6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
In the pristine tundra of Northern Alaska, winter is brutal. But for one small team of oil scouts, this season is about to turn deadly. As an unseen evil stalks the isolated crew, nature's violent fury adds to their fear and torment. Horrifying visions in the snow close in, and they'll soon discover that not everything buried below the ice is resting in peace.
Starring: Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton, Zach Gilford, Kevin CorriganHorror | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Note: This title is currently available as part of The Larry Fessenden Collection.
You might think Larry Fessenden would be better known as a director, given the fact that entries in his filmography bear such iconic titles
as
Jaws, A Face in the Crowd and Chinatown
. Of course Steven Spielberg, Elia Kazan and Roman Polanski might prefer to have someone pointing out the fact that Fessenden’s films
with those titles are not the “famous” ones, so to speak, so there’s that. Fessenden has carved an interesting niche for himself as an indie
horror meister,
while also frequently appearing as an actor in not only his own films, but those by such iconic names as Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out the Dead) and Neil Jordan (The Brave One). Fessenden might seem like a somewhat odd subject for a
“career
retrospective” of sorts like the new four disc set from Scream Factory which assembles Fessenden’s films from a fifteen year span (give or
take)
bridging the 1990s to the 2000s. Fessenden may exploit an unabashedly (and unapologetically) lo-fi ambience in many of his films, but he’s
also an (at times at least) unusually intelligent writer of horror. While each of these films has its own hurdles to overcome (as even
Fessenden
admits in his charmingly self deprecating commentaries), this set also provides an interesting example of an independent filmmaker growing
and
becoming more and more technically competent as his career progresses. There's at least some thematic consistency in play between these
quite disparate films, including a recurrence of the traditional horror staple that Mother Nature doesn't take kindly to humans not respecting
her enough.
The Last Winter is presented on Blu-ray by IFC Midnight and Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is by and large the best looking presentation found in The Larry Fessenden Collection, no doubt due to the recent vintage of the film, the fact that it was shot on 35mm and perhaps also at least partially attributable to the fact that it's new enough to have had a digital intermediate. While the palette is somewhat tamped down throughout the film, tending toward an almost hospital-like greenish tint at times, detail and fine detail remain strong throughout the presentation, especially in close-ups. Gradations of white are also handled well, with little to no banding in evidence. Some of the second unit photography of wide open Alaskan vistas offer stunning depth of field if admittedly not much in the way of fine detail.
The Last Winter's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix does a good job of evoking both the barren out of doors ambience of several scenes in the film, but also the cloistered, claustrophobic confines the characters find themselves in when they're inside. This film has a few more source cues than are generally present in some of the other films in The Larry Fessenden Collection, and those spill through the surround channels quite winningly. Dialogue and effects are rendered cleanly and clearly and offer excellent prioritization. There is also a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix included on this Blu-ray as an option.
Fessenden has assembled one of his most impressive casts for The Last Winter, and they deliver good performances in what is in some ways a surprisingly rote thriller that recycles ideas not just from Fessenden's own oeuvre, but a few other hoary films as well. The Last Winter may be a bit too screed like for its own good, but it's also uniquely unsettling and has a nicely disturbing vibe running through its perhaps too predictable tale. Technical merits are generally strong, the supplementary package is very enjoyable, and The Last Winter comes Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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Unrated Director's Cut
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Collector's Edition
1988