Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

The Otherworld Blu-ray Movie Review

The Da Vinci Decoder.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 11, 2017

Those of you who have seen the eminently enjoyable documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau may be surprised to hear that Richard Stanley is way down the list of eccentrics who populate the equally enjoyable documentary The Otherworld, a piece which details Stanley’s evidently long fascination with an area in the south of France Stanley dubs "The Zone", a place which includes the French commune of Rennes-le-Château. In the earlier documentary profiling Stanley’s aborted attempts to bring The Island of Dr. Moreau to the screen, Stanley came off as something of an aging hippie type, given toward metaphysical musings and, replete with long hair and floppy brimmed hat, coming off as kind of a modern day Gandalf. That would perhaps hint at Stanley automatically being one of the more “interesting” people in any given aggregation, but The Otherworld is so stuffed to the gills with mystics, conspiracy theorists and other “woo woo” types that Stanley comes off as at least relatively restrained. Fans of The Da Vinci Code may recognize the name of Rennes-le-Château, since it crops up overtly in Dan Brown’s labyrinthine mystery, and also is referred to subliminally through the character name of the murder victim who sets everything in motion, the supposed Louvre impresario Jacques Saunière. The surname of Saunière has long been associated with Rennes-le-Château courtesy of François- Bérenger Saunière, a Roman Catholic Priest who spent much of his life in the village and who reportedly discovered a treasure there. Some have imputed an occult dimension to François-Bérenger Saunière’s discovery, but fans of Brown’s opus will know what the ostensible “real” treasure turns out to be. This is all fascinating if arcane material for Stanley to investigate, but while The Otherworld is a bizarrely compelling trip down a very particular rabbit hole, anyone looking for ultimate answers will probably come away, well, mystified.

As fans of Brown’s world shattering bestseller are probably already aware, Brown culled at least some of his backstory information from a highly controversial book entitled The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. This book posited all sorts of information about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Priory of Sion, as well as what the authors claimed was the matriculation of Jesus’ descendants to a region in the south of France, not so coincidentally more or less where one finds Rennes-le-Château. This book, along with The Da Vinci Code and others like The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, all helped foment an intense interest in Rennes-le- Château, though considering Stanley’s anthropological leanings, he very well could have been drawn to this mysterious area without any of the publicity it received courtesy of the books.

Stanley is seen in much the same mode as his appearance in Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, namely aimed squarely at the camera and delivering fairly portentous sounding monologues. He begins the documentary by admitting that many viewing The Otherworld will not believe what he’s about to tell, either generally or more particularly with regard to his personal experiences there, but then the piece goes off on a number of weird if often entrancing detours, which leads us to the whole gamut of other eccentrics who provide their own unique insight into the region and its supposed portals to alternate dimensions.

While some of the people appearing as “talking heads” (or in one case, a “talking midriff” due to Stanley’s odd framing choices) come off as relatively rational, at least a couple will certainly qualify as among the odder people to appear in a supposedly fact based documentary. One of the weirder guys seems to be a quasi-shaman (at least as evidenced by his odd get up and equally odd facial makeup), who seems to delight in the fact that he smashed a vintage archival mirror in one of the village’s historic landmarks because he was convinced occultists had opened a portal to Hell and the Devil was inside it. It’s this kind of off the wall stuff that some will be rolling their eyes at, but which actually gives The Otherworld a certain kind of gonzo charm.

While Stanley and his companion Scarlett Amaris report on “strange goings on” at some locations within “The Zone”, there’s a somewhat artificial feeling to some of the presentational aspects which purport to be “fly on the wall” visions of the supernatural, but which sure feel like “dramatic recreations”. The real interest here is in some of the other talking heads, as well as Stanley’s unapologetically hallucinatory style, something that permeates this piece and gives it an appropriately trancelike effect.

The Otherworld Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Otherworld is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The IMDb credits the Canon C300 as the camera utilized for the production, and I assume a 2K DI was the source for this transfer. It's a little hard to assess things like "sharpness and clarity" since Stanley is so keen on introducing psychedelic effects, with lots of superimpositions, effulgent light sources and/or dimly lit scenes taking place more or less by firelight, but on the whole, and especially when the documentary is outside during daylight, detail levels are generally excellent, with a natural looking palette. The camera is very rarely stationary, and as such fine detail levels tend to fluctuate depending on what's in the frame (and how close it is to the camera). There are a lot of stunning panoramic vistas on display, many of which offer excellent depth of field. There are occasional slight banding issues, some of which are tied to Stanley's love of sudden changes in lighting regimens, but otherwise this is a problem free presentation.

The Otherworld Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Otherworld features both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks. Truth be told, there's not a whale of a lot of difference between the two, at least in terms of the talking head and voiceover elements, though the surround track certainly opens up Simon Boswell's score nicely, and also provides discrete channelization for quite a few ambient environmental sounds in the many outdoor scenes. All elements are rendered cleanly and with good prioritization on both tracks.

The Otherworld Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scene #1 (1080p; 5:53) takes a look at a so-called Angel Sanctuary.


• Deleted Scene #2 (1080p; 4:22) is another snippet with Scarlett Amaris.


• The Other Side of the Mirror (1080p; 33:50) is an interesting, near wordless (in terms of narration, etc.) documenting of the shooting of The Otherworld.


• Trailer (1080p; 2:38)

Additionally, the release comes with a Bonus DVD featuring the following supplementary materials:

• Voice of the Moon (480p; 32:28) is a rather relevant piece, despite being filmed in 1990, documenting some of the history, both ancient and recent, of Afghanistan. This features an optional commentary as well as an optional introduction by Richard Stanley (480p; 13:56).


• The White Darkness (480p; 48:22) explores the Voodoo culture of Haiti. This features an optional commentary as well as an optional introduction by Richard Stanley (480p; 10:20).


• The Secret Glory (480p; 1:36:57) gets into some of the oft reported stories of the occult tendencies of the Nazis, in this case an SS officer on the hunt for the Holy Grail. This features an optional commentary as well as an optional introduction by Richard Stanley (480p; 10:20).

All three of these documentaries appear to have been sourced from older video, and exhibit some anomalies, including quite a bit of wobble at times as well as some occasionally fuzzy imagery.

The Otherworld Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Somewhat hilariously, I was in a pit band for a huge production of Peter Pan (as a keyboard player, I was the "voice" of Tinkerbell) when I was reading The Da Vinci Code, and I still remember trying to sneak in as much reading as possible in between moments when I was needed orchestrally, finding myself completely swept up in Brown's tale that touched on some of the same things Stanley explores in The Otherworld. Kind of like Tinkerbell herself, the myths and legends surrounding Rennes-le-Château and other close by locales are seemingly immortal, and The Otherworld will only end up adding to that lore and legend. This is not a traditional documentary by any stretch, but for those attuned to Richard Stanley's rather unique take on things, it's unusually compelling even if it never provides any definitive answers. Severin's package offers excellent technical merits as well as some very enjoyable supplements, and The Otherworld comes Highly recommended.