I Kill Giants Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

I Kill Giants Blu-ray Movie Review

Little Girl Lost

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 28, 2018

The European-produced fantasy drama I Kill Giants has been compared to a Universal release from the previous year, A Monster Calls. It's a fair comparison in both themes and narrative, but there's a crucial difference. The protagonist of I Kill Giants is young girl, and nearly all of the speaking cast is female. This subtle difference permeates the entire project, quietly shifting perspectives and distinguishing the film from the legion of tales about boys struggling with impending manhood. The heroine of I Kill Giants also faces unusual challenges as she transitions from child to young adult, but her path is less clearly marked by previous fictional explorers.

I Kill Giants is based on a graphic novel by Joe Kelly, who has written extensively for both Marvel and DC Comics. Kelly scripted the movie, and if you look at the excerpt of his original creation in the extras (the artwork is by Ken Niimura), it's like looking at storyboards for the film.

I Kill Giants is told entirely from the perspective of young Barbara Thorson (Madison Wolfe), a tween from Long Island (or possibly New Jersey; the geography is deliberately vague), who believes that giants exist and that she has a calling to protect the world from them. Barbara has invented—or, from her point of view, documented—an entire taxonomy of giants in all their variety, and she has designed and built an array of traps, talismans and weapons to kill or keep them at bay (including the ever-present bunny ears that reflect her mood). Barbara's immersion in this private world has made her a stranger to everyone around her, including her sullen teenage brother (Art Parkinson) and her older sister (Imogen Poots), who's the overburdened head of their seaside household. The school bully (Rory Jackson) makes Barbara a regular target. The sympathetic school psychologist (Zoe Saldana) does her best to reach out to an obviously troubled student, but Barbara rejects her efforts, insisting that she has more important things to do than talk to a shrink.

The only person who manages to establish a connection with Barbara is a new student, Sophia (Sydney Wade), a recent arrival from England, whose accent Barbara finds appealing. For her part, Sophia is intrigued by Barbara's tales of giants, which she initially treats as an elaborate game. But as they spend more time together, Sophia gradually realizes that she and Barbara inhabit different realities.

First-time feature director Anders Walter effectively creates a sense of Barbara's fantastical world coexisting with the everyday reality inhabited by those around her, and at times I was reminded of Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter, which sustained the uncertainty of its protagonist's apocalyptic visions until the film's final frames. Despite the script's American setting, I Kill Giants was filmed entirely in Ireland and Belgium, and the geographic dislocation adds a surreal quality to Barbara's surroundings, even when she isn't seeing monsters, because the landscape never looks quite right. (The neighboring town is oddly deserted.) The computer-generated creations are capable but not ground-breaking, although the weapon that Barbara wields is a clever device, a combination of practical and CG elements that the young giant killer has dubbed "Coveleski", after a Major League baseball pitcher from the first half of the 20th Century. The name's significance is gradually revealed, along with the full dimensions of the sad and terrifying world that Barbara is navigating.

I Kill Giants wouldn't work without a convincing Barbara at its core, and Madison Wolfe, who played one of the children plagued by spirits in The Conjuring 2, gives the character a tragic gravity even at her most obnoxious moments. She's precocious, a brat, and she may be crazy, but Wolfe's portrayal demands that she be taken seriously.

I Kill Giants Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I Kill Giants was shot digitally (on Alexa, if IMDb is to be believed) by Rasmus Heise, who was the cinematographer on director Anders Walter's previous short features, including the Oscar-winning Helium. RLJ/Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a respectable presentation reflecting the usual virtues of digital capture, with superior detail and sharpness throughout, solid blacks and an absence of noise, interference or artifacts (although I caught a few fleeting instances of banding). The palette is mostly dull and naturalistic, except when Barbara's alternate reality intrudes and the live photography transitions to effects sequences, which are alternately darker or much brighter than the everyday world. RLJ/Image has cut corners by placing the 104-minute film on a BD-25, resulting in an average bitrate of only 17.99 Mbps. However, the encoding appears to be capable, given the film's digital origin.

I Kill Giants Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I Kill Giants' 5.1 soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, and it provides deep bass extension for the many manifestations of giant-dom, as well as the surf that pounds the shore outside the Thorson family home. The rest of the film's soundtrack is primarily dialogue-driven, with the surrounds supplying environmental ambiance. The fantasy/adventure soundtrack was supplied by French composer Laurent Perez Del Mar (The Red Turtle).

I Kill Giants Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of I Kill Giants (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:39): Interviews with the cast and crew.



• Anatomy of a Scene (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:52): Barbara's battle with the giant she identifies as "Titan".



• I Kill Giants Graphic Novel: Chapter 1 (1080p).



• Photo Gallery: Eighteen production stills.



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Odd Thomas, The Cobbler and The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box.

I Kill Giants Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I Kill Giants runs a little too long, but its heart is sincere, and Madison Wolfe's performance is terrific. It's a family film for older children. The Blu-ray's technical merits are satisfactory and, accordingly, recommended.