Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Lightning Bug Blu-ray Movie Review

You CAN Go Home Again

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 15, 2013

Robert Hall is a successful makeup and effects artist, whose company, Almost Human, has worked on such TV shows as Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. His film work includes Vacancy, Superbad and The Crazies. Hall started young, teaching himself and creating Halloween makeup for friends in the small Alabama town where he grew up, then landing a job as an assistant on Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers (which shot in Selma), and finally moving to Hollywood in 1993 at age 19. Hall established Almost Human just three years later.

As several participants in the new documentary on this Blu-ray point out, when makeup artists turn director, it's usually for a sequel on an established horror franchise. Typically the result is a film where the effects look great, but the rest of the movie falters. Hall took a different path. He wrote, directed and largely self-financed a semi-autobiographical drama in which horror motifs do occur, but only as an expression of all-too-human dilemmas. There's gore, but most of it is admittedly fake, and the few instances that are meant to be real are handled with restraint. The characters in Lightning Bug may know their horror movies, but the film isn't a Scream-like spoof. Indeed, Hall's script rests on the premise that cleverness isn't a talisman against evil. Sometimes nothing can protect you (or those you love).

Lightning Bug never played theatrically, but it proved popular at film festivals and was a cult hit on DVD on the Anchor Bay label. Image Entertainment is releasing it on Blu-ray with additional extras, including a longer director's cut.

Lightning Bug is set, and was filmed, in Fairview, Alabama, which is the town where Hall grew up after his family relocated there from Detroit. A similar relocation opens the film, as Jenny Graves (Ashley Laurence from the first two Hellraiser films) drives into Fairview with her two sons, Green and Jay. Green is a boy when they arrive, and Jay is barely a toddler, but years pass with a simple edit. Green is now a teenager played by Bret Harrison (who would later become better known as the star of Reaper), and Jay (Lucas Till) is now the age that Green was when they arrived. The brothers come home one day to find their mother drinking with a new boyfriend, Earl "Bone" Knight (Kevin Gage, best known as the treacherous Waingro in Heat). Jay, who doesn't like to see his mother drinking, immediately senses trouble, but Bone buys off Green by letting him use his car (the cracked windshield should be a warning sign). Bone has a good job, according to Jenny, and he's willing to support her and her boys. Soon enough, they're married.

Like his creator, Green wants to make monsters for Hollywood, and he spends all his spare time studying books and videos on the subject. (Hall's middle name is "Green".) But his immediate aspiration is to get a job doing the effects for the annual haunted house run by a local farmer, Mr. Tightwiler (Bob Penny). A convincing demonstration involving Tightwiler's prize hog clinches the deal, and Green sets to work on his first major project. Bone thinks it's a waste of time and tells Green, with increasing volume, to get a job at the local chicken plant.

One of the many virtues of Lightning Bug is its nuanced depiction of small town life. Green's unusual interests don't mark him as an outcast. His friends, Billy Martin (George Faughnan) and Tony Bennett (Jonathan Spencer), accept him for who he is, even if they don't really get his preoccupation with monsters and horror films. Most adults tolerate him as well. A town cop, Deputy Dale (Hal Sparks), who has a sideline hosting a local cable access show, even invites Green to be a guest and discuss the haunted house, although Dale quickly loses interest once the interview begins.

The one local who truly objects to Green's work is the ultra-fundamentalist Ms. Duvet (Shannon Eubanks), who may not be the second coming of Carrie White's mom but is often photographed like an apparition. Ms. Duvet would prefer that the town not promote Halloween at all, calling it a "pagan holiday", but her objection to Green has a special intensity, because her daughter, Angevin (Laura Prepon from That '70s Show), has fallen for him. A goth rebel whose blasé attitude masks a troubled past, Angevin works at the video store, where she and Green bond over slasher movie trivia, and Angevin tells him one lie after another about the Duvet family. As the truth gradually emerges, Angevin's mother becomes more understandable, if not more sympathetic.

The true villain of Lightning Bug remains Bone, the stepfather whose demeanor deteriorates with his drinking and for whom violence remains close to the surface. For much of the film, Bone's physical attacks are limited to his buddy, Rusty (Josh Todd), but Hall stages several disturbing scenes of domestic confrontation that make it clear something worse is coming. Indeed, the film opens with a jagged excerpt from a violent incident whose exact nature will not be fully revealed until near the end. When the revelation arrives, it is both logical and tragic.

The title refers to the luminescent insect that Green and his friends chase through the warm Alabama nights and capture in jars. The bug is a metaphor at several levels, of which the most obvious is its ability to produce a seemingly magical effect, which is also Green's aspiration. But the lightning bug's abilities are best displayed when it flies free rather than being contained, which is why the film concludes with Green's departure from Fairview for the larger world beyond.

Lightning Bug Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cinematographer Brandon Trost, a member of the hard-working Hollywood family that gave us The FP, was only 21 when he shot Lightning Bug, and he has since moved on to a successful career in mainstream films such as That's My Boy and the upcoming This Is the End. Both to contain costs and to give Hall his desired look, Trost shot the film on Super16. Hall wanted a low-budget, grainy, Eighties horror film look, and he says in his commentary that he was initially disappointed when saw what a good image Trost was delivering with 2004-vintage lenses and film stock.

