6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In a remote police station, the arrival of a mysterious stranger, an apparent victim of a traffic accident, begins a night of deadly reckonings with the past.
Starring: Liam Cunningham, Pollyanna McIntosh, Bryan Larkin (II), Hanna Stanbridge, Douglas RussellHorror | 100% |
Supernatural | 7% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.44:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The Irish actor Liam Cunningham has a face that both invites scrutiny and defies it. It's an adaptable face, suitable for tough guys, gangsters, stoic heroes, ruthless villains and even ordinary fellows who turn out to be more than they seem. Currently best known as former smuggler Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones, Cunningham has enjoyed a long and varied career in film and TV, playing everything from a priest in Steve McQueen's Hunger to Harry Brown's pub landlord, who knows everyone and sees all in a crime-ridden London neighborhood. In Let Us Prey, a joint Scottish-Irish production and the debut feature from director Brian O'Malley, Cunningham's ambiguous features are ideally suited to the role of a character known only as Six, after the number of the jail cell in which he is placed. With no identification and nothing to say (at least at first), Six is the apparent mystery at the heart of the film. By the film's conclusion, though, much larger questions have been raised—assuming, of course, that one is inclined to contemplate the moral underpinnings of the story's events. One can simply enjoy the gleefully bloody mayhem that seems to follow in Six's wake wherever he goes. The script for Let Us Prey is by David Cairns and Fiona Watson, who previously worked together on a BBC series called Twisted Tales, and the story has the kind of hermetic, self-contained quality of an episode from a TV show like Tales from the Crypt. The initial inspiration for this particular tale was John Carpenter's classic Assault on Precinct 13, from which the writers borrowed the idea of an isolated police station under attack. But Carpenter's film was a retooled Western, in which the police station became a fort assaulted by criminals. In Let Us Prey, the attack comes from within.
No information was available about the shooting format, but Let Us Prey appears to have been originated digitally. The credited cinematographer is Piers McGrail (The Canal ). MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files. Deep blacks are the critical element in the film's visual scheme, beginning with the crows of the opening credits and continuing through the many scenes in the nighttime streets of the town. (The entire film plays out in the course of one evening.) Even the interiors are frequently lit so that figures are isolated by dark shadows. This is easily arranged in the dim basement where the jail cells are located, and it even occurs in the better illuminated main floor. In one startling moment, the overhead lights switch off suddenly as a character is transported to another place and time (whether in reality or in his own mind is unclear), and the effect is achieved entirely with light and shadow. Whatever isn't shrouded in blackness is detailed and reasonably sharp. The "making of" featurette reveals that the production deliberately chose vintage anamorphic lenses in an effort to evoke the look of the classic horror films from the Eighties. The palette begins on the cooler side and gradually warms as midnight approaches (which is the moment that Six has been waiting for), when the most prominent colors are bright reds and yellows. MPI has encoded Let Us Prey with an average bitrate of 21.98 Mbps, which is adequate for digitally originated material. Except for a few stray instances of banding at scene changes, no artifacts were in evidence.
Let Us Prey's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, packs a wallop for the film's impressive finale, which I can't describe without spoilers, but suffice it to say that's there destruction all around. An early indication of the track's dynamic range comes during the opening credits with the sound of wind, waves and crows flapping their wings, as "Six" makes his way to Inveree. Cars squealing to a halt, jail cell doors clanging shut, shotgun blasts and horrible squishing sounds accompanying impacts on various body parts have been amped up for maximum effect. The sound of the inclement weather is a constant presence. The dialogue is clearly rendered, but the Scottish accents are so thick, especially Douglas Russell's as Sgt. MacReady, that the dialogue can sometimes be hard to follow. Use the English subtitles as needed. The effective score is by Steve Lynch, whose previous work has been primarily on short films. As usual with MPI releases, an alternate PCM 2.0 track is included.
Let Us Prey doesn't break new ground in either horror or supernatural thrillers, but it's well-conceived and skillfully executed in a genre that's seen more than it's share of slapdash work. As the filmmakers stress in the "making of" featurette, the characters, though extreme, are individuals with distinct personalities, and the casting is strong all around. No one is there just as "cannon fodder". MPI's disc, though light on extras, is a capable presentation. Highly recommended.
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