Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

The Nesting Blu-ray Movie Review

Low-rent 80s scares appear on a thrown-together Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 19, 2011

Am I going completely crazy now?

Horror may be the most fickle and unstable of all film genres, the one that's most likely to churn out any number of movies at any quality interval imaginable, from the seminal all-time classics like Halloween to the latest watered- and dumbed-down PG-13 atrocities that are neither scary nor original. It's a scattershot (or scatterbrained, as the case may be) crapshoot process in sifting through the pile in search of that gem or even that watch-and-forget Saturday night time killer. For every under-the-radar surprise, there are a dozen movies like The Nesting that are almost inexplicably bad in every major category, whether strength of story, quality of acting, directorial craftsmanship, pacing, and on and on. The Nesting is one of the most tedious and tiresome films of the entire 1980s Horror landscape. Granted it faces some steep competition as a member of a decade that was arguably defined by its excess of Horror pictures good, bad, and everything else that filled in and overflowed every last square inch of middle ground in between, but even the worst of the Jason, Freddy, Pinhead, Michael, and Chucky franchise movies, not to mention even standalone fare like Shocker, prove vastly superior to this. Sure The Nesting is low-rent sort of fare, but a decent story doesn't cost anymore than one's time behind a keyboard and a little imagination.

"And...and...and I have flashbacks of all those movie villains who fall to their deaths!"

Novelist Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves) is a big-time agoraphobic who panics when she leaves her house. It's degrading her quality of life to the point that she decides to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and settle down in a rented country secluded home where, just maybe, she can get her life back together and get busy on her next project. She and her boyfriend Mark (Christopher Loomis) head out of town in search of the perfect place and stumble upon a creepy, old, and irregularly-shaped house that miraculously looks just like the house she had drawn up to place on the cover of her latest book, The Nesting. She rents the house from a mysterious old man named Colonel Lebrun (John Carradine) and settles in, but it doesn't take long for her to realize that there's something most peculiar about the house. As Lauren sees several around her go crazy and die, she concludes that the house may be haunted. It definitely has an unpleasant history, and if she's to survive her stay, she's going to need to figure out just how she fits into its dark past.

Maybe coming down so hard on The Nesting isn't quite fair. After all, the filmmakers have taken the Haunted House picture and at least put a slightly novel twist on it, but even then the plot is at best serviceable. The real problems surrounding The Nesting lie in the peripherals. The film does not one single thing right, languishing as it features forgettable characters while struggling through plenty of dull stretches, and suffering under heavy-handed direction, and that's not even to crack the surface. It's all forgettably standard, employing cliché elements such as the "dark and stormy night" and "shrieking Horror strings" out the wazoo while tossing in several gratuitous breast shots and milking the "creaky old dark house" plot device for all of the fifteen cents its worth. The Nesting just has the look and feel of some makeshift Horror movie built on the fly without much thought or care. It's not an embarrassment in an absolute sense, but it holds together only enough to keep from completely crumbling into earning a "zero" score.

Director Armand Weston doesn't do anything from a visual perspective to earn the film any praise, either. His direction is stale at best and questionable at worst. His lensing is so routine that the film seems to put viewers in a trance-like state as the entire story runs together, the characters become indistinguishable one from another while the plot fails to gel when it's supposed to come together. His climax is awkwardly handled, to be kind; his middling direction is capped by a tedious and completely ineffective slow-motion orgy of cheap violence as the backstory is fully revealed. It seems Weston is aiming to give the situation far greater import than it deserves, but he manages to in fact lessen whatever surprise there may be by overplaying his hand and dragging it out, and not even crafting it with any sort of style other than shooting at greater than 24 frames per second. Capped by ineffective acting -- including a meaningless extended cameo by John Carradine who appears in the film long enough to earn a credit and expends less energy playing his part than the audience does watching the entire film -- it becomes clear that maybe coming down hard on The Nesting is fair after all.

The Nesting Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Nesting sets up shop on Blu-ray with a middling, uneven 1080p transfer. Though the image retains a fair bit of grain, it's also flat and lifeless. Facial details are nearly nonexistent, appearing overly smooth and soft. Fortunately, fine detailing elsewhere fares well enough as evidenced by the way the transfer picks up the textures of a woven quilt in one scene or the scratchy, dusty wooden floor of the house later on in one low-level shot. Unfortunately, softness is a constant problem, both center-frame and around the edges. Colors fail to impress but aren't too terribly dull or washed out. Color gradations are poor, with many scenes showcasing skin tones that harshly jump from shade to shade rather than transition naturally with the light. Black crush also plagues darker scenes, of which there are several. This isn't a complete disaster of a transfer by any means, but it doesn't meet the same standards of excellence that fans have come to expect from Blue Underground.

The Nesting Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Nesting features a full-fledged DTS-HD MA 7.1 lossless soundtrack, but the vast majority of information remains firmly entrenched in the front speakers. Dialogue is fairly shallow and not particularly loud, lacking the sort of natural clarity found in most lossless tracks. Music is dull and lifeless, absent much vigor until some greater energy and spacing becomes evident during a few of the more intensive musical cues, such as one action scene in chapter twelve. Still, the track is somewhat sloppy, with highs playing as screechy and scratchy with regularity. Natural ambience -- chirping birds, for instance -- doesn't really escape the front speakers. There is a smattering of surround usage near the end of the film, but the vast majority is front-heavy to be sure. This is a suitable listen and a fair companion to a well-below-average film.

The Nesting Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Nesting arrives on Blu-ray with only a scant amount of supplemental content.

• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p, 12:02): Extended Scene: Therapy Session; Alternate Stairway Descent; Extended Scene: Therapy Session; Extended Scene: House Rental Inquiry; Extended Scene: Attic Expedition; Deleted Scene: Police Investigation; Extended Scene: Physics & Haunted Houses; and Extended Car Chase (Audio Missing).
• English Trailer (1080p, 1:55).
• Spanish Trailer (1080p, 1:55).
• TV Spots (1080p, 0:30 each).
• Poster & Still Gallery (1080p).

The Nesting Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Nesting is probably the worst movie Blue Underground's released so far on Blu-ray. It's about as ineffective as a Horror movie can be. There's no atmosphere, the direction ranges from stale to desperate, the plot is weak, and the acting is subpar. Unfortunately, the Blu-ray disc more or less matches the film. The technical presentation is below par and the extras are weak. Kudos to the studio for getting this movie out there -- the more the merrier -- but even die hard Blue Underground completists might want to think twice about adding this one to the collection. Skip it.