Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		1.0
Audio		0.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		0.5

The Nameless Blu-ray Movie Review

Those Responsible for this Blu-ray Wouldn't Give Their Names

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 19, 2013

Writer-director Jaime Balagueró's The Nameless (Los sin nombre) won several festival prizes, but no one would mistake it for a masterpiece of supernatural or psychological suspense. Among other problems, it has too many characters, and its overly complicated plot requires so much exposition that no payoff can satisfy the anticipation. Still, the film should at least get a fair chance to cast whatever spell it can manage over viewers, but the Blu-ray presentation by Echo Bridge under the "Miramax" label sabotages it in every conceivable way: a lackluster image from a damaged source element; a poorly done English dub, without even the minimal effort needed to translate original intertitles or essential writings, such as newspaper headlines, that supply vital information; and a 2.0 soundtrack instead of the original 5.1, despite the obvious care that the sound team invested in creating an atmospheric and disturbing discrete surround mix. When you're not being distracted by the long vertical scratch that keeps appearing at the right side of the screen, you're wondering why the disembodied voices are so poorly matched to the actors' lip movements. Even bad kung fu movies were better synched.

Balagueró directed the English-language Darkness (2002) for Mirmax's Dimension label, when the Weinstein Brothers controlled the company. Either as a favor to Balagueró or to capitalize on the modest success of Darkness, the Weinsteins released his 1999 Spanish-language chiller on U.S. DVD in 2005. That version, released under Disney's Buena Vista label, had the original Spanish track as Dolby Digital 2.0 with English subtitles, as well as the English dub in DD 5.1. For Blu-ray, Echo Bridge has provided the worst of both worlds by supplying only the English version in two channels.

For anyone still interested at this point, I will do my best to provide a spoiler-free overview of the film. If you are at all intrigued, I recommend tracking down a copy of the Buena Vista DVD. Even at standard definition, it should provide a better experience than this pitiful excuse for a Blu-ray.

"We must find out who put that blue scratch behind you!"

The film begins with the gruesome discovery by the police in an unnamed Spanish city of the body of a young girl, badly mutilated beyond all possibility of identification, including dental records. (The film predates modern DNA analysis.) Based on a bracelet found near the body, and the anatomical oddity that one leg is shorter than the other, the authorities conclude that the body is that of a missing child named Angela for whom they have been searching. A detective named Massera (Karra Elejalde) delivers the bad news to the distraught parents, Claudia (Emma Vilarasau) and Marc (Brendan Price).

Five years pass—or, in the untranslated Catalan phrase that appears on the screen, "5 Anys Després" (literally "5 Years Later"). Claudia and Marc have long ago split up, and Claudia has most recently broken off a relationship with a photographer named Toni (Pep Tosar), who refuses to accept Claudia's decision. She is currently working on a book about piercings and tattoos, for which Toni was supplying photographs. But Claudia still lives in the past. At home by herself, she watches videotapes of Angela playing with Marc.

One day Claudia picks up the phone and hears a girl's voice insisting that she's her long-lost daughter, that she isn't dead and that she's in trouble and needs her mother's help. The voice on the phone directs Claudia to a clinic near the beach, where she used to take Angela. When Claudia visits the now-abandoned structure, it is filled with strange objects, including at least one that has obviously been left there just for Claudia. Now convinced her daughter is still alive, Claudia seeks aid from Det. Massera, only to discover that he has recently left the police force for personal reasons. But he has yet to turn in his badge, and he agrees to investigate these new developments. One gets the sense that Angela's disappearance is a case that still haunts him.

Matters take an even stranger turn when Quiroga (Tristan Ulloa), a reporter for a tabloid magazine specializing in the paranormal, receives an envelope containing a videotape with Claudia's phone number written on the label. The tape contains footage of an unidentified woman being savagely brutalized, but it also has recent footage of Claudia, who is apparently being stalked.

With Quiroga and Det. Massera now joining forces, the investigation begins to focus on a mysterious cult called “The Nameless”. Claudia and Massera learn about the cult from a Jesuit scholar (Boris Ruiz), whom Massera has consulted on past cases. The scholar describes the cult’s roots in the Thule Society, a secret German organization that included Hitler among its leaders. The cult sought the perfection of evil, and many of the horrific experiments in the concentration camps were its handiwork. After the war, the group’s leader was a camp survivor named Santini (Carlos Lasarte), who is now in prison. Massera and Claudia visit this monster, who has grown elderly and disfigured, but he will only see Claudia, to whom he speaks in riddles and nonsense. But Santini drops just enough clues so that the anguished mother is finally able to learn what happened to her daughter.

Balagueró uses odd editing rhythms to achieve his effects. He likes to build a sequence to what should be a shocking moment, then end it abruptly just when you're expecting something terrible to happen. Not until later do you learn what actually did happen. Transitions are often accomplished by abrupt cuts to disturbing images on video, which may (or may not) represent the characters' nightmares. It's a filmmaking style designed to pull the viewer out of the everyday world and into a visionary realm where normal rules don't apply and earthly authorities have no dominion. In a decent presentation, it's a style that might be very effective.

The Nameless Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The source material for Echo Bridge's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is in terrible shape, far removed from anything resembling an interpositive or original camera negative. It does not appear to be even a print created for distribution in the film's original Spanish, as the occasional intertitle is in Catalan, which is a Romance language spoken in parts of Spain and France, with similarities to both Spanish and French. The image is littered with dirt, speckles, streaks and other damage, including a pronounced vertical scratch extending from top to bottom of the right side of the screen that comes and goes in the latter half of the film. It is inconceivable that a better source could not be found for a film first released in 1999.

Looking past the damage, the transfer is merely adequate in its reproduction of Xavi Giménez's (Red Lights) cool, somewhat desatured palette that is occasionally offset by startling expanses of red. Detail is only fair, black levels are inconsistent, and the image has a flatness and lack of depth suggesting that high frequencies have been rolled off, with perhaps a touch of sharpening afterward. Some of the elaborate sets demands to be seen in detail (e.g., the abandoned clinic to which Claudia is directed by the first phone call from the voice claiming to be Angela), but this image doesn't make them easy to decipher.

The Nameless Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 2.0 track is a textbook example of why lossless audio is not necessarily better audio. I would gladly trade this lossless dubbed 2.0 garbage for a lossy original Spanish-language 5.1 track in a heartbeat. As previously noted, the dubbing has been carelessly performed so that the voices rarely match lip movements, when the latter are visible. The voices thereby acquire a weirdly disembodied quality that is clearly not what the filmmakers intended. Played through a surround decoder, the 2.0 mix has just enough of a presence in the rear speakers to suggest the kind of effect that a discrete 5.1 mix might fully convey, with rustlings, creaks, wind, echoes and other faint noises heard in the distance during tense moments. The track has sufficient dynamic range to establish the necessary contrast between loud and soft moments in the quick cuts between disturbing "dream" footage and regular waking life, but a 5.1 mix that opened up the "dream" sounds would work even better.

There is a generically effective horror score by Carles Cases, who also wrote the score for Darkness.

The Nameless Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc contains no extras.

The Nameless Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This was my first viewing of The Nameless, and I would like to see it again some day in a quality presentation with its original soundtrack, just to be able to experience Balagueró's vision as he intended. Otherwise, it's unclear to me whether the film has much rewatch value. I am one hundred percent certain, however, that this particular version on Blu-ray has no value at all. Avoid at all costs.