Killers Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Killers Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 7, 2015

Killers has some high-falutin’ ambitions, including making the questionable point that some serial murderers may be plying their “trade” for ostensibly justifiable reasons. That’s all well and good, and in fact the film has some fairly interesting philosophical ruminations to offer, but it’s hard to accept the fact that Killers wants to be accepted as a “serious” and probing enterprise when so much hideous violence, including what squeamish types might describe as torture porn, is sprinkled so abundantly across so much of the landscape. Actually, there are two landscapes, Tokyo and Jakarta, at play in Killers, as there are similarly two unhinged serial killers who “find” each other via the internet.

The two titular murderers in this film include a Japanese sociopath named Nomura Shuhei (Kazuki Kitamura), a guy who delights in toying with helpless women before savagely murdering them, capturing it all on video and then uploading it for the world to see. Nomura’s videos ultimately catch the attention of Jakartan journalist Bayu Aditya (Oka Antara). Aditya becomes more obsessed with Nomura, finally going over to the “dark side” himself, but for ostensibly more “honorable” reasons. The moral ambiguities Killers attempts to explore are undeniably fascinating and even compelling, but they’re hard to swallow alongside a film that exults in such graphic imagery of women being so hideously maimed and murdered.

Killers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Killers is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. According to the IMDb, this was shot with Red Epic cameras with a 5K source downressed to a 2K DI. The image is suitably crisp and actually quite impressive a lot of the time despite typically aggressive color grading that bathes scenes in slate grays and cobalt blues. Aside from some of the gruesome murder scenes, though, the palette doesn't really pop for a lot of the film, residing in darker, somber black and brown tones quite a bit of the time. Fine detail is commendable in both midrange and close-ups. The film is resolutely dark (as in dimly lit), and there is a light dusting of noise in some scenes.

Killers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

According to online data, the spoken languages in Killers are Japanese and Indonesian, which would make sense, though I am not an expert enough to positively identify them and unfortunately the case contains no information. One way or the other, the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is quite aggressive, though typically in the horrifying murder scenes, where patently disturbing sound effects (like sledge hammers hitting skin or acid being poured on a corpse) dot the surrounds. Dialogue is cleanly presented. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is extremely wide on this problem free track.

Killers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:49)

Killers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Killers would have been a thought provoking exposé of pathological behavior as well as a startling critique of voyeurism had it not wallowed so excessively in gruesome and grotesque torture, mutilation and murder scenes. The film is undeniably technically ambitious and it generally looks and sounds excellent on Blu-ray.