Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

The Zero Boys Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 27, 2016

Some enterprising sign maker could make a small fortune manufacturing warnings to keep teens away from cabins in the woods. Evidently the often amorously inclined young ‘uns who populate typical slasher films from the 1970s and 1980s have never been to a movie themselves, or else they would know wandering through the wilderness and (especially) camping out at an apparently abandoned domicile in said wilderness tends not to end well for most if not all of the expedition. Perhaps surprisingly, then, The Zero Boys, while ostensibly being solidly in The Cabin in the Woods tradition in several key ways, dispenses with or at least delays some genre tropes, refusing to “evict” characters one by one (again, for the most part), and instead concentrating on building a suspenseful tone. That approach is certainly commendable, but writer-producer-director Nico Mastorakis (Island of Death) perhaps tries to juggle a few too many tonal balls (so to speak) to keep The Zero Boys’ momentum moving consistently forward. Instead the film works in fits and starts, lurching forward appealingly but then stalling, only to regain a bit of composure for a couple of gruesome set pieces.

In a kind of goofy prologue of sorts, the film begins not in the woods, but in the Wild West—or at least an abandoned movie studio backlot which looks like it could have been used for any number of circa 1950s westerns, either on the big screen or television. There are a number of young combatants tooling around the place, and they seem to be armed. When shots are in fact fired, it turns out we’re witnessing a paintball skirmish between two opposing teams. The ultimate victors are the self dubbed Zero Boys, and the leader of that team is Steve (Daniel Hirsch, who previously starred in Mastorakis’ Sky High). Steve rubs salt in the wound of the losing team’s leader (who is conveniently dressed in a Nazi officer’s uniform, thereby clearly defining him as the bad guy), extracting not just payment but the participation of the guy’s girlfriend, Jamie (Kelli Maroney), in The Zero Boys’ planned victory party. Jamie is not all that thrilled that she’s been offered up as a “prize”, but after socking her (now former) boyfriend in the chops pretty viciously, she decides to accompany The Zero Boys for reasons which are not very well motivated (beyond the fact that if she didn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a film).

Two other couples accompany the newly minted duo of Steve and Jamie on the victory celebration, one which careens through an appealing swath of Los Angeles locations before heading out into some undescribed wilderness. It doesn’t take long for spooky occurrences to start accruing, but in a surprisingly restrained turn of events, Mastorakis doesn’t go all Grand Guignol (at least, not right off the bat), slowly but steadily building an incipient ambience of menace instead of going for the gusto, blood and guts wise. In fact, The Zero Boys is a relatively (emphasis on relatively) “bloodless” film if one accepts it as a more or less entry in the slasher genre.

One significant way this film departs from the slasher idiom is that these are not a bunch of defenseless kids running away from (which of course means running directly toward) danger. As already shown in the film’s prologue, the boys have a facility with weapons, and in one of The Zero Boys’ patently absurd conceits, they’ve ended up in the woods with real life automatic rifles (like, the kind that spew actual bullets instead of paint balls). That gives them a fighting chance at least, something that Mastorakis exploits, albeit a bit clumsily at times, in several showdowns with assailants who for the most part are only dimly seen.

Another kind of interesting departure from standard slasher tropes is the fact that the kids don’t instantly pair off for planned sexual adventures, only to meet their fates in flagrante delicto. There are certainly amorous escapades in The Zero Boys, but it’s notable that the only “real” sex scene gets interrupted when the girl notices someone spying on them from a hole in the ceiling of the room where she and boyfriend have gone to. In other ways, though, Mastorakis hews pretty solidly to established genre tropes, having the teens panic when the lights go out and the phone goes dead. Mastorakis also employs the tried and true “killer’s POV” gambit on a couple of occasions, letting the audience know there is indeed something evil who is waiting and watching, about to go bump (at least) in the night.

There’s also a kind of disturbing torture aspect that plays out as a sideline to the main “track and kill” scenario, and in fact it’s probably here that The Zero Boys will work up the most angst in typical viewers. The fact that it actually takes the film a good long while (at least by traditional slasher standards) to actually off a major character means that this film spends more time than usual on set up and less time on dispatching the major players, something that may or may not appeal to genre enthusiasts. The film finally tips over into pretty standard combatant fare in its final act, though enquiring minds may still end up wondering who the villains are and what exactly their motivations may have been (aside from a general love for slicing and dicing).

