Splintered Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.0

Splintered Blu-ray Movie Review

Things fall apart.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 17, 2012

It’s amazing what public relations press sheets tout, sometimes buried far into the description of whatever product whose supposed claims to fame they’re extolling. Take for example the printed hype accompanying Splintered, a horror film that, at least according to its plot précis, seems to be cobbled together from a bunch of well worn clichés: you know, a bunch of teenagers, an abandoned building, an otherworldly creature out for blood. But this little tidbit instantly caught my eye: “. . .[Splintered] was nominated for Most Memorable Mutilation for the arm removal scene at Spike TV’s 2009 Scream Awards”. Okay, so we all know film awards have so completely oversaturated the market that it seems like every film wins something, but certainly Most Memorable Mutilation must go down as one of the most hilarious “awards” that films are eligible to “win”. (It probably comes as no surprise that 2009’s coveted Most Memorable Mutiliation award was won by Saw V for the pendulum trap sequence.) Splintered traffics in many hoary horror tropes but does so so haphazardly that it might have received a second Most Memorable Mutilation nomination for its lack of coherence. The film has some undeniably moody moments, it features an unusual setting (North Wales), and it really, truly wants to be somehow “relevant” (a term that should hardly ever be used in conjunction with the horror genre), but it attempts to gain that relevance with a troubling coda that supposedly casts everything that has gone before in a new light but which in actuality trivializes what is a very real horror for untold thousands of people while doing little to shed light on the pretend horror that splatters across the screen.

Where are the Scream teens when you really need them? If only someone had come along to warn the youngsters of Splintered about wandering into the dark and mysterious woods, especially when there are gruesome sounds abounding, and, even worse, deciding to go inside an abandoned gothic institutional building of some kind, so much blood and guts might not have been spilled. Splintered actually opens with a prologue featuring our heroine Sophie (played by little Holly Messenger in this sequence and some flashbacks, but by adult Holly Weston for the bulk of the film) where the little girl is lying in bed when she’s suddenly beleaguered by some sort of hideous monster trying to break into her room. That turns out to be a nightmare (or is it?) as the adult Sophie awakens with a start, but then of course Sophie’s real nightmare begins when she enlists several of her friends to help her track down a mythical forest beast which may be killing livestock and (eegads!) even humans.

Sophie soon finds herself a prisoner in a locked cell in the gothic building, which turns out to be an abandoned Catholic orphanage. Sophie’s repeated attempts to escape prove fruitless (though she gets achingly close a couple of times), and she is dragged back to her cell by whom we’re led to believe is the bad guy of the piece, a demented leftover from some unknown sequel to Deliverance named Gavin (Stephen Walters, billed here as Stephen Martin Walters). Screenwriting 101 aficionados will have already figured out that Gavin may in fact be attempting to protect Sophie from an even worse fate than Gavin’s greasy hair and missing teeth, and that of course turns out to be the case. Meanwhile all of Sophie’s friends traipse through the forest in an attempt to figure out where she’s gone, and all seemingly unable to find the gargantuan facility that Sophie had no problem tripping over and getting trapped in.

In the meantime a Priest named Father Thomas (Colin Tierney) shows up and attempts to lend a helping hand (and cross and gun). It’s here where Splintered lapses into complete absurdity as well as some elements that some people are going to find troubling if not outright disturbing and objectionable. Screenwriters Mat Archer, Simeon Halligan (who also directed) and Stephen Trimingham skirt the issue of abuse by priests ever so delicately (no, really), actually not getting into the sexual aspect but making it clear that things were not all sunshine and roses at the orphanage in days of yore. The sexual aspect of abuse is actually left up to Sophie’s backstory, where that opening nightmare depicted in the prologue is suddenly revealed to have a more Freudian and sinister underpinning. This all erupts in a several big “Moishe the Explainer” flashbacks in the film’s final half hour, and while these elements at least give the viewer context for what exactly has been going on all of this time, they also seriously interrupt any momentum that may have been building up until that point.

