Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Seven Below Blu-ray Movie Review

What Does It All Mean (Starting with the Title)?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 27, 2012

"Direct to video" no longer has the stigma it once did. In an era where promoting a theatrical release can cost as much as making the film and more people are likely to see it on home video anyway, skipping the movie theater can make good economic sense. This is especially true for a film without the financial muscle of studio backing, which often comes with contractual commitments or accounting gimmickry requiring that the film appear inside a cineplex. (How else does one explain the release of a train wreck like Jonah Hex?)

Sometimes, though, direct to video is exactly what it used to be: the dumping ground for films too awful to persuade anyone to release them. Such is the case with 7 Below (or, depending on what source you consult, Seven Below), a wanna-be horror film with no scares, zero suspense and even less drama. (Yes, that would be a negative value; the movie literally sucks drama out of the room.) Director and co-writer Kevin Carraway has obviously watched plenty of horror films, because 7 Below contains countless elements lifted from superior sources, the most obvious of which are Halloween, Psycho and The Haunting (the 1963 Robert Wise original, not the ghastly 1999 remake). I also counted elements from The Shining, Kenneth Branagh's 1991 potboiler Dead Again, the original Friday the 13th and even The Skeleton Key. Undoubtedly there are others.

But in many instances, especially with the older classics in the list, it seems as if Carraway hasn't actually seen the films (or watched them all the way through). 7 Below plays like what you'd get if someone were to make highlight reels from great horror films, or lesser imitations, then randomly clipped scenes from those reels for the kind of collage that author William Burroughs used to create by cutting words from the pages of a book. Burroughs created some interesting surrealist poetry, but Carraway came up with the script for a 93-minute feature that makes no sense from title to closing shot. Somehow he managed to persuade actors as talented as Val Kilmer, Ving Rhames and Luke Goss to appear in this disaster.

The biggest challenge in describing the "plot" of 7 Below isn't the usual problem of avoiding spoilers (since every reveal is telegraphed and doesn't reveal much anyway), but to avoid writing nonsense. I'll do my best.

The film opens with a prologue set in 1911 in a house in an unidentified but remote location. William McKnight (Silvio Wolf Busch), the head of the household, is having vigorous and uninhibited sex with an unidentified woman, when his wife, Elizabeth (Brianna Lee Johnson), bursts in on them. Not one visual element of the sexual encounter, the decor, or the appearance and behavior of the people suggests anything but a contemporary era, but let's not bother with details, since the film crew obviously didn't. An argument ensues, and the distraught Elizabeth first checks on her two daughters, then visits wheelchair-bound Aunt May (Jennifer Trier) for sympathy, and finally goes downstairs, where she finds her son, Sean (Corey Reilly), mutely holding a knife. Sean proceeds to murder the entire family, while a storm rages outside.

For those keeping count, that's five dead, plus Sean, whose later life can be presumed to be short and unhappy. The seventh person in the title can be easily spotted thirty minutes into the film, if you still care.

One hundred years later, a group of tourists are being driven from a stay at an unidentified resort in the same area. Bill and Brooklyn McCormick (Kilmer and Bonnie Somerville) were taking some time to work on their marriage, apparently without success, because Bill immediately tries to pick up the cashier, Courtney (Rebecca Da Costa), at the gas station where they stop to refuel. Issac and Adam (Goss and Matt Barr) are brothers who were there to have a good time; they make the same play for Courtney, but don't do any better than Bill, even though they're younger and better looking. (Kilmer looks the worst he ever has in movies.) A doctor named Lipski (Christian Baha) was at the resort for a convention.

But the ghosts of the murdered family are obviously uneasy, because the mother, Elizabeth, keeps appearing by the side of the road, and eventually she causes the driver to lose control and crash. He dies, but the five passengers suffer only minor injuries. And wouldn't you know it, but a helpful passer-by appears on this little-traveled country road, just in time to render assistance. His names is Jack (Rhames), and he informs the passengers that the area is under a severe storm alert and tornado watch. They need to get inside immediately. Jack lives nearby—in what turns out to be the former McKnight house.

