6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Six friends travel on holiday together to a cabin in Østerdalen, but when they arrive the owner of the cabin is nowhere to be found. Nearby the cabin lies Blåtjern, a lake where legend has it that at night one can hear the screams of a crazy man.
Starring: Erling Lindahl, Bjørg Engh, Henny Moan, André Bjerke, Per Lillo-StenbergHorror | 100% |
Foreign | 95% |
Mystery | 13% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Norwegian: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as a part of All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror.
All the Haunts Be Ours advertises itself as "the most comprehensive collection of its kind", which may initially beg the question as to "kind of
what?". But the release also comes with a front cover sobriquet
proclaiming it "a compendium of folk horror", which may then beg the next obvious question as to what exactly "folk horror" is. In that
regard, this set
begins with a fascinating and diverse documentary which has its own subtitle referencing folk horror, Woodlands Dark and Days
Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, which provides a veritable glut of clips from international films which director (and this entire set's guiding
light) Kier-La Janisse has assembled to help define the genre, but perhaps the best answer is to simply echo a certain Supreme Court Justice named
Potter Stewart who was trying to decide a case involving supposed pornography, and who famously opined, "I shall not today attempt further to define
the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I
know it when I see it. . ."
Lake of the Dead is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Severin's insert booklet states this has been "restored in 2K from the original negative", and the results are often quite striking. The black and white cinematography is well represented here, with strong contrast and good black levels, and with a prevalence of midrange and close-ups tending to support very good to excellent fine detail levels. There are rough patches, including the opening credits and some later opticals, and unless there were some inartful edits, there is a missing frame or two. Other minor damage has made it through the restoration gauntlet, but nothing of any major import. Grain resolves naturally throughout.
Lake of the Dead features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track in the original Norwegian. While there's never anything overly problematic here, you can clearly hear crackling and hiss from the get go, and there continue to be occasional pops along the way. That said, this track has a better sounding high end than some of its siblings in the All the Haunts Be Ours set, and that redounds to the benefit of both the omnipresent water effects and some of the harp cues in particular. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.
This is another entry in All the Haunts Be Ours where one's "definition" of what "folk horror" means may or may not align with what the film has to offer. There are some spooky atavistic elements at play here, especially with regard to the evocative setting, but the actual "mystery" kind of turns out to be surprisingly tawdry, if, again, tinged with just the hint of the supernatural. Technical merits are generally solid and the commentary by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons is both entertaining and informative. Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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