Still, the image on Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray adequately delivers Hall's vision, in the sense that the film's grain structure has been accurately translated to hi-def without filtering or other digital tampering. While the grain is slightly more coarse than might be the case with 35mm photography, the image is finely detailed and the grain is never distracting (unless you're the kind of viewer who hates seeing any grain at all). Black levels are good, and the color palette establishes a nice contrast between the lovely earth tones of the Alabama countryside and the more artificial hues of indoor habitats lit by artificial lights (e.g., the video store). Trost's lighting adeptly manages the frequent shifts between the natural and the stylized; the latter look is most common whenever Ms. Duvet enters the scene.

Hall indicates in the extras that a few digital "fixes" were made to Lightning Bug for Blu-ray, which no doubt explains why the video store where Green meets Angevin manages to display copies of Laid to Rest and ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2, which did not exist at the time Lightning Bug was shot. Occasional artifacts can be spotted from those fixes, e.g., in a shot near the end where the camera is dollying away from Green down a hill and the shot had to be stabilized digitally. For the most part, though, this additional post-production work is seamless.

Lightning Bug Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's soundtrack is provided in three versions: lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, DD 5.1 (at 640 kbps) and a DD 2.0 track that is specially labeled for ProLogic2. Perhaps because of the restricted budget, surround effects are somewhat limited, but they are distinctive when they occur: e.g., a voice from another room or mysterious sounds that lure unsuspecting Mr. Tightwiler to the gruesome demonstration that Green has prepared for him. The dialogue is clear, and both the songs by Kevn Kinney and the underscoring by Jason M. Hall (Robert's brother) are reproduced with force and presence.

Lightning Bug Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Many of the special features have been ported over from the DVD previously released in 2005 by Anchor Bay. Features new to Blu-ray have been marked with an asterisk, and the main ones are listed first.

• *Lightning Bug—Extended Cut (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:49:36): In his commentary to the deleted scenes on the 2005 DVD (and also included here), Hall spoke of creating a "director's cut" restoring many of these scenes. This is clearly that cut, with most of the deleted scenes restored to their original location and in superior quality. This extended cut has not been created by seamless branching but as an entirely separate encode, also using the AVC codec. A choice of soundtracks is offered between DTS-HD MA 5.1 and DD 5.1 (at 640 kbps). The video quality appeared similar to the standard edition, though not as good overall, probably because the bitrate is substantially lower (13.68 Mbps vs. 24.12 Mbps).



• *Afterglow: A Look Back at Lightning Bug (1080p; 1.78:1 & 1.33:1; 24:34): This is a retrospective documentary composed of contemporary interviews with several different groups. One consists of participants in Lightning Bug, including Laurence, Gage, Sparks and Prepon; these new interviews are supplemented by clips taken from the "Luciferin" documentary described below with Hall, Harrison, Eubanks and others. The second group is composed of fans of the film, many of whom know Hall and have worked with him on other projects; these include Lena Headey (Laid to Rest), Thomas Dekker (ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2), Darren Lynn Bousman (director of several Saw sequels), make-up expert Steve Johnson and Pat Jankiewicz of Fangoria magazine.



• Commentary with Writer/Director Robert Hall: Hall is a lively commentator, and he enthusiastically details the efforts of his actors, producer and crew, and also of the inhabitants of Fairview, Alabama, in making the film for under $500,000. Hall covers every aspect of production, pre and post. The only aspect of the film on which he is somewhat reticent is its autobiographical elements.



• Commentary with Writer/Director Robert Hall, Producer Lisa Waugh and Actors Ashley Laurence and Laura Prepon: Recorded several days after Hall's solo commentary, this group effort is just as lively, with Waugh, who is an Alabama native, providing even further detail about the contributions of the citizens of Fairview. Prepon and Laurence provide interesting insights about specific scenes. Harrison was scheduled to participate but never made it to the session.



• Luciferin: The Making of Lightning Bug (1080i; 1.33:1; 20:47): This is a well-made documentary on the film's creation, mixing interviews with all the principal cast, production footage from various locations and a few excerpts from auditions and effects shots. The documentary concludes at the 2004 Philadelphia Film Festival, where Lightning Bug had its world premiere.



• Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary (1080i; 1.78:1; 19:07): There are sixteen scenes, most of which were deleted for pacing. The single most significant cut was the removal of Uncle Marvin, a comic relief character played by Don Gibb, whose function Hall decided was no longer needed, because other actors had brought such unexpected humor to their parts.



• Outtakes (1080i; 1.78:1, centered; 4:31): "Dude, did you get enough outtakes, or not really?" asks Prepon on the last day of filming. Not really.



• Kevn Kinney Video (1080i; 1.78:1; 3:50): The video is for "Sun Tangled Angel Revival", which plays over the film's opening credits. Note that the artist's name is correctly spelled "Kevn" (without an "i") in the film's credits, on the Blu-ray menu and on the video, but not on the Blu-ray cover.



• Trailers
• *Blu-ray Trailer (2012) (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:36)
• Original Trailer (1080i; 1.78:1; 1:11)



• Photo Gallery (1080i): Several dozen production stills and a few one-sheets.

Lightning Bug Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lightning Bug is a personal film, and it has its share of rough edges, but it's also affecting and deeply felt. The story has an earnest quality, and the performances have an authenticity, that lift it above the average and make the film stay with you after the credits roll. Hall draws on familiar formulas for inspiration—horror, Southern gothic, exploitation films—but he uses these elements in service of a personal story that he obviously felt compelled to tell. The most memorable works typically result from such compulsion, even when they're disguised as genre pictures. Highly recommended.