The Thompsons Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

The Thompsons Blu-ray Movie Review

An American Family in (and Near) London

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 30, 2012

Following a template created by Kathryn Bigelow in Near Dark (1987), the writing and directing team known as "The Butcher Brothers" have stripped the vampire legend of its mystical and religious trappings so that they can use it for something else. Bigelow made a contemporary western, in which an outlaw band roams the countryside, raiding and killing at will, until a righteous father and son make a stand and dispense frontier justice. The future Oscar winner was so determined not to have her cult classic typecast as a vampire film that the term "vampire" is never used. The Butcher Brothers, which is the working name for Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, also avoid the word "vampire", but the characters' fangs and red contact lenses tend to give the game away. Still, the Brothers have transformed vampirism into a genetic disorder that drives its victims to feed on blood, while amplifying their strength, speed and senses through standard biological pathways. All the rest—sunlight, coffins, crosses, holy water, garlic, wooden stakes, bat wings—have been dropped.

The Thompsons is a sequel to the 2006 film The Hamiltons, which recounted the tale of four siblings coping with the death of their parents. In the best gothic tradition, they gradually uncover the family secret, which is that they're all "different". By the end, all four, plus a younger fifth sibling they didn't know existed, have embarked on a nomadic existence for their own protection. They've also assumed a new identity as the Thompsons. Their goal is to live under the radar, but that turns out to be impossible.

Especially in the first half, which is the best part, The Thompsons is told in a fractured chronology knit together by the voiceover narration of the next-to-youngest brother, Francis (co-screenwriter Cory Knauf). We find him buried alive in a wooden box somewhere in England, but the explanation of how he got there proceeds by fits and starts.

The family of five siblings left America after a chance encounter led to a blood bath and they became the object of a criminal manhunt. The youngest Thompson, Lenny (Ryan Hartwig, replacing Nicholas Fanella from The Hamiltons), was severely injured. In the world conjured by the Butcher Brothers, the strange disorder afflicting the Thompson family leaves them as vulnerable to injury or death as any other person. The eldest, David (Samuel Child), was told by their late parents that, in a dire emergency, they could seek help in a small town outside London called Ludlow. There they should ask for someone named "Manderson".

While David tends to Lenny in London, Francis ventures out to Ludlow on a scouting mission. The remaining two Thompsons, fraternal twins Wendell and Darlene (Joseph McKelheer and MacKenzie Firgens), wander off to Paris. The twins are irrepressible party animals who share everything, including sex partners and meals—yes, it's kind of creepy—and as the film unfolds, it becomes clear that they can't be trusted with anything serious. Francis is the reliable one. His wanderings bring him to a country inn in Ludlow where the regulars stare at him like those in An American Werewolf in London, one of the Butcher Brothers' acknowledged inspirations. But the landlady (Selina Giles) is a friendly sort, who promises to ask around about the name Manderson, and her pretty daughter, Riley (Elizabeth Henstridge), is more than friendly to this lean and handsome Yank with trouble in his demeanor.

A stranger should always be wary of getting too friendly with a local bar maid.

Without getting into spoiler territory, one can reveal that Francis' mission to Ludlow brings the Thompsons face to face with an older, better established family of creatures suffering from the same blood condition. But this family, the Stuarts, has embraced their fate, glorified it and learned to manage it, even enjoy it. Indeed, the junior members, Ian and Cole (Tom Holloway and Sean Browne), are vicious sociopaths of the first order (and their parents seem very proud indeed).

Because of the news reports from America, the Stuarts have expected the Thompsons' arrival, and at first they appear to be all smiles and welcomes. Their goal, so they say, is to join the two families. Their real purpose is something else, which bring us back to that coffin in which we first find Francis buried. Meanwhile, a brute named Cyrus (Sean Cronin) is dispatched to London to deal with David and Lenny.

