5.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
It's the first night for Londoners Ed and Sarah in their new home - an isolated farmhouse on the Scottish border. Come sunset they fall in love all over again on a wander in the woods. But as darkness falls, Sarah suspects they're not alone. Ed goes to investigate, and it suddenly dawns on them that they do not belong here. And they certainly aren't welcome either....
Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Lee Williams (II), Joanne Mitchell, James McCreadie, Dominic KayHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 26% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Early in the English thriller, The Blood Lands, a realtor showing a rundown farmhouse in the Scottish countryside notes that it stands on the site of a "ferocious" battle between the Scots and the English. Asked who won, she answers with a smile: "That depends on who you talk to." A similar degree of wry ambiguity was clearly what screenwriter Ian Fenton and director Simeon Halligan were after from the film. Fenton originally envisioned the story from two points of view, shifting between the farmhouse's inhabitants barricaded inside and their attackers laying siege from outside, but he ultimately settled on an approach that stayed entirely with the inhabitants and left the attackers' identities vague. Director Halligan looked for visual inspiration to films like the 2008 shocker, The Strangers, which employed a similar approach. Unfortunately, despite good performances and a capable crew, The Blood Lands doesn't achieve the creepiness factor for which its writer and director were aiming. The marauders are frightening enough, once they finally show up, but the victims make themselves such easy targets that they quickly lose the audience's sympathy. People in real life often behave stupidly, but in movies they have to be at least smart enough to prevent the audience from thinking to themselves (or yelling at the screen): "Oh come on!"
The Blood Lands was the first feature shot by James Swift, an experienced camera operator for British television. Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, from which Magnolia Home Video's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by a direct digital path. Both in its photographic style and its color palette, the image aims for naturalism, so that it can adequately represent the beauty of Scottish scenery, at one extreme, and the menace of the nighttime attackers and their hulking figures, at the other. The forests surrounding the farmhouse can look green and inviting in daylight and bluish black and hazardous at night. Blacks are solid, and shades of black are nicely differentiated, which is essential for extended scenes of cat-and-mouse in the buildings and surrounding woods. Wherever there is light, detail is excellent. The decrepitude of the farmhouse is so evident that you will be wondering why anyone would want to buy it. Magnolia has mastered The Blood Lands with an average bitrate of 24.01, and the compression has been carefully performed.
The Blood Lands's 5.1 sound mix, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, effectively recreates the cacophony that so unnerves Sarah and Ed (but especially Sarah) as they settle in for their first night in their new home, with plenty of cries, creaks, rattles and other unidentifiable noises all around. Later, when the threat is all too real, the voices of their attackers can be heard in distant pursuit. Stereo separations are distinct across the front soundstage, so that people speaking off-camera are heard to left or right, and the dialogue is always clear. The score was composed by Jon Wygert, a frequent composer for documentaries, who has created a range of moods, from suspense tone reminiscent of Jon Carpenter to echoes of folk ballads.
When my colleague Jeffrey Kauffman reviewed Simeon Halligan's first feature, Splintered, he hoped that the former production designer would choose a better script for his sophomore effort. With all due respect to screenwriter Fenton, The Blood Lands was not that script. The concept of natives attacking English interlopers is promising, especially in today's context of controversy over Scottish independence (which was used to promote the film in the U.K.), but the plot mechanics needed to be worked out with much greater care to create a credibly frightening scenario. Rent, or see on demand (if at all).
(Still not reliable for this title)
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