6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
A special high mountain command of nine experienced soldiers is sent to a military base in a desolate high-plains moor of Colombia with which contact was lost several days ago and was believed to be target of a guerrilla attack. Upon arrival, the only person found inside the base is a peasant woman who is heavily chained. Gradually , the isolation the inability to communicate with the outside world, an the impossibility to escape, undermine the integrity and sanity of the soldiers, causing them to lose the certainties about the identify of the enemy and creating them doubts about the true nature of that strange woman.
Starring: Juan Pablo Barragán, Alejandro Aguilar (VI), Andrés Felipe Torres, Mauricio Navas, Juan David RestrepoHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 23% |
Foreign | 2% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
A lot of horror movies, both iconic and, well, not so legendary, have exploited the ambiguity between “real” supernatural phenomena and either a misapprehension of events or downright mental illness coloring someone’s reactions to what’s actually going on. One of the more artful examples in this subgenre would be The Innocents, Jack Clayton’s evocative filming of the William Archibald play (culled from Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw). In that film, it’s left tantalizingly unclear whether a rash of otherworldly events, including the potential possession of children by malevolent spirits and in fact thost spirits themselves, is actually happening or simply the byproduct of the fervid, neurotic imagination of a live in nanny and caretaker. There’s a difference, however, between intentional ambiguity and mere indecision, which seems to be what afflicts The Squad, an admittedly moody film that wants to have its supernatural cake but eat it within the context of incipient paranoia, a stand in here for a “rational” explanation for events.
The Squad is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in
2.35:1. The most frightening thing about this release may well be not anything that happens on screen, but the quality control process The
Squad went through on the way to market. The actual quality of the video will be addressed in a moment, but did no one notice the bizarre
(and glaring) digital errors like the one that occurs at circa 12:21? At that moment, for just a second, a soldier's face suddenly morphs and
stretches, dissolving into a pixellated mass that is like something out of a Japanese horror film exploiting killer videos. I actually thought it was
an intentional moment and that The Squad was lapsing into a quasi-found footage element, but it seems to be some kind of glitch either
in the master or something that happened along the way in the authoring process. It's completely odd, in any case.
Aside from anomalies like that, The Squad has a somewhat bleak and unappealing look, with low contrast scenes that are hobbled by
having been shot in low, or indeed no, light a lot of the time. Even more brightly lit scenes have been desaturated so that there's little
other than gray and brown in evidence in the palette. In decent lighting and in close-ups, detail is very good to excellent (see screenshot 1).
There are occasional minor instability issues, but the biggest bugaboo is the alarming digital meltdown like the one described above.
Though perhaps not as noticeable as the issues with video, The Squad's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix has transitory sync issues that may end up annoying audiophiles. The 2.0 mix included does not seem to suffer from them, at least not at the same rate. Both mixes (in the original Spanish) offer excellent fidelity, and the 5.1 mix has a nicely burnished low end that adds to anxiety levels.
The Squad has two fairly interesting ideas—first, a group of isolated, haggard soldiers dealing with increasing bouts of paranoia, and, second, a mysterious woman who may be, for want of a better word, a witch. Unfortunately the film doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with either of these potentially interesting scenarios, and instead squanders opportunities with a really slow pace and an ultimately unsatisfying resolution. Outweighing even the issues inherent in the film are some really odd errors on this release that really should have caught someone's attention somewhere along the way.
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