6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The mangled body of a teenage girl is discovered outside a rusted Pennsylvania steel town, where every resident harbors a dark secret. Suspicions and accusations mount as a manhunt for the killer intensifies, even as evidence mounts that the suspect is not a man at all.
Starring: Famke Janssen, Landon Liboiron, Bill Skarsgård, Dougray Scott, Joel de la FuenteHorror | 100% |
Supernatural | 35% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
For today’s recipe, you’ll need to have a couple of big box sets ready, please. First, take Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery and Twilight Forever: The Complete Saga, and remove the grand total of 20 Blu-ray discs. Place at least a few of the discs in your Cuisinart and set to puree, adding more discs as you are able until all 20 have been diced to a fine dust. Add a touch of water and fashion the dust into new Blu-ray discs, baking at 375 degrees until crispy. Or, if that doesn’t work—simply pick up Hemlock Grove: The Complete First Season, and you’ll pretty much have the same thing (reduced, as they say in cooking class, to a mere three discs!). In the commentary appending the series’ premiere episode, executive producer and director Eli Roth makes no bones (skeletal or otherwise) about Hemlock Grove’s antecedents, willingly offering up both the David Lynch and Stephenie Meyer outings. If Hemlock Grove never even attempts to approach the surreal giddiness that defined Twin Peaks in its most outré aspects, the series still has several resemblances to that unforgettable show, including a seminal murder of a teenage girl that kicks things off in horrifying fashion, and a small town that is fairly bursting at the seams with—well, unusual inhabitants. Mix in a a few young werewolves and vampires, and if there aren’t the makings for actual teams devoted to Edward or Jacob, there’s certainly enough fodder to make the resemblance to the gloomy ambience of Twilight more than apparent. In its quest to seemingly dominate the world’s entertainment options, Netflix, which is moving more and more into original programming, has already greenlit the series for an additional season beyond the two already in the can, this despite some withering critical assessments of the seasons that have already aired.
Hemlock Grove: The Complete First Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory (an imprint of Shout! Factory) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Shot digitally with the Arri Alexa, Hemlock Grove boasts the sleek, smooth appearance the Arri excels in delivering, but the show is repeatedly hampered by odd color grading choices, including a kind of sickly pea green or green-yellow hue that is slathered on a lot of the proceedings (as can easily be seen in many of the screenshots accompanying this review). This gives the show a very distinctive look, but it keeps fine detail at bay, a situation exacerbated further by the series' tendency to push contrast quite a bit of the time, leading to blooming whites and general effulgence in many shots. Some close-ups can deliver really superb fine detail (see screenshot 6). There are no issues with image instability and no real problems with noise creeping into the many dark scenes.
Eli Roth knows how to deliver scares via jump cuts and booming LFE, and those techniques help to bolster Hemlock Grove's lossless DTS- HD Master Audio 5.1 track. There's some good immersion here, courtesy of some well placed ambient environmental effects (a lot of the series takes place out of doors). Dialogue is cleanly presented and well prioritized and some nicely done sound effects also add to the spookiness. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is very wide on this problem free track.
The featurette entitled Dysfunctional in Every Way included on this Blu-ray set might be an unwitting epigraph for this entire series. Simply throwing a bunch of admittedly extremely odd characters together in a supposed murder mystery with supernatural overtones might seem like a good idea, but as they say the devil is in the details. Too often this series plays like a warmed over marriage of Twin Peaks and Twilight, and my hunch is most fans will simply opt to watch either (or both) of those rather than sit through some of the turgid melodrama on display here. Aside from some questionable color grading choices which detract from detail levels, technical merits here are very strong for those considering a purchase.
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2013
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2020
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2020
1942
La Mansión de la Niebla
1972
La morte negli occhi del gatto / Corringa / Cat's Murdering Eye
1973
The Fantastic Disappearing Man / Curse of Dracula
1958
Warner Archive Collection
1935
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1933
Slipcover in Original Pressing
1990
2012
2014-2016