6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
20 years after three teenagers disappeared in the wake of mysterious lights appearing above Phoenix, Arizona, unseen footage from that night has been discovered, chronicling the final hours of their fateful expedition.
Starring: Jeanine Jackson, Chelsea Lopez, Cyd Strittmatter, Florence Hartigan, Luke Spencer RobertsHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 7% |
Mystery | 5% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1, 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
Fox may be hoping we curmudgeonly reviewer types would forget most of us feel “found footage” offerings have definitely become more than passé, at least as evidenced by the deluxe, swag filled package they sent me in support of Phoenix Forgotten, in what some might see as an attempt to distract from the actual film at hand. I’m as open as the next person to being bribed (that’s a joke — kind of), but in the case of Phoenix Forgotten, probably no amount of prizes, consolation or otherwise, could overcome this film’s inherently derivative qualities. Those qualities of course harken back to the granddaddy of all relatively recent found footage entries, The Blair Witch Project (down to somewhat similar marketing art), but probably are actually more in line with Blair Witch, in that Phoenix Forgotten posits a sibling in search of a missing relative, much as that putative reboot from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett did. Phoenix Forgotten is loosely assembled around a real life incident, a March 1997 sighting of mysterious lights over the skies of Phoenix which was witnessed by so many thousands of people that traditional “write off” explanations that typically accrue around such events seemed a little disingenuous. That’s certainly a great place to start with a film, but like so many found footage offerings, Phoenix Forgotten struggles under the weight of its own pretensions, and, much as I mentioned in my now long ago The Blair Witch Project Blu-ray review, some who share a certain curmudgeonly response to overly contrived films may find this resolutely lacking in any real scares.
Phoenix Forgotten is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 (the archival footage resides around Academy ratio). As with many found footage offerings, there's a heterogeneity on display that tends to make traditional analysis of the imagery a little problematic. The film's closing credits feature a "captured with RED" logo, but it's not clear whether the lo-fi looking "older" material was in fact captured at high resolution and then intentionally distressed to look shoddy, or if in fact lower resolution cameras were utilized. One way or the other, and completely expectedly, the contemporary footage looks nicely sharp and well detailed, with a natural looking palette and excellent fine detail levels. The "archival" footage is widely variant, almost always pretty fuzzy looking (something exacerbated by lots of "shaky cam" footage), and also frequently having less than stable contrast. Some of the archival footage either has inherent noise or has been tweaked to appear so.
There are moments of really good low end and surround activity on Phoenix Forgotten's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, but they tend to be intermittent and perhaps too sporadic for some audiophiles. A lot of the film (especially the early going) is more "talking head" material than anything else, and as such immersion is limited, though fidelity is always fine. Interestingly, the "archival audio" doesn't seem to have been tweaked as much as the video element, and so there's a somewhat more homogeneous feel to the sonics than the video presentation offers.
There was a really stupid joke going around when I was a kid, where the joke teller would pretend to be a television pitchman hawking a new cereal called "Lost" (this was years before the series of the same name), which ended with the familiar phrase, "So, kids, the next time you're with your Mom at the store, tell her to get 'Lost'". Some may be wanting to attach that general sentiment to "found footage" films, since it seems way past time to tell them all to get lost. Phoenix Forgotten has about ten to fifteen minutes of relatively suspenseful material. What you do for the other hour-plus is up to you. Technical merits are generally strong (with an understanding of the "found footage" aspect) for those considering a purchase.
2017
Collector's Edition
1998
2017
1990
2012
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2002
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Warner Archive Collection
1993
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1995
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2022
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2019