While Mastorakis’ various skills are certainly better developed here than in Island of Death, the film is still pretty clunky at times, especially with regard to some of the performances. There’s a drinking game to be developed where a sip must be taken in the longish pauses between a dialogue set up and what turns out to be a panicked response, something that recurs several times throughout the film and which adds to the stop and start quality of this enterprise. Two climactic deaths toward the end of the film are also haphazardly staged, without the requisite build up that would add tension. At least Mastorakis has the good sense to let an apparently dead bad guy suddenly spring back to life, if only for a moment, in order to threaten one of the damsels in distress.

The Zero Boys Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Zero Boys is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The insert booklet included with this release includes the following information on the transfer:

A 35mm interpositive element was scanned in 4K resolution on a 4K Spirit Datacine and was graded on the Baselight grading system. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris and light scratches were removed through a combination of automated and manual restoration tools.

(Kudos to Arrow for being, along with Criterion, one of the few niche labels which has no problems clearly identifying the provenance of its transfers. We reviewers sometimes have to guess about things, and it's always great to have verified information.) There are some experts in the transfer business who have insisted to me that 4K scans really ought to be "saved" for sourcing from the original camera negative, and those folks may point to a fairly wide discrepancy in image quality here as one example why. A lot of this transfer looks absolutely great, with nicely variegated color, good contrast and rather surprising shadow detail, at least given the film's obvious lo-fi filming techniques. Grain is healthy throughout the presentation, but there are pretty large differences of resolution efficiency throughout, as can be clearly seen by simply contrasting the screenshots included in this review. I've attempted to give some "gradations" of anomalies present in screenshots 9 through 15 especially, but I highly recommend those interested to fully parse all of the screenshots included with this review to get a good overview of the wide disparity in detail levels, grain management and compression. Most of the issues are understandably limited to the darkest sequences, and the more brightly lit moments offer excellent levels of detail, a more "tame" presentation of grain and an overall very pleasing viewing experience. My score reflects the inconsistency of the presentation more than anything, and longtime fans of the film may well feel this deserves a higher score.

The Zero Boys Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Zero Boys features an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 track. They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows, and the same could certainly be said for show business, as evidenced by the fact that scoring duties on The Zero Boys are credited to the very odd couple of Hans Zimmer and Stanley Myers. Most younger fans will recognize Zimmer's name for his by now iconic contributions to films as varied as The Lion King and 12 Years a Slave. Stanley Myers' name might be a bit less familiar, but his contributions to film music are no less impressive, spanning over 30 years. Though he didn't actually score the film itself, Myers' beautiful "Cavatina" was used as source music in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. This kind of weird mash up provides an at times anachronistic listening experience, with Zimmer's synth heavy action adventure cues seeming a bit odd in a quasi-slasher film. That said, the uncompressed track provides ample support for the film's score, effects, dialogue and all important screaming. Fidelity is fine throughout and there are no problems with distortion or damage.

The Zero Boys Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Nico Mastorakis on. . .Nico Mastorakis (1080p 27:48) is a patently odd piece which finds Mastorakis (as a character) interviewing himself. While there's some decent information here, the presentation is needlessly silly and as with at least some other Mastorakis pieces, it might have been aided by a better writer.


• Zero Girl (1080i; 8:20) is a good interview with Kelli Maroney from 2015.


• Music Videos

  Main Theme (480p; 2:09)

  The Spelling of S.U.S.P.E.N.S.E. (480p; 1:09)

• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 3:09)


• Stills Gallery (1080p; 1:24)


• Audio Commentary features Kelli Maroney hosted by Chris Alexander from Fangoria.

The Zero Boys Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Zero Boys is just patently goofy at times, and it suffers from the typical Mastorakis lo-fi proclivities, but it's also kind of unusual in a number of interesting ways, especially in its refusal to off its characters one by one as soon as the second act starts. The film is strong on mood if sometimes short on production finesse. There's a rather wide array of "looks" this video presentation offers, but audio is consistent and the supplemental package enjoyable. It's hard to outright recommend a film like The Zero Boys, but for a certain kind of genre enthusiast it will fit the bill quite nicely, and those folks should appreciate Arrow's typical attention to detail in packaging and bonus material.