Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		1.5

Offspring Blu-ray Movie Review

WARNING: NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH!

Reviewed by Dustin Somner October 8, 2009

Ghost House Underground is a production company established by Sam Raimi (director of Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell, Spiderman Trilogy and many more) and Rob Tapert (producing partner on most Sam Raimi films) to help promote independent horror films from up-and-coming directors in the genre. Established in 2007, the label has released a total of eight films up through September of 2009, averaging four horror releases per year. For 2009, the prolific filmmaking duo hand-selected four new entries that mark the production company’s initial foray into the Blu-ray format. Not that I’m going in any specific order, but the first film I’ve chosen from the series, is a blood-soaked feature that proudly earned a lengthy assessment from the MPAA (Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, disturbing situations, language, nudity and some sexuality). Now that I’ve sat through the entire 79 minute runtime, I can safely say each and every cautionary statement in that warning is well-deserved.

Is it just me, or is that a big baby?

In the sleepy coastal town of Dead River, Maine, there lurks a pack of cannibalistic children that were kidnapped from their families at various points over the years. The group has remained surprisingly quiet for the past decade, following the destruction of their clan at the hands of a local law enforcement officer named George Peters (Art Hindle). Summoned one night to the scene of three brutal slayings, the retired officer recognizes the work of the savage children and agrees to assist the local police department in tracking them down. Not surprisingly, there’s no need to conduct much of an investigation, since a brutal home invasion occurs the following night, resulting in the kidnapping and torture of two young couples. It would seem the cannibal family is out for the blood of a baby, and they have their sights set on the child of a recently separated mother who inadvertently brought her son and baby into the hunting ground of the axe-wielding youngsters. Before the night is out, the line between primitive and civilized will begin to blur as the tormented residents of Dead River struggle to survive.

To give you some perspective, I don’t consider myself a huge fan of gore-based horror films. As the central focus of a production that’s meant to elicit spine-tingling chills, I’ve never found exposed flesh and buckets of blood something I’d consider scary. In my opinion, a great horror film is something that keeps you guessing throughout the majority of the runtime, and makes you wonder if you really just saw a figure in the background, or simply the shadow of a coat stand with a jacket on it. The fear of the unknown is something we can all associate with, because it still allows for the potential of a supernatural element, or the belief that we’re dealing with something we cannot physically handle. I apologize for going off on a tangent here, but I wanted to establish the basis for my disappointment in Offspring.

So let’s get to the meat of the film I’m here to discuss. At first glance, you’d think the film has at least a shred of hope considering it was written (novel and screenplay) by Jack Ketchum, a well-known horror/thriller writer. So why does the film have such an awful plot that rarely even takes a stab at making sense? The primary reason comes with the knowledge that Offspring is actually the sequel to another novel titled “Off Season”. The events that take place in this film pick up ten years after the conclusion of the first novel, but we’re given almost zero explanation of what took place back then. In the audio commentary on the disc, producer William M. Miller explains that the rights to the original novel were already purchased, so their only option was to make the sequel instead. That makes perfect sense if you at least take the time to bring the viewer up to speed, but dumping us in the middle of a story without an adequate prologue just seems lazy.

The other problem in Offspring is the glossed over reasoning behind the actions of the cannibals. They rarely speak, but when they do, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of why they needed a baby, or what they would gain from kidnapping and/or torturing the family. Add in a cannibal girl that whips herself for no reason, has a demented sex scene with a chained up man named “The Cow” and gobbles up human body parts like spaghetti (one of the worst scenes by far), and I’ll wager most viewers will be a bit frustrated by the lack of a coherent plot. As if all of that weren’t troubling enough, the major question that continues to linger, is why did these cannibals remain hidden in their cave for the past 10 years (and why emerge now)?

As you can imagine, the acting in the film matches the amateur nature of the cinematography, direction, screenplay and costumes. Art Hindle receives top-billing as the retired police officer who’s tasked with tracking down the cannibalistic clan, and though he does a serviceable job, he tends to wear the stale “former cop” role on his sleeve, without bringing anything fresh to a character we’ve seen a million times by now. Amy Hargreaves shows some natural acting talent as the damsel in distress, but I wish she’d been given a bit more emotional range in her role, which remains mostly grounded in crying and acting scared. Lastly, I need to give a special mention to the cannibal crew for generating non-stop laughs through the majority of the feature. Even if you forget about the ridiculous look of the costumes (which all seem like clones from the little boy in Road Warrior), there’s not much chilling about a group of rabid children that run around snarling and laughing. I’m not knocking the kids for doing what the director likely asked them to do, but the end result is about as far from scary as it gets.

