Friday, October 30, 2009

BD impressions: Wrong Turn

1:31 PM / BD Impressions / Comments10 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

Ah, the early 00s - a time when the horror genre hadn't yet gone down the route of remaking every single scary movie from the 70s but, by the same token, had only just shaken off the spectre of the nudge nudge, wink wink brand of self-awareness popularised by Scream and its sequels. I'm watched a number of horror movies of this vintage recently, and very few of them hold up particularly well. There's a certain aimlessness about them - they're competently made but generic, populated by bland, good-looking people, and do nothing that wasn't already achieved decades earlier for less money. Wrong Turn actually hold up rather better than some that I could name, although, let's be honest, if you want to watch a proper "nice middle class white people set upon by backwoods savages" movie, Deliverance or the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre is probably a better bet.

Image quality: My brother has upgraded to a new projector, so this was the last BD we watched on his previous model. I'm still trying to decide whether or not this was a fitting funeral, for the simple reason that this is one of the worst-looking discs we've ever watched. It's so bad it boggles the mind, and in fact I'm so lost for words that I'm just going to let the screen captures speak for themselves. I honestly can't understand how a film from 2003, released by a major studio, could possibly look this bad. 2/10

Wrong Turn
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 35.48 Mbit/sec

Wrong Turn Wrong Turn Wrong Turn Wrong Turn Wrong Turn Wrong Turn

 
10 Comments

1. Sunny said:

Oh, thats a pity. The movie itself is one of the most entertaining of his genre. A good BD-Release would be very nice, but the screens of the actual release shows very poor picture quality :(

(Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 at 3:18 PM)

2. FoxyMulder said:

So what is wrong with the image as i can't tell completely just looking at from the stills ?

I can see something doesn't seem right but i just don't know what it is as when i for example look at the second picture at first glance i thought film grain and then on closer inspection it looks like something else and i'm wondering if this looks very bad when in motion ?

Is the Icon release from Australia the same as this one ?

I like the film but bad reviews from people i trust have really put me off ordering this one.

(Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 at 5:55 PM)

3. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Foxy:

The image is abysmally soft, to the extent that I could name several commercially released DVDs that are vastly superior in terms of detail. There is a layer of dense grain or noise "on top" of the soft image, but I'm insure what it is or how it got there. Suffice it to say that the whole thing looks almost like it was shot out of focus... although the fact that the on-screen credits are similarly blurry puts the kibosh on that notion.

I've seen screenshots of the Icon release (Erik has a comparison on his site), and they look no better than the Fox version.

(Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 at 7:21 PM)

4. Kram Sacul said:

It is indeed inexplicable why a film from 2003, shot on 35mm, would look this... undefined. I'm guessing the transfer was done on very poor equipment.

(Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 10:39 AM)

5. Author Profile Page Michael said:

In terms of overall appearance, it reminds me a lot of Monsters, which had similar problems: undetailed, smeared image with a wall of fine grain/noise on top of it. Sadly I don't think it's a title that will be getting an in-depth restoration any time soon.

(Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 6:06 PM)

6. FoxyMulder said:

I take it then it's definately not an upconvert ?

Incidentally Suspiria is being shown on Film Four very late tonight at 12.50am. I wonder if it's being shown in HD for those that have the hardware to receive it and whether it will be uncut and a decent print.

(Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 9:38 PM)

7. David Mackenzie said:

Too much detail to be an upconvert. The entire thing looks soft in an optical way, not in a digital way.

The weirdest thing is a sort of distortion that's across the whole film, most noticeable during panning shots and the end credits. It's like the top 1/3rd of the screen is "taller" than the rest. The whole thing has weird optical distortion.

(Posted on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 4:40 AM)

8. redunbeck said:

The forest wide shot was the first capture I embiggened and my immediate thought - other than "I need to puke", anyway - was that this looks like a VHS tape. So soft, so noisy, so...godawful. But then again I think I've seen a few VHS tapes that weren't quite this atrocious. I'm honestly shocked if this isn't an upconvert. I'm having flashbacks to The Beast on blu-ray: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews46/the_beast_blu-ray.htm

(Posted on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 6:42 AM)

9. Kram Sacul said:

Another title which is ridiculously soft is The Girl Next Door. No signs of being HD anywhere.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=17128343&postcount=25

(Posted on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 1:18 PM)

10. DeeDub said:

From those caps, it actually looks like upscaled SD with a grain filter applied to try and give the illusion of HD!

(Posted on Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 2:42 AM)

 
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