Splintered was the first feature film for director Halligan, whose background is largely in Production Design, as he mentions in the featurette devoted to him included as one of the supplementary features on this Blu-ray. That background means that Splintered has a nice look, especially with regard to the very spooky location shots, but also with regard to the nicely rendered interior of the old orphanage, which seems alive with the spirits of dead children. But there’s nothing beneath the grimy and gritty surface of Splintered. This is a film that takes several well worn clichés, mixes them up into a stew and hopes that no one will notice the stale ingredients. The endgame of Splintered is especially questionable, joining one character’s sexual abuse with other characters’ abuse at the hands of Priests in an unseemly and perhaps ill advised manner. Conservative who were up in arms about that art installation years ago that featured a crucifix drenched in bodily fluids may have a similar objection to the final showdown between Sophie and her beastly tormentor here, where the crucifix becomes an actual weapon. It may have a certain kind of poetic justice, but that doesn’t mean some won't find it blasphemous nonetheless.

Splintered Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Splintered is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is yet another RED shot horror feature that delights in extreme tweaking in the DI phase, leaving the film intentionally desaturated and/or filtered a lot of the time, once again in shades of green and blue, which seem to be the preferred hues for all up and coming horror directors nowadays. One of the chief issues with the film and this transfer is that the vast majority of the film is simply too dark, to the point that nothing can be made out a lot of the time. I never saw Splintered theatrically (my hunch is very few did), and so I can't comment about whether this was endemic to the theatrical exhibition, but what is on display here is an almost complete lack of shadow detail and outright crush a lot of the time. The film is so dark so consistently that it was actually difficult to find sufficiently lit moments to get decent looking screencaps for this review (one reason three shots come from one of the few daytime scenes in the film, where Sophie's friends are in a field). The grim filtering tends to rob the image of at least a little fine detail in all but extreme close-ups. Things are noticeably better in the handful of brightly lit sequences, though even those are filtered to such an extent that colors never really look natural.

Splintered Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Splintered lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio mix is quite good, though in a kind of surprising twist it's rarely as bombastic as many of this kind of horror film tends to get. We of course get the usual glut of jump cuts accompanied by bursts of LFE, and there's some nice surround activity with regard to things that go bump in the night in the orphanage, but this is a curiously restrained soundtrack quite a bit of the time. Fidelity is excellent, though dialogue can be a bit hard to make out due to some heavy British accents (and unfortunately this Blu-ray has no subtitles to aid in deciphering what the characters are saying). Dynamic range is quite good throughout the film and immersion is decently consistent if never as over the top as some horror fans are probably going to want.

Splintered Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes is split into the following featurettes:
  The Beginning (HD; 2:49)
  CGI (HD; 3:05)
  Cinematography (HD; 4:09)
  Design (HD; 3:33)
  Music (HD; 3:04)
  Prosthetics and Make-Up (HD; 2:41)
  Shooting a Scene (HD; 3:17)
  The Designer (HD; 6:22)
  The Actors (HD; 7:33)
  The Director (HD; 6:03)



• Deleted Scenes (HD; 13:20) contains nine scenes, including two alternate endings (one without music or grading).


• Teaser 1 (HD; 1:10)


• Teaser 2 (HD; 1:11)


• Trailer (HD; 2:08)

Splintered Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Director Simeon Halligan has a good eye and a lot of Splintered looks quite fine, even if performances aren't exactly Oscar caliber and some of the fight scenes are ineptly done. What Halligan really needs more than anything is a better screenplay to film. Splintered takes too many worn out ideas and doesn't do anything unexpected or innovative with them. There really aren't any outright scares in this film, despite an abundance of gruesome killings. Hard core horror fans may find this an okay enough popcorn munching rental experience, but even those fans may be dozing off long before Sophie finds her inner demon slayer and kills the nightmares that have been haunting her.