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  Directed by
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  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.85:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
    English - Hearing Impaired
  Extras

    Soul Survivors (Rental)

    20th Century Fox/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 82 mins . M15+ . PAL

      Feature
    Contract

    In order to save you from yet another boring theory on why America is so fascinated with spooky movies, we’ll accept something as a given right from the get-go. Soul Survivors is yet another in a long, long line of teen flicks with an eye on the short-attention-span popcorn crowd. Get ‘em in, creep ‘em out, send ‘em home. Easy. Trouble is, even the most undemanding and intellectually challenged teen audience member can spot a turkey a mile away. No, not the roast-it-for-dinner kind of turkey (which, to be fair, can be spotted by most people a mile away thanks to an unfortunately silly head and a seriously annoying range of sound effects). We’re talking about the cinematic turkey, which is easily spotted from at least a mile away by the sound of rustling test-audience cards, as well as a curious snip-snip-snip sound. No, folks, that’s not Freddy Kruger you hear. That’s the editor, under orders from the studio to get a PG-13 rating at any cost; after all, who cares about silly things like the plot anyway, right?

    A partial remake of (in other words, a “homage” to) a little-known Z-grade gobbler called Soultaker, Soul Survivors kicks off clumsily right from the opening credits, where bangin’ techno music inexplicably pumps out for the opening logos before being replaced by the standard stuff of spooky-horror-thriller movies, all sad strings and minor keys. We’re introduced to a bunch of teenage university students, though we’re not quite sure who they are, what they’re doing or why we are supposed to like them. We just walk into their lives in progress: the quiet, fragile Cassie (well played by Melissa Sagemiller in a role that resembles Andie McPhee from Dawson’s Creek, troubled mind and all), her passionately romantic boyfriend Sean (Casey Affleck), rebellious party girl Annabel (played by Eliza Dushku as though she were still on the set of Buffy - a supporting role, despite her front-and-centre prominence in Fox’s cover design) and her boyfriend, the dark ‘n’ brooding Matt (Wes Bentley, best known for American Beauty). The four go partying at a creepy movie-goth nightclub, have a four-way romantic tiff and then, on their way home, tragedy happens. From that point on things get spookier and spookier.

    And things also get more and more incoherent as the film drags on. And it drags - with a 76 minute running time excluding the end credits, this should fly past. But writer-director Stephen Carpenter (creator of The Dorm That Dripped Blood, which has got to count for something just for the title alone) has nothing to say here; his story is simple, and hinges on one key revelation at the end of the film (which most will guess much earlier anyway). This is the kind of material that makes for an entertaining 41-minute Buffy episode, not a feature film twice that length. The padding is painfully obvious, and even extends to a completely gratuitous scene where the two female stars get covered in paint and take a shower together to wash it off; that long scene’s only plot point, a burst of imagined blood from the shower drain that gives Cassie another chance to freak out, is entirely superfluous to the story. But you can bet the test audience loved it, ‘cos it stayed in.

    But then, so much here is pointless. And you can’t help but marvel at that - what you’re seeing, after all, is a film that was mercilessly cut down on the editing bench, with all the sex, language and gore removed to appease the MPAA and gain access to a pre-pubescent audience. Even the ending was re-shot, neutering the film’s punchline in the process and turning the entire thing into either an advert for the Christian church or a bizarre tribute to The Wizard of Oz (or quite possibly both). The uncut version is available on DVD in the US, and may eventually surface here (though it seems unlikely). But the cuts here are savage and blatantly obvious (particularly in the nightclub and hospital scenes), destroying the coherence of much of the film and making a mess of anything approaching character development. Nothing makes any sense, which appears to be the way it’s meant to be anyway - but if we only gave a toss about any of the characters, we might have felt like coming along for the ride regardless. Instead, the viewer is left to puzzle over what the hell’s going on. “I don’t understand,” says a plaintive Cassie to an unexplained priest in the middle of the film. “Well,” replies the priest with an apologetic smile, “I don’t either.” Presumably this character was added after audience test screenings.

    Technically, there are some positives; the cinematography is nicely moody and generally well done, and the editing - tellingly credited to two people - is quite often the most exciting thing happening on screen, particularly during the climactic “montage” sequence. But ultimately, it all comes across like a film school thesis on the last two decades of suspense and horror movies, a great big stylised moving sign that says “HELLO, MY NAME IS STEPHEN CARPENTER, AND THESE ARE MY INFLUENCES.”

      Video
    Contract

    This 16:9 enhanced transfer of Soul Survivors is presented at its theatrical 1.85:1 ratio, the matte accurately reflecting what was (very briefly) seen in (American) cinemas. And the transfer is lovely - detailed, crisp without ever looking over-sharp and richly saturated with accurate colour, this is a surprisingly high-end transfer for what was, essentially, a low-budget independent film. Shadow detail and black level is spot-on, a crucial thing for this film, where almost everything takes place at night or in dark rooms. Only a couple of minor nicks on the negative can be found by those who are so bored by the film that they start counting them (and there may be more than the usual contingent in that department here!) and there’s nothing problematic about the video compression at all, typical of current Fox titles. While a single-layered disc is used, the short running time allows a gargantuan encoding bitrate, and the disc’s authors have used the space well.

      Audio
    Contract

    Two audio tracks are provided - the same Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Surround 2.0 tracks that were used on the film’s theatrical prints. The 5.1 mix is typically aggressive for this type of film, with extensive use of the split surrounds and almost an almost constant hammering from the LFE channel; this is one of those films where a pin drops and the subwoofer responds with a “woomp”. The re-recording mixers have had fun with this one, though the main front channels are not as good as they could be; the staging across the front is not good (the centre channel often sounds like it’s in a completely different environment to the left and right) and the dialogue is lacking in definition and very often unintelligible (not helped by some of the actors mumbling incoherently). If you’re only after something to show off how many speakers you’ve got, though, then this is one to play at parties.

    The matrixed surround track is fine for the format, but a bit superfluous given that the 5.1 version downmixes so well to stereo, like all modern 5.1 mixes should.

      Extras
    Contract

    As with all Fox’s rental discs, there are no extras here. The US disc (released by Artisan, who made the film) is loaded with extras and contains the more explicit version of the film, which is very slightly longer. But it’s unlikely we’ll see an extras-stacked DVD here in Australia for this film (the longer cut has not been classified by the OFLC), and the fact that the disc menus are properly-designed and music-backed (rather than the usual generic Fox rental menus) implies that this is the disc you’ll eventually be buying. We’ll let you know either way when the time comes.

      Overall  
    Contract

    A Christmas turkey that’s full of stuffing and covered in flashy trimmings, but short on meat and lacking a backbone, Soul Survivors is a misfire that richly deserves our indulgent over-use of big ugly bird analogies. It’s worth a rental if you’re a fan of one or more of the stars and want to see them flail around in something meaningless; rarely are so many capable actors so recklessly thrown in at the deep end and left to drown.

    Fox’s rental-only DVD is flawless visually and a reasonable speaker-challenging workout aurally, but contains the heavily cut version of the film (a shame) and is, as a rental, totally devoid of extra material (no great loss).


  • LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=2197
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      And I quote...
    "Hello, my name is Stephen Carpenter, and these are my influences."
    - Anthony Horan
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Sony DVP-NS300
    • TV:
          Panasonic - The One
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-DB870
    • Speakers:
          Klipsch Tangent 500
    • Centre Speaker:
          Panasonic
    • Surrounds:
          Jamo
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          Monster s-video
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