Blu-Ray Horror Movies

A gripping saga highly recommended for teen to adult viewers – Midwest Book Review – Oregon, WI USA
Teens seeking suspense and many an adult viewer looking for something different will find the movie ELSEWHERE an avid show. Sarah and Jillian have been long-time best friends although very different. Sarah is shocked to find her friend has started meeting anonymous men over the internet in search of excitement – and when Jillian vanishes, she and her friend search for their missing friend and the reason why nobody in town seems to want her found. Deleted scenes, audio commentary with the film’s director and producer, and a featurette enhance a gripping saga highly recommended for teen to adult viewers.

“Elsewhere” is exactly where I wanted to be while watching this. – Robert P. Beveridge – Cleveland, OH
Elsewhere (Nathan Hope, 2009)

There will come a time, and hopefully it will be soon, when someone will make an intelligent mystery about Internet dating, with realistic, well-drawn characters, an original twist on what is already a very old subgenre, and an ending that you can’t see coming from a mile away. Elsewhere is not that film. Not by a country mile.

Elsewhere takes place in small-town Indiana, the kind of quaint little place you stop at on your way through the state for pie, coffee, and postcards, but never really think much about. Stranded there are best friends Sara (Twilight’s Anna Kendrick) and Jillian (Lost’s Tania Raymonde, best known these days for being Jeff Goldblum’s girlfriend; he’s 56 and she’s 21). Sara is the bookish, thoughtful type who just bears life; Jillian will do anything to get out, including putting nearly-naked pictures of herself on a social networking site (obviously modeled on Myspace) in order to meet someone who will take her away. All looks great when she starts talking about a secret admirer she calls “Mr. X”, until she disappears from a party one night. Sara, with the aid of her computer-geek friend Jasper (Senior Skip Day’s Chuck Carter), must figure out what happened to her, and whether she’s even still alive. (This may not be the case; it seems young ladies have a habit of going missing in this town.)

First off, the script doesn’t even bother throwing in a red herring; you’ll know who the bad guy is fifteen minutes into this movie (and at that point you don’t even know there is a bad guy unless you’ve read the jacket copy). Revealing character names for the win! (In fact, the name gives away a very important plot point…) But by the time you hit that, it doesn’t surprise you; Hope’s script takes a list of mystery clichés, combines it with a list of Internet clichés, and mixes the whole thing into a thin, unpalatable, smelly stew obviously meant as a cautionary tale about Internet dating. It ends up being an unintentionally hysterical parody of movies like Reefer Madness, but updated for the instant-gratification Internet generation. You’ll see every plot twist coming, not that it’s hard through such paper-thin characters. I think the only reason this movie has gotten any publicity whatsoever is the presence of one of the stars of Twilight. Trust me; that’s not nearly enough to save it from the obscurity it so richly deserves. Good for a laugh, but not much else. *

The transfer and sound are great. There are still some traces of foreign matter visible from the print used, but this is the nicest copy you’ll probably ever see on a home edition. I believe it is the same transfer used for the Special Edition in 2006.

The features are identical to the Special Edition release:
- 12 Days of Black Christmas featurette
- Midniht Q&A
- Interviews ( Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and Art Hindle)
- ‘Uncovered’ Sound scenes

My only complaint is the lack of subtitles or commentaries, and for that reason I only give 4 stars. Apparently space limitations were the problem on the Special Edition. That would not be a problem on blu ray. It seems the rights to the commentaries from the 2002 Collector’s Edition are owned by another company so those were not available, but it seems that new actor commentaries might have been obtained for this edition.

Sadly, Bob Clark was killed by a drunk driver in 2007. For fans wanting the director’s commentary, the collector’s edition is the only option and will become increasingly harder to obtain.

If you have the Special Edition and an upconvert dvd player you might give this one a miss, as there are no new features to speak of. If you have a blu ray player and don’t already own the special edition, the Blu-ray edition is the way to go. Of course, you can hold out for a “Definitive Edition”. There’s always next Christmas…

Great movie, LOUSY, AWFUL, transfer. – C. Betzhold – USA
Wow, is this bad.

This is one of my favorite movies and I hoped it would be a upgrade from the standard DVD that I have had for a number of years and is not very good. What a mistake. The grain is worse than my old DVD. I looks like it was filmed through a silk screen. To make matters ever worse, the audio is not synced. Impossible to watch. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!

This one never fails to entertain… – Mad Collector – Las Vegas, NV
There is a reason why Black Christmas has lasted so long. It predates Halloween and Friday the 13th by several years as it is an early inspiration for the later rise of “slasher” films. It uses innovative camera tricks and gives us the killer’s POV. And it takes the sacred holiday of Christmas and interjects it with real-life morality conflicts of its characters.

The transfer on this edition is decent, and is coupled with some great features. A 20-minute candid interview with Margot Kidder stands out. Also, a documentary featuring remembrances from the cast and crew is quite informative. Top it off with a new 5.1 mix, and you have a nice blu-ray bundle. Great to add to your collection!

Black Christmas – Ashi Toledano – USA
I saw the remake in the theatre and never got a chance to check out the original, so i ordered it from amazon on blu ray. Well, it was pretty good. The storyline was kind of slow and not very exciting, the acting was really bad at times and the film wasn’t restored as good as I could have expected after seeing the restoration jobs on films like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I don’t like how you never really discover much about the killer, it doesn’t make it scarier, just more boring. This film however, had some real gem moments. Sme of the killings and some scenes are pretty groundbreaking. There is suspense and all in all it’s a cult classic. I just think it’s slightly overrated. It is a solid film though, and every horror fan needs to see this to check out how this paved the directional way of later films in the genre.