It Stains the Sands Red Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

It Stains the Sands Red Blu-ray Movie Review

With a Zombie Stalker, What's a Girl to Do?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 2, 2017

It Stains the Sands Red (or "IStSR") is the third feature from the team of Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz, who began their filmmaking career as "The Vicious Brothers". Minihan directs, Ortiz produces, and they co-write the scripts. Like so many low-budget cinema entrepreneurs, the pair is working the genre circuit, with ghosts (Grave Encounters), an alien invasion (Extraterrestrial) and now a zombie horror film whose generically bloody title masks some impressive originality. IStSR is the latest Blu-ray offering from MPI Media's Dark Sky Films, and it's a deceptive little shocker anchored by a remarkable lead performance from Canadian actress Brittany Allen, who has the daunting challenge of carrying the entire film and rises to the task with aplomb.

With yet another zombie onslaught in progress, a party girl named Molly (Allen) flees a blighted Las Vegas with her current male companion, Nick (Merwin Mondesir). As they streak across a (mostly) empty desert, their destination is a small airport where they will join companions planning to wait out the disaster by partying on an unidentified Mexican island.

But things fall apart, as they usually do in zombie films, and shortly Molly finds herself straggling across the wasteland on foot—but she's not alone. She's picked up a dogged zombie pursuer she dubs "Smalls" (Juan Riedinger) for reasons you'll have to see the film to discover. Like Tom Hanks with Wilson in Cast Away, Molly gradually endows Smalls with a personality and an identity, and as their travels progress, he almost (almost) exhibits remnants of his pre-zombie self. Beginning as Molly's adversary, he evolves into her traveling companion and even, on occasion, her protector.

Molly isn't the brightest of refugees, but she proves to be surprisingly resourceful, as days pass under the desert sun's relentless rays and coke snorting gives way to thirst and desperation. She's also haunted by memories of the son she gave her sister to raise because she considered herself an unfit mother (which she probably was). In unexpected ways, Molly's guilt ends up fortifying her, leading to an ending that's both surprisingly uplifting and suitably apocalyptic.

Minihan and Ortiz don't stint on the familiar zombie gore effects, providing a generous helping of blood, entrails and disembowelment, but IStSR's most striking visuals are the long shots of Molly (and Smalls) staggering across vast desert expanses (filmed in Nevada) or pausing for rest, sleep or the occasional encounter with others fleeing the disaster. The filmmakers also manage to find a pretext for a brief return to the wreckage of suburban Las Vegas that Molly left behind, where formerly sedate residential streets have been transformed into a war zone.

It Stains the Sands Red Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Appropriately enough given the name of the film, It Stains the Sands Red was shot on Red digital cameras by cinematographer Clayton Moore, whose background in documentaries aptly suits the film's observational style. MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray effectively captures the surreal hues and textures of the desert settings under both the blazing daytime sun and the nightly canopy of stars, as well as the messy details of the chaos in the film's brief return to what remains of Las Vegas. The fine shadings of color and detail make Molly's sunburn look genuinely painful (she's a blonde who should be wearing super-sunblock). The nighttime blacks are deep and solid, and the image is free of artifacts except for a few fleeting instances of banding. MPI has mastered IStSR at an average bitrate of just over 23 Mbps.

It Stains the Sands Red Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

IStSR's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, provides a fine sense of environmental ambiance and rises effectively to the occasional "big" effects, e.g., a severe desert sandstorm. Dialog, monolog and zombie grunts are clearly rendered, and the score by the Canadian trio known as Blitz/Berlin (who have composed trailer music for Fifty Shades Darker and scored one of the advance shorts for the upcoming Blade Runner 2049), is understated and effective.

As usual with MPI releases, an alternate PCM 2.0 track is also included.

It Stains the Sands Red Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:38): Includes on-set footage and interviews with star Brittany Allen and filmmakers Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz, who describe a tense encounter between the production crew and the Las Vegas police. Caution: Spoilers!



• On the Set (1080p; 1.37:1; 3:37): This is a lively tongue-in-cheek parody of a show-biz newsreel from the 1930s. It begins in black-and-white, then switches to color.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.38:1; 1:58).



• Introductory Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Another Evil, Catfight and Stakeland II.

It Stains the Sands Red Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Zombie films aren't one of my preferred forms of entertainment, but I do enjoy those that discover unexpected wrinkles in the well-plumbed genre that the late George Romero created almost fifty years ago. IStSR belongs in that category. MPI's Blu-ray presentation is proficient and highly recommended.