credit due to a talented cast who forcefully convey the fear of waking up to discover that every aspect of your life has been commandeered by evil forces that will do anything to keep you securely pinned in place for their enjoyment—permanently.

Haunter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Haunter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries


• With Director Vincenzo Natali: Despite a bad cold, Natali provides a wealth of information on the rigors of low-budget filmmaking and the imaginative solutions that the lack of funds inspired him to create for various logistical and story problems, including a reconceived ending. Despite the challenges, he clearly prefers the creative freedom to the strings that come attached to big budgets.


• With Writer Brian King: The best parts of King's commentary are his descriptions of the story's evolution through various drafts and his observations on what he would write differently, now that he's experienced the practical difficulties of making his final draft "work". King is also illuminating on his sources and inspirations.



• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 20:42): This featurette covers some of the same ground as the commentaries, but in a more compact form. Participants include Natali, King, producer Steven Hoban, Abigail Breslin, Peter Outerbridge and Stephen McHattie.



• Haunter: The Compete Storyboards by Vincenzo Natali (1080i; app. 1.33:1; 54:50): In a continuous scroll that simulates pages of a notebook, Natali's storyboards flow across the screen from bottom to top, accompanied by themes and sound effects from the film.



• Teaser Poster (1080p): A single image.



• Trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 1:45).



• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Dark Touch, Devil's Pass, Berberian Sound Studio and Contracted, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Haunter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.