5.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
When ex-soldier Ryan wakes up in a van next to a young boy who appears to have been kidnapped, Ryan manages to set the boy free just as he discovers that his life expectancy has been downgraded to nine minutes and 47 seconds. Ryan must now fight to save his own life as after every nine minutes and 47 seconds his brain gets rebooted. Is Ryan part of some grand scientific experiment? Is this all just payback for leaving the military? Only Ryan can figure it out, but he's running out of time...
Starring: Noel Clarke, Ian Somerhalder, Brian Cox, Alexis Knapp, Luke HemsworthThriller | 100% |
Action | 92% |
Sci-Fi | 75% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Sometimes, a movie will ask its audience to simply go with the flow, to accept the unacceptable, and sit back and enjoy a deep story that unfolds gradually, in many complex layers that individually are nothing more than thin membranes but that collectively assembled represent something sturdily impressive and valuable. The Anomaly wants to be one such movie but fails, miserably, in just about every way conceivable. It has "low budget ambitious" written all over it, which isn't a bad thing, but the result is a tedious watch, a movie that's structurally and dramatically confusing and that doubles down for the duration on its narrative haziness. It ultimately leaves the audience more in the dark than the characters, which is never a good thing. It's easy enough to piece together the basics, but the journey towards answers is so laborious that the best answers will be found in the scrolling credits, rising light levels, and a focus on something else. Anything else. There's a decent, if not stale, mixture of ideas here, but the film suffers from too many debilitating shortcomings to make it a worthwhile cinema experience.
What are we watching again?
The Anomaly features a clean and precise, but fairly utilitarian, 1080p transfer. The image is solid yet unspectacular, offering a mildly muted color palette in which even bright green leaves don't explode off the screen. There's an overriding coldness to the color scheme, punctuated by a few warmer interiors. Details are crisp though a bit digital-flat. Basic skin and clothing textures satisfy, as do dense leaves seen at the beginning and various city textures seen throughout. Black levels are fine while flesh tones appear a touch pasty under the source's constraints. Mild noise creeps into the image, but banding, macroblocking, and aliasing are nowhere to be found.
The Anomaly's Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack opens strongly, with haunting, reverberating screaming and gunshots that sound as if they're coming from a metallic enclosure. The track maintains a good deal of energy throughout, exciting with some pulse-pounding musical notes that power through the entire stage with a beefy LFE support element. Even the track's most piercing musical cues find a good bit of precision clarity. Gunfire and other action effects satisfy, with the futuristic guns not quite so impactful as modern day weaponry. City din surrounds the listener at several junctures and other examples of light ambience help better define the film's aural atmospheres. Dialogue remains front-and-center with solid clarity and prioritization throughout.
This Blu-ray release of The Anomaly contains no supplemental content.
The Anomaly disappoints in every way. It's slow, confusing, poorly written, and blandly executed. There's a glimmer of potential in the movie, but the problem is that all that potential really just comes from the hints of the other, better movies this one has crammed into its barely coherent plot. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of The Anomaly delvers solid enough video and audio. No extras, not even trailers, are included. Skip it.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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