6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
A psychological thriller about a troubled young woman working nights at a recently closed hospital that may be connected to a series of gruesome murders.
Starring: Sara Foster, Cary Elwes, Michael Biehn, Gabriel Mann, Colleen CampHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 40% |
Mystery | 6% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.55:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
You’d have to be crazy to go to work in an abandoned hospital on the night shift, and then journey upstairs to a perhaps haunted psych ward, wouldn’t you? Well, that may or may not constitute a spoiler, but it aptly sums up the subtext of Psych: 9, a derivative but sporadically effective thriller-horror film that is strong on ambience and woefully short on logic and well crafted writing. What is it about the horror genre that seems to so attract new directors to its axe wielding, serial killing, forsaken (and usually haunted) shores? Once again we’re “treated” to a newbie director, in this case Andrew Shortell, proving to the world he’s probably got an encyclopedic knowledge of every cheapie horror flick released over the past 20 or more years. How do we know? Take the opening sequence for just one example. A frantic blonde runs through a grainy, desaturated semi-urban landscape screaming for help. She approaches a monolithic, perhaps industrial, building and pounds on a door, which is of course locked. Cut to a close-up of the back of her head, as she quickly turns in horror to greet the claw end of a hammer coming down hard and fast. Cut again to the inside of the door, which suddenly jolts as if a dead body had fallen against it. The camera pans down to the space under the door. What do you think is coming? Do you really need more than one guess? Well, it’s a slowly oozing pool of oily black blood, of course, seeping under the door and meandering toward the viewer. How many times have you seen something like that? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?
Psych: 9 is yet another horror film which traffics in grainy, desaturated footage interspersed with luridly lit sequences, in this case the harsh yellow-green fluorescence of the hospital's glaring bulbs. The AVC encoded 1080p image, in 2.55:1, is very typical of a lot of recent films in this genre, with fluctuating contrast, which is either intentionally overblown, leaving things blooming and fuzzy, or alternately intentionally low contrast, leaving things extremely grainy with an equal lack of fine detail. Obviously this is exactly the look Shortell was going for, and so it's hard to fault the Blu-ray for accurately reproducing it, but from an objective standpoint, while the image here is reasonably sharp and well detailed, it's not particularly impressive from a pure hi-def standpoint, especially considering the overall softness of the transfer. The best element here is the ugly and unsettling reproduction of the harsh yellow-green color scheme, which paints virtually the entire film in a sort of quasi-alien palette. While this choice does rob some of the film of fine detail, close-ups can still reveal some nice elements.
Psych: 9's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is rather impressive for what was obviously an extremely low budget film. Not only is fidelity top notch, surround activity is very creatively handled, aided and abetted by the spooky ambience of the hospital, which allows for everything from creepy, far away sounding singing to sudden thumps and crashes to engage the side and rear channels. There are some extremely effective and immersive moments throughout this film, including one of Roslyn's hallucinations, where she's enclosed in a room where her own voice screaming "I want my baby" echoes through the surrounds in a really unsettling mix. While some of the sound effects are hackneyed, overall the sound design here really ups the terror level in a couple of key sequences, including two which involve fire, with the roaring sound of flames surrounding the listener. Dialogue is always crisp and clear and well mixed, and the entire track is really excellent for a low budget film.
Psych: 9 offers the following supplements on Blu-ray:
Lionsgate is promoting some of these neophyte directors' efforts under the branding of Ghost House Underground, and if you take into account these are by and large first features, there are some redeeming elements here. Unfortunately Psych: 9 is simply too derivative for its own good, despite some creepy moments and an overall unsettling ambience. If you're a fan of this kind of film, you'll probably do OK to give it an evening's rental on a dark and stormy night. Otherwise, there are a host of better, more original offerings out there, many released by Lionsgate itself.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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