The Thompsons loses some of its momentum in the latter half; the ending drags on for far too long. But the Butcher Brothers manage to sustain the energy of their jigsaw puzzle opening for a impressively decent interval. Like all properly structured horror films, The Thompsons has a viciously gory opening designed to let an audience know what kind of ride they're in for. It's significant, though, that these opening cruelties aren't the result of vampires feeding. They're more like something out of the sadistic games in the Saw franchise or a zombie biker movie. Or even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The Thompsons Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Thompsons was shot digitally with the Red system; the cinematography credit is shared between two young cinematographers, David Rom, who shot the initial U.S. sequences, and Matthew Cooke, who took over in the U.K., when Rom became unavailable. The image on ARC Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is generally consistent with Blu-rays from other Red-originated projects, in that it's sharp and detailed, has good depth of field and deep blacks, and reflects the generally bland color palette that is typical of Red productions except where someone has made a conscious choice to intensify and saturate colors in post-production. Obviously, no such choice was made here, where the gentle earth tones of the English countryside were intentionally a major element of the production design.

The single greatest flaw in the image is aliasing. This only occurs in a handful of shots, but it's substantial and noticeable when it appears, always on a horizontal surface reflecting light back to the camera. Whether this is an artifact from the initial capture, introduced at the digital intermediate stage or in connection with Blu-ray mastering is impossible to say, but it's surprising to see this kind of issue at this stage in the development of digital technology.

The Thompsons Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Despite being nominally a horror film, The Thompsons has a fairly restrained soundtrack, presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. Though filled with gore effects, the film is largely dialogue-driven, and there's little of the elaborate sound-mixing that, say, Robert Rodriguez might bring to the party. The occasional voice or sound effect is placed off-screen in the surrounds, and the guttural, bestial roars of the vampires in their rampage mode are rendered with depth and intensity. The serviceable score is credited to Kevin Kerrigan, who is part of the team that worked on Michael Mann's Collateral. More memorable are some of the atmospheric rock tunes, especially those by a band called The Break Mission.

The Thompsons Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Relocating the Family (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:00): The Butcher Brothers, Knauf and the rest of the cast playing Thompson family members discuss the appeal and also the challenges of setting the story in England and shooting the film there. They are joined by producers Rob Weston and Travis Stevens. The ever-changing weather is a big topic, as is the antiquity of the surroundings, a source of constant amazement to these Los Angeles natives.



• Scribed in Blood (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:02): Some of the same interviewees discuss the decision to make a sequel, the development of the script and the difference between this film and other contemporary works in the vampire "genre".



• Humans to Monsters (1080p; 1.78:1; 13:19): This featurette is divided into two parts. The first focuses on makeup and prosthetics, the second on fight choreography.



• Awakening the Project (1080p; 1.78:1; 19:08): Of the six featurettes, this is the closest to a traditional "making of". It traces the history of the project, discusses casting and production and provides a general overview of the film.



• Families (1080p; 1.78:1; 17:00): As noted several times in the extras, the actors who play the Thompsons have made several films with the Butcher Brothers, whereas the actors playing the rival Stuart family are new. This featurette examines the two groups, both inside and outside the story.



• The Ringlestone Inn (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:28): A short feature on the Ringlestone Inn, the real location used in the film, including interviews with Kevin de Young and Christina Warren, the landlord and landlady. They don't bat an eye when they tell you about the ghosts inhabiting the place.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 1:38): "We live with a disease . . . "



• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Outpost: Black Sun, Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes, Greystone Park and Gangsters, Guns and Zombies. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Thompsons Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Vampire films have been a cinematic staple since Murnau's 1922 classic Nosferatu and certainly since Tod Browning's immortal Dracula with Bela Lugosi nine years later. While we seem to be in a period where vampire films are appearing in exceptional numbers, that is merely testimony to the genre's enduring vitality. During the heyday of the studio system, westerns were produced with equally numbing regularity, most of them forgettable, but when audience interest disappeared, so too did the western (except for the occasional nostalgia act). The same will happen with vampire films. For now, though, it's worth paying attention when someone tries to make something of the genre besides another tale of teenage angst. The Thompsons offers flashes of genuine originality, and the film and the disc are recommended for those interested in a change.