6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Rita and Dana Lund's marriage is in a crisis, Rita's frustrated from being just a housewife. To save their marriage, they set out for a camping trip through California with their son. At a camping site they meet the hitch-hiker Eric, who befriends their son. Against Rita's will, Dana takes him with them, not knowing that he's a brutal psychopath who'll force their son to participate in his nightly trips of vandalism.
Starring: Maxwell Caulfield, Edward Albert, Shawn Weatherly, Matt NoreroThriller | Uncertain |
Drama | Uncertain |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
BDInfo
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
It certainly can’t be pure coincidence that some of the key art for this 1989 thriller prominently features a knife slicing through a photograph of the family at the center of the tale (see screenshot 20 for the Main Menu of this disc, which kinda sorta reproduces what I'm talking about, but there are other examples, including on the main listing page, for this film's IMDb entry). In much the same way that the always ebullient Kim Newman points out in a supplement on the Criterion release of Diabolique how a now little remembered film’s advertising campaign sought to capitalize on the iconic Henri-Georges Clouzot film by having a tag line which stated the film being advertised offered “a diabolical new technique”, which Newman holds his hands over the middle of to reveal “diabol-ique”, Mind Games may similarly subliminally be suggesting to ardent cineastes that this film bears certain unmistakable similarities to Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. Both films feature a dysfunctional couple whose seemingly arbitrary decision to pick up a hitchhiker leads to all sorts of mayhem, both psychological and physical, with much of the action taking place either near or actually on a body of water. The one salient difference between the two films is that the family in Mind Games also features the couple’s young son.
Mind Games is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Some of MVD's releases routinely contain at least a little bit of info on transfers on their back covers, but there's nothing I could see here about the provenance of the element or master used to create this disc. That said, this is generally one of the nicer looking transfers I've seen from MVD Rewind, with an overall very warm and vividly suffused palette, and very agreeable detail levels, even when "arty" lighting effects are utilized. For example, even though he's bathed in dappled sunlight in an almost dreamlike introductory sequence, the fine hair on Eric's shirtless shoulders can easily be made out during some of the backlit moments. There seem to be diffusion filters that have been utilized, specifically in some of the beachside scenes, but even here detail levels are generally very good. There are occasional minor signs of age related wear and tear, but nothing I'd term overly distracting. Grain resolves naturally throughout the presentation.
Mind Games features a nice sounding LPCM 2.0 track. A lot of the film takes place out of doors, and ambient environmental sounds regularly fill the background of dialogue scenes. David Campbell's score also sounds full bodied and problem free. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout the presentation and I noticed no issues whatsoever with regard to dropouts, distortion or other damage.
Here's a question for any and all parents out there: if your son brought back a drifter he had found in the woods, a drifter who soon enough started to display signs of being mentally unbalanced, would you not just invite this stranger to join you on a road trip, but keep inviting him to stick around even after all sorts of hell started breaking loose, even if your marital squabbles were at the forefront of your thinking? The answer to that may be distressingly obvious, but it's one that never seems to occur to either Dana or Rita, which makes the underlying premise here a little hard to swallow. That, combined with what my hunch is some viewers will feel is the off putting subtext of Eric being "interested" in Kevin, make this a kind of smarmy enterprise from the get go. That said, technical merits are generally solid and the supplementary package appealing, for those who are considering a purchase.
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