Jasper Mall Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Jasper Mall Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 16, 2020

George A. Romero's 1978 social satire horror/zombie film Dawn of the Dead takes place in a shopping mall where several survivors hole up from the hordes of zombies outside which eventually make their way past the barricades and inside the structure. I turns out that, while well stocked with various items of need, the mall may not have been the best place to turn into home after all because the zombies are curiously drawn towards it. At one point in the movie a character asks, "What are they doing? Why do they come here?" Another responds, "Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives." That was in the heyday of the shopping mall, once a bastion for commerce and social gathering in the 1970s and 1980s. The mall was the lifeblood of many thriving communities, offering countless opportunities for shopping, employment, and entertainment. It was a relatively safe place to hang out and socialize. But the mall has slowly been in a state of decay as physical stores shutter to superstores and the growing world of e-commerce. Jasper Mall, directed by Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb, was shot over the course of a year in 2018 and looks at an Alabama mall in its death throes, having lost two of its three anchors, its smaller shops drying up, and its patrons growing ever older and fewer in number.

While the mall itself is the film's focal point, it is essentially voiced by a man named Mike McClelland, a former zookeeper, a man in camo pants who, for the mall, wears many hats: mall manager, mall security, mall maintenance, mall custodian. He's the man who opens the doors in the morning and who locks them at night; he cleans feces off the floor and mops the tile; he deals with prospective tenants and says goodbye those departing; he makes friends of the regulars and greets passers-by; he ensures that locks are tight and that the abandoned stores are not deteriorating in hopes that their sales floors might one day again be lively places of commerce. The film further focuses on several stores and individuals, including a family owned florist looking at closing for retirement; a jewelry repairman who has been at the mall from its open in 1981 but who can no longer make money at the all but deserted locale; a beautician and one of her best clients looking to move on and up in the world; a new hire to help Mike with some of the custodial duties in the mall; a teenage girl blossoming in young love; and an elderly man who plays dominoes with a few of his friends. As the year progresses, more stores close, including the two restaurants, a loss sure to push away both potential patrons and prospective businesses, not to mention further souring the prospects for current tenants. Business picks up a bit during Christmas but even a jolly fat man in a red suit can't give the gift the mall certainly wants, and needs, most: a time machine.

It’s kind of a sublime film that is sure to elicit melancholic memories, not for those who frequented Jasper Mall in particular but for anyone who was ingrained into the mall culture more broadly during its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. Malls were once a symbol of thriving consumerism, capitalism, and engineering, and Jasper Mall shows the rapid decline not of the structure itself, which Mike faithfully maintains, but rather of an era. The film, with both elegance and raw emotion, depicts the struggle of the physical to survive in the age of digital progress, and that the film is now seen in the prism of pandemic makes it all the more timely, yet another prism in which to witness the proverbial writing on the wall.

But more than the decline of the mall, the film is subtly, but clearly, also about the passage of time, of how things change no matter how desperately one wishes to hold onto the status quo or, perhaps even more futile, recapture former glory. Life moves on, Jasper Mall tells its audience, for better or for worse. The tenants and the customers represent a microcosm of the mall's past glory and future fate, its story mirroring life’s inevitabilities. One shop owner retires. Young love comes to an end. Dreams are made and shattered. Death comes calling for one of the film’s subjects. These frameworks tell the mall’s story but also the story of life. The film certainly intends to paint a broader picture beyond the mall’s decline, but that it does it so well, that it juxtaposes the passage of time both commercially and socially with such grace and authority on the subject, is quite remarkable. Come for the memories, leave with a more fruitful understanding of life’s inevitable, and irreversible, forward march.

Jasper Mall Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jasper Mall's digital source photography holds up nicely on this burned MOD (Manufactured on Demand) Blu-ray. The 1080p transfer is pleasantly clear, allowing audiences to soak in all of the details at the mall from storefronts to floor tiles and small examples of wear in high traffic areas around shops and within the mall's bowels, particularly around Mike's office. Closeups showcase fine essential details for skin and clothes, and various product closeups within the stores, such as jewelry or flowers, are impressively textured. Colors are absolutely neutral, finding perfect, natural balance across all of the colorful signs and items in store windows. Clothes are likewise impressively saturated and skin tones appear accurate. All of the lights seen at the parking lot carnival represent the best spectrum in the film. Black levels are generally good as Mike takes viewers inside the abandoned K-Mart and J.C. Penny stores. Here, some of the most severe problems are apparent, including dense macroblocking. Aliasing is seen from time to time, most prominently on the gate securing a shuttered Subway restaurant at the 65 minute mark. Noise is apparent throughout but is only truly dense and distracting in those lower light scenes, which are really the only seriously difficult points in the film.

Jasper Mall Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jasper Mall's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack handles duties admirably, though there's little of dense involvement at play. Subject monologues and some dialogue primarily drive the material, and clarity thereof is excellent with fine center placement and perfect prioritization. There's little else of note. The atmospheric mall music that bookends the film plays with good foundational clarity and spacing, though it doesn't exactly stretch deep into the rears or challenge the subwoofer in any way. Very light atmosphere around the mall is audible here and there. The carnival sequence offers the most springy, lively sound elements; here the track is at its most diverse and the surrounds find the most engagement they will ever find in the movie. This is a simple track but one presented here as effectively as one could conceivably demand of it.

Jasper Mall Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Jasper Mall Blu-ray includes a single extra, the film's Trailer (1080p, 2:04). No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipccover. It does ship in a double-wide case; why a MOD BD-R release that is obviously cutting corners includes a case that uses twice the material as a normal one is a mystery, but so it is.

Jasper Mall Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jasper Mall does not simply reminisce and lament a bygone era. It is at its core a film about progress, be that progress for better or for worse, about the march of time and the ever evolving realities of life. The film is surprisingly moving while also easily digestible. It's smart, simple, and satisfying. Gravitas Ventures' Blu-ray is featureless beyond a trailer. Video and audio presentations are fine. This is one of the best documentaries of the last few years. Highly recommended.