The image is well defined and quite sharp. The disc contains a version of the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. This film lives off its subtext.Īrtisan Entertainment have given "Strangeland" a nice treatment for this DVD release. Don’t look for the visceral horror in this film or you will be disappointed. It is a macabre modern tale of how volatile our society has become through the anonymity of modern communications. The fact that we are literally helpless when it comes to crimes committed through the anonymity of the Internet. The true horror in this film is our world. The horror in this film does not come from the torture inflicted on its victims. Interestingly however, I constantly found myself thinking how many people in the real world are actually subjected to this kind of terror, which in turn made me think about the film a little more.įrom the abuse of the Internet to hunt innocent victims, all the way to the sadomasochistic fetishes, self mutilation and goth-rock punk clubs, this film is much more contemporary than any other horror film I have seen in a long time. Unfortunately the plot contains gaping holes and the characters remain so distant throughout the film that the viewer doesn’t really care much about them. Using plenty of shadows and murky interiors to heighten the sense of danger and inhumanity in Captain Howdy, the film also uses a remarkable camerawork with intense framings that slowly but gradually build tension until the lens finally captures what we have been waiting for all this time.
What impressed me the most was the film’s cinematography. The film is by no means perfect, but for Snider’s writing and acting debut it is a film that he can certainly be proud of. Maybe living in Southern California makes me a little more sensitive to the disturbing subtext of the film than people who live in safer areas of the country, but I found "Strangeland" a truly bizarre and disquieting experience.Ĭompletely unlike what I had expected, and completely unlike the mindless teeny horror flicks we have seen lately, "Strangeland" has a mature note that immediately hit a string with me. While his character Captain Howdy is in fact a sick masochistic antagonist, the fright factor of the film has to be attributed more to the matters at hand and the authenticity of the picture than the actual villain himself. After a failed police raid on his house as a result of the online conversation, Howdy knows about the detective’s true identity and starts playing with the authorities – until one night Cage takes matters in his own hands and decides to turn the tables.ĭee Snider tried to create a new ultra-nasty bad guy that is memorable and obviously lends itself to a franchise. Cage spends some time online with a fake handle and before long he grabs Captain Howdy’s attention.
When the girls don’t return home their parents, lead by Genevieve’s father, detective Mike Cage, start looking for clues and eventually they learn about the Internet chat rooms their daughters were surfing. Unaware of the fact that they have just fallen victim to a cyber predator, Genevieve and Tiana decide to go and meet the seemingly cunning person they just met in the chat room. Scouting Internet chat rooms for prey, Captain Howdy (Dee Snider) is using the web’s anonymity to invite two teenagers to a party at his house.
The film is not a horror film in the traditional print and is not really viscerally scary, but it creates an intensely disturbing atmosphere that I found remarkable. Unsettling is the operative word here however. Not since David Fincher’s "Seven" have I seen a more unsettling motion picture. The result was fans buying a disc for the exclusive Pantera song thereon, only to discover the same cyber-tinged nu-metal track they’d skipped over on their last soundtrack purchase.If someone asked me to describe "Strangeland" in three words, they would have to be sick, dark and twisted! Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Dee Snider’s Hollywood debut quite a bit. Whether a film was all about gun ballet, erotic vampirism, or teen boner hilarity, these acts found a way to shoehorn a track onto its OST. And yet these CDs sold by the tens of thousands, and introduced countless fans to bands they may never have heard otherwise.įor the people buying these albums (this author among them), it became increasingly clear that a handful of bands had obviously made themselves available to the soundtrack circuit. For the movies, this was usually laughable - you’d watch a scene where a typical high-school horse girl was getting ready for prom, and there’d be a Slipknot song behind it. Between approximately 19, action and horror movie soundtracks were basically modern rock samplers, showing off the best in rap-metal, industrial, and pop-punk. We wonder if our younger readers fully understand what a big deal hard rock and metal soundtracks used to be.
0 kommentar(er)
