Mohawk Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Mohawk Blu-ray Movie Review

History Evaporates

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 16, 2018

Having admired writer/director Ted Geoghegan's debut feature, We Are Still Here, I regret to report that his sophomore effort is a bust. An attempt to meld historical drama with horror and slasher tropes, Mohawk demonstrates just how much effort is required to bring a period piece credibly alive onscreen. You can't just flash a historical date and dress your actors in picturesque costumes. You have to write them dialogue suggestive of the era, and they have to behave and react like people who actually live in the past. The illusion can be accomplished even without a big budget (see, for example, Pilgrimage), but it requires a clear directorial vision that Mohawk lacks.

It's 1814, and the British and the Americans are at war. Both sides seek the support of the Mohawk Nation, which struggles to remain neutral. In the forests of New York, a British officer (Eamon Farren) and two Mohawks, Calvin (Justin Rain) and Oak (Kaniehtiio Horn), are pursued by a squadron of U.S. cavalry led by the fanatical and bloodthirsty Holt (Ezra Buzzington). Holt seeks revenge for Calvin's impromptu attack on an American regiment. Shooting, stabbing, beheading, throat-slicing and other forms of cruelty and bloodletting ensue.

Not one thing about Mohawk feels authentic. Not the dialogue laden with anachronisms. Not the antique weapons, which the actors handle as if they'd just picked them up for the first time. Not the machine-tooled components of the isolated wilderness fort. Not the industrially woven fabrics of the clothing that appears to have been supplied by a costume shop for Revolutionary War reenacters. Not the apparently smudge-proof Mohawk war paint, which looks like it came from a jar and was applied by a makeup artist. And certainly not the wooden performances, which are either inept (e.g., Noah Segan's timorous scout), unhinged (Buzzington's Holt) or simply unconvincing. Oak, who is supposed to be the film's central figure, skulks through the film like a disgruntled office temp. Her most convincing moment is when she screams.

Mohawk doesn't offer much beyond sadism and gore. It's so lazily plotted that—minor spoiler alert—the third act abruptly morphs into a ghost story, with a supposedly dead character appparently resurrected to continue the killing spree. Despite Geoghegan's attempt to dress up this avenging spirit in Native American garb, it remains a cliche: another unstoppable killer like Jason, Michael Meyers or Victor Crowley, who appears whenever a jump scare is needed and performs superhuman feats to satisfy genre conventions. Mohawk could just as easily have been set in modern times, with rape, robbery and regional prejudice as motivations (see, e.g., Deliverance). Its historical setting quickly becomes a distraction from what the film is really about, and you feel cheated for having bothered to invest yourself in the setup.

Mohawk Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Photographed on Red by cinematographer Karim Hussain (who also shot Geoghegan's We Are Still Here), Mohawk was reportedly finished on a digital intermediate at 4K, although I doubt we'll be seeing a UHD disc. Still, the film's high-resolution digital provenance makes for an impressively sharp and detailed image on MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The forests through which the antagonists pursue each other are reproduced with exceptional clarity, with dense green foliage, gnarled brown tree trunks and a multi-textured ground cover of plants and dead leaves. Black levels and contrast are excellent, and primaries are richly rendered, especially the reds and blues of the U.S. uniforms and the reds and blacks of the Mohawk war paint. Mohawk's photography is so vivid that it actually works against the narrative, highlighting the shortcomings of the costumes, makeup and production design.

MPI Media has chosen to place the 92-minute Mohawk on a BD-50 and master the film with what is, for them, an uncharacteristically high bitrate of 35 Mbps.

Mohawk Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mohawk's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, effectively uses the surrounds to expand the sense of vast, uninhabited forests through which the characters pursue each other. The dynamic range is broad, and bass extension is suitably deep, when needed. There isn't a lot of gunfire, but it registers with authority. The dialogue is generally clear, although some of the actors seem to be deliberately swallowing their lines. The synth score is by Wojciech Golczewski, another veteran of We Are Still Here, and it might have provided an intriguing counterpoint to the historical setting, if the rest of the film weren't so ineffective at creating any sense of period.

As with nearly all Blu-rays from MPI Media, an alternative PCM 2.0 track is included.

Mohawk Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The sole extra is a trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 1:41). At startup, the disc plays trailers for Victor Crowley, Nails, Bitch and We Are Still Here.

Mohawk Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mohawk has its fans, including my colleague Brian Orndorf, but I found it nearly unwatchable—not because of the extreme violence, but because it's violence for its own sake, untethered from any credible story logic or character identity and delivered without any of the wit that characterized Geoghegan's debut feature. MPI Media has provided a first-rate Blu-ray, but I can't recommend the film.