The Ringmaster Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

The Ringmaster Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 17, 2021

The Ringmaster evidently was screened in its native country of Denmark as whatever the Danish word for Finale is, although it appears that, if the IMDb is to be believed, the film didn't actually "screen" in the traditional sense but was instead offered as a pay per view event on television. That's actually perfectly keeping with the film's very plot conceit, which offers what might be thought of as a closed circuit or internet "broadcast" of a literal horror show where two unfortunate women are captured and then tortured for an apparently rapt audience. There's "meta" content here galore as a result, not the least of which is an introductory vignette offering what almost looks like a portly elder version of the Emcee from Cabaret, who warns the audience (which in this case one assumes means the buyers of this disc, but which could also refer to the audience implied in the story itself) that they'd better be prepared for a lot of violence, though this odd character also probably wisely admits that the violence is probably why anyone is interested in The Ringmaster to begin with.

In that regard, it may not really matter all that much that screenwriters Carsten Juul Bladt, Steen Langstrup (helping to adapt his source novel) and Søren Juul Petersen (who also directed) spend so much time delineating their two focal characters, since the point of the enterprise would seem to be what happens to them in captivity, not what got them there. In that regard, however, The Ringmaster employs a structural device which ping pongs back and forth in time, offering "backstories" detailing some events in the lives of Agnes Berger (Anne Bergfeld) and Belinda Andersen (Karin Michelsen) interspersed with the chilling "pay per view event" of them being assaulted in various ways, all under the watchful eye (more like a leering gaze) of The Ringmaster (Damon Younger).

The Ringmaster may in fact benefit from this approach, however, since it at least provides a bit of an emotional tether to the characters, though, as "confessed" by the Emcee at the film's opening, it's the horrifyingly brutal set pieces in this film, which echo similar "trap" deaths like those seen in the seemingly unending Saw franchise, which may provide the most allure for horror fans. There's an obvious attempt to have some "meaningful" subtext at play here, with a none too subtle link between the assumed audience watching The Ringmaster and his prey and the "real" audience (meaning anyone watching this disc), which is all fine and good, even if it doesn't make the actual violence depicted on screen from being any less provocative.

The film never really makes it completely clear about the "mechanics" of the ostensible pay per view event, and even the way Agnes and Belinda are "chosen" isn't especially well developed, but the context of the story is reasonably well fleshed in (no pun intended), documenting two women from probably different socioeconomic strata thrust together in an isolated setting, where an unusual situation for Danish sports fans is keeping most people at home glued to their televisions and which has left the women dealing with a variety of menacing figures dropping by the gas station where they both work. Of course, the real menace turns out to be The Ringmaster and his "little" show.

The Ringmaster Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Ringmaster is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Jinga and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The closing credits list the Panasonic Lumix as the camera of choice (I believe this is the first time I've seen this particular model listed), and I'm assuming the DI was finished at 2K. There's a lot of intentional tweaking to the imagery here, as tends to be the case in some of these horror enterprises. In unaltered moments, the imagery is typically nicely sharp and very well detailed, with a surprisingly warm and natural looking palette, as probably exemplified by the first two screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. However, large swaths of the film have been intentionally distressed and graded, often toward slightly sepia tones, especially in some of the Ringmaster sequences. There are other stylistic conceits utilized, including supposed closed circuit video and the like, some of which can look pretty fuzzy and ill defined. A couple of fades have very slight passing banding.

The Ringmaster Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Ringmaster offers DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks, with the film playing out mostly in Danish, but with snippets of English and German as well. The soundtrack offers some substantial surround activity in the Ringmaster sequences in particular, and Peter K. Nørgaard's score is also noticeably opened up in the surround version. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly, though it looked to me like at least parts of the film may have been post-looped, since lip movements occasionally do not match the sounds emanating from them. The film defaults to English subtitles for the foreign language segments (so that the opening spoken English vignette doesn't have subtitles), but there are also English SDH subtitles included that translate the entire film, and these have a really curious anomaly as seen in screenshot 9, where what rather weirdly looks like timecode information appears, and which skews the subtitles off of where they should be. There are also a number of typos scattered throughout the subtitles, for those who care about such things. Optional Spanish subtitles are also available.

The Ringmaster Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers includes The Ringmaster (HD; 1:28), along with other releases from Jinga and MVD.

The Ringmaster Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The fact that The Ringmaster's original title was Finale may suggest that there's not going to be any sequel in store, and yet the entire film seems designed to create some kind of "new and improved" (?) horror franchise. A lot of horror franchises admittedly begin with a bang (and/or a splatter) without much contextual information, leaving that aspect to any follow up productions, but The Ringmaster kind of interestingly spends quite a bit of time on its supposed victims rather than offering information about the central conceit of the film, the ostensible pay per view event showing the horrifying maiming of various people. I wish the film had exploited what almost seems to be a rather dark sense of humor in one of the first of several "title cards" the film offers, where text informs the audience that their expectations for any traditional Danish "hygge" are about to be seriously disabused. Technical merits are generally solid for those who are considering making a purchase.