No one seems to notice that Jack volunteered to call the authorities when they reached his home, but as soon as they arrive, he declares he has no phone. (They are, of course, in a dead zone for cell service.) Nor does anyone, including Dr. Lipski, try to dissuade Bill, who has a head injury, from popping pills, guzzling booze and going to sleep. And no one seems to catch the obviously sinister vibe dripping off Jack when Very Strange Things start happening to the five crash survivors, who are shortly joined by Courtney, after she has car trouble heading home from her gas station job. (That makes six people staying at Jack's house. Get it?) Meanwhile, the storm rages outside, and ghosts continue to appear. Or are they really ghosts?

At this point, I couldn't give away the plot even if I wanted to, because I don't know what happens. It has something to do with destiny, fate, vengeance and the past repeating itself—but I'm still not sure what. Carraway treats these narrative elements like stylistic tics. They're just something you throw in, like a knife or a peephole or a stalker's point-of-view in the woods. They don't actually mean anything. Unfortunately for Carraway, and for anyone unlucky enough to sit through 7 Below, suspense, fear or thrills can't be achieved without at least a semblance of a coherent narrative, and Carraway wouldn't know a narrative if it bit him.

Most of the actors do their best to make something out of nothing, even Rhames, who must have known he deserves better. But Kilmer plays Bill McCormick like he's quit acting altogether—unless, of course, his intent was to portray a man who's given up on absolutely everything, including being interesting. If so, Kilmer succeeded to perfection.

Seven Below Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Because 7 Below skipped theatrical release and went straight to video, it is unclear what its release ratio would have been. The ratio on Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is 1.78:1, which is not an AR used in theatrical exhibition. Although the usual theatrical AR for such a disc presentation would be 1.85:1, an occasional shot suggests that director Carraway and cinematographer Harris Charalambous may have framed the film for 2.39:1 theatrical exhibition. In general, though, the compositions do not feel cramped, nor are objects or people noticeably cropped at the edge of the frame, except as noted.

DP Charalambous' website hasn't been updated to include 7 Below, but both the film's texture and a close reading of the credits suggest that 7 Below was shot digitally. This has both pluses and minuses. The pluses include a clean image, good detail, solid blacks, good depth of field and all of the usual virtues of digital acquisition when it comes time to make a Blu-ray. The minuses are most noticeable in the prologue set in 1911, where the digital appearance feels completely "off", because it looks far too contemporary. Either the production should have used film for these sequences, or further processing should have been done in post to simulate a period look, whether through color desaturation or other means.

The palette favors cool colors, with blues dominant except where the warm tones are meant to throw you off guard (and they don't). Even scenes in the forest or in the antique McKnight home have been chilled down through the introduction of copious cool tones, notably white (fog, a lot of white linens and nightclothes, etc.). For whatever it's worth, I'm confident that the Blu-ray has faithfully replicated the film's intended look.

Seven Below Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 is aggressively loud in creating the severe thunderstorm that traps the travelers in the old house, but it doesn't otherwise offer much in the way of subtle or creepy sound cues. There's the occasional rustle or distant voice, but such effects depend on moments of silence for their impact, and 7 Below doesn't do silence. I have read complaints at IMDb and elsewhere that some users can't hear the dialogue over the noise of the storm, but I had no problem (not that there's anything informative to hear). This may simply be a matter of proper calibration. The score by Jake Staley, who was the orchestrator for All Things Fall Apart, is adequate but nothing more.

Seven Below Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 1:49): The trailer tries to impose a semblance of cohesion on the film's story, but that's too much to ask from a trailer.


• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers (in 1080p) for Creature and 96 Minutes, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Seven Below Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's not one thing to recommend in 7 Below. It's not eye candy; it isn't a sound demo; and the story, if you can call it that, is dull and meandering. If you must have the disc, the technical merits can't be faulted, but don't come crying to me that you wasted your time and money.