Offspring Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in 1080p utilizing the AVC codec (at an average bitrate of 15Mbps), Offspring is a disappointing high-definition experience. From the first scene of the film through the blood-drenched climax, the transfer exhibits a startling lack of detail, allowing haziness to creep in during at least 60% of the runtime. The low bitrate could be a contributing factor in the overly soft nature of the picture, but I'm guessing another primary factor is a lack of focused camerawork during a number of scenes. Although fine-object detail is below average, the color spectrum of the film seems to accurately replicate the intentions of the cinematographer (William Miller). In the opening twenty minutes, we're introduced to a coastal setting that at first glance seems bright and welcoming, but as the story unfolds becomes a dark, dingy hell on earth. Unfortunately, the last sixty minutes of the runtime take place during the course of one night, so moonlight or firelight becomes the primary form of lighting during the majority of the film. This wouldn't be a problem if black levels and contrast exhibited even an average level of proficiency, but the differentiation between multiple shades exhibits a level of weakness that results in a drastic loss of shadow detail. Lastly, anyone with an aversion to film grain should be aware there are several scenes with noisy backgrounds due to the incorporation of heavy grain-fields.

Even if you consider the low-budget nature of this release, there's simply not much positive to be said about the transfer.

Offspring Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Matters don't improve much with the lossless audio track, presented in DTS HD-MA 5.1. One of the first things you'll notice about the audio presentation is the anemic sound design, which ultimately fails to generate much in the way of chills. As we all know, a good horror movie is ten times better when the effects and music generate a creepy sense of dread, but Offspring seems content to only throw out moments of clarity when it involves sounds of ripping flesh or the crunch of an ax penetrating a skull (as I stated before, this film is not for the squeamish). Other than that, I rarely noticed much creativity in the use of surrounds. On the positive side, the opening title sequence contains some effectively chilling synthesizer music that harkens back to days of John Carpenter. As you can imagine, the opening sequence simply sets the viewer up for disappointment, since the rest of the film never manages to live up to the expectations set during the first three minutes. Moving along, the dialogue from the noticeably amateur cast feels overly flat, as if the voice-work was completed in a post-production sound booth that doesn't match the environment of the scene we're currently watching. I'm not saying the speaking parts are always that bad, but most of the dialogue-heavy scenes in the first twenty minutes of the film seem to have that off-putting nature to them.

I'm trying to keep in mind this is a low-budget entry in the horror genre, but even when you take that into account, this is still only a serviceable audio experience (in a genre that demands much more).

Offspring Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Progeny: The Birth of Offspring (480p, Dolby Digital 2.0, 20:48 min): This behind-the-scenes featurette includes interviews with most of the cast in the film, as well as director Andrew van den Houten and others on the crew. Along with the interview dialogue, we're shown several sets from the film and snippets of rehearsal footage.

First Stolen's Bailout (480p, Dolby Digital 2.0, 3:04 min): One of the primary cannibal actors ends up in jail after being pulled over with a suspended license. The director and members of the crew have to take a trip to the local lock-up to bail him out prior to their midnight shooting schedule.

Webisodes (1080p, Dolby Digital 2.0): You can choose individual behind-the-scenes clips that were apparently used to market the film. Running just under two minutes in length, the eight segments each focus on a scene, theme, or character.

Rounding out the extras, there's a photo gallery of stills from the film, a standard definition trailer for Offspring, a video collection promoting the Ghost House film series (standard definition), theatrical trailers of other Lionsgate releases, and an audio commentary with Jack Ketchum (writer), Andrew van den Houten (director/producer), and William M. Miller (producer/cinematographer). The commentary track focuses heavily on themes from the film/story and offers a great deal of praise for the performances from the cast.

Offspring Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you can safely call yourself a gore hound, there could be enough entertainment value in this release to make it worth adding to your collection. For the rest of you, I'd recommend you steer clear of this title and set your sights on a horror film that actually generates chills (such as The Orphanage). I know Sam Raimi has always been a fan of the gory yuck factor, but I can't believe there weren't some better options in the genre that would have been more deserving of a high-definition release. If you've exhausted all other horror options this Halloween, I can't likely convince you to avoid this release, but just remember not to eat anything immediately prior to (or during) Offspring.