How do you atone for the unforgivable? It’s a question without a satisfactory answer—no remorse or good deed can undo the weight of the pain caused—and it almost always lacks room for compromise. In most cases, all you can do is hope there is some way of redeeming your soul, a dream that must seem as absurd as figuring out a way to travel back in time and right your wrongs. You might as well stare helplessly at the night sky, wishing another planet to form where you can escape and try to move past your regrets.

That latter scenario isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility for protagonist Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) in Mike Cahill’s Another Earth. Rhoda is a young woman who destroyed her life almost exactly at the same time a new planet resembling our own was discovered. This planet, named Earth 2, appears to strongly mirror our own, lingering in humanity’s eyeline up in the stars—a permanently haunting temptation. For Rhoda, it’s also a lifeline. She enters what might be the most ambitious, meaningful essay contest ever devised. If she wins, she will be granted a ticket to travel to this planet, escaping this world and its agonising reminders of a mistake she can never forgive.

The future MIT student threw all her potential away in one reckless night of drinking when, in her drunken stupor, she drove into another car. Of the occupants of the other vehicle, the father, Yale professor John Burroughs (William Mapother), is left in a coma, whilst his wife and young son are killed. Rhoda is sentenced to four years in prison—a similar timeframe to the number of years John’s son lived on this Earth. The pain of Rhoda’s guilt is always reverberating within her. Marling wears her character’s self-loathing so openly that it’s impossible not to sympathise with Rhoda, who is sapped of contentment from that moment onwards. Mapother, meanwhile, is just as adept at portraying a person fractured by grief, where anger, dejection, and hope undercut one another to present a full portrait of his character’s torment.

After Rhoda completes her prison sentence and moves back into her childhood home with her parents and brother, she finds herself still picking up the pieces of her shattered life. Not that she wants it to be whole again. Her misery is a self-imposed state, a penance for her sins that she knows will never be enough. Upon seeing John leave a toy near the site of the crash, she feels compelled to visit his home and tell him that she is responsible for destroying his life.

Unable to find the words when face-to-face with the victim of a regret that has defined both their lives, Rhoda pretends to be a cleaning lady, forming a working relationship with John that gradually deepens. Another Earth is about forging a new reality, even when that journey out of misery seems impossible. As a drama, it’s remarkably well-written—by Cahill and Marling—as each of Rhoda’s interactions with John further twists the knife into the tangled web of regret consuming her. Washing one of John’s most coveted items of clothing, likely worn by his wife or child, reminds her of her actions. Helping him to give up his aimless routine of drinking alone is just as punishing, since he is unaware that she triggered this torment. Their dynamic is marked by devastation at every turn, but it’s deeply human all the same.

At the same time as new possibilities emerge for both of them in one another’s company, humanity as a whole is forced to grapple with the seemingly boundless possibilities of a new reality. Is this new planet an exact mirror of ours? Will it try to subjugate us? Should it be conquered? Is our place in the universe meaningful because of our new neighbours, or meaningless because we’ve lost that precious mantle of being the only life forms in the cosmos (that we know of)? Does this revelation shatter or strengthen our trust in religion or science? Another Earth is too committed to Rhoda and her shattered ego to ponder these questions for long.

This is a thematically ambitious work, pairing the discovery of a new planet with the equally invigorating, beautiful, and haunting discovery that life can begin again after tragedy. To someone grieving the loss of people who gave their existence meaning, both possibilities seem equally foolish. This is a science fiction film that superficially reaches out to the stars for answers, all whilst knowing that the truest ones existed within us all along. Another Earth cleverly uses its genre premise to toy with our attempts to confront grief. The film’s ambition carries over to its minuscule budget; produced for just $100,000, it easily recouped its costs with a box-office intake of $1.9M.

Similarly to Gareth Edwards’s feature debut, Monsters (2010), Cahill’s debut film is a meditative contemplation on our beautiful, fractured attempts to grow with and trust one another, framed through a blossoming relationship between two weary souls against a sci-fi backdrop. Thematically, Another Earth is more ambitious than Edwards’s debut, and as a result, it’s more moving in its best moments. But it’s also more narratively flawed, with one-note side characters and eye-roll-inducing exposition. Almost every mention of Earth 2 might as well feature the word ‘EXPOSITION’ flashing on the screen in bright lights. Rhoda’s life is so bare that there is no possible way to sneak in these expository sections more nimbly, so instead, minor characters on media stations do the heavy lifting. Starry-eyed wonder abounds in Another Earth, but here it’s replaced by surface-level professionalism. Philosophising about this new planet could have proved fascinating, but the film never finds a way to expand on its premise beyond its exploration of grief.

As for obnoxious side characters, Rhoda’s brother, Jeff (Robin Lord Taylor), is impressively irritating, leaning so far in this direction that you almost wish Rhoda had ruined her life by crashing into him instead. Jeff, like Rhoda’s parents, is barely present in the film, existing only superficially. As for Purdeep (Kumar Pallana), the less said of him, the better. A co-worker of Rhoda (who is now cleaning at her old high school—a fitting punishment for a girl who seemed destined to transcend her humble beginnings), he is a variation of the ‘Magical Negro’ stereotype.

Recognising something special in Rhoda and appearing blessed with a unique ability to understand the inner workings of the universe, Purdeep’s faux-spiritual presence means he’s never granted true personhood, whilst his tortured existence might as well only exist for Rhoda’s benefit. I won’t spoil the plot developments for his character, but they are insultingly transparent and heavy-handed. For a film that simultaneously looks towards the stars and deep within our hearts for its emotional resonance, it’s disappointing that Another Earth falls back on ridiculous, old-fashioned racial tropes to further its plot.

USA | 2011 | 92 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Mike Cahill.
writers: Mike Cahill & Brit Marling.
starring: Brit Marling, William Mapother, Jordan Baker, Robin Lord Taylor, Flint Beverage, Kumar Pallana, Diane Ciesla & Rupert Reid.

The post ANOTHER EARTH (2011) appeared first on Frame Rated.

Romolo Guerrieri’s The Double / La controfigura (also known as Love Inferno) is an interesting yet problematic movie, limiting its appeal to aficionados of Italian pulp cinema. Therefore, it seems fitting that Radiance are releasing this Blu-ray premiere as a boutique limited edition boasting an excellent 4K restoration, scanned from the original camera negative of the Italian theatrical release. The accompanying bonus material may be modest, but the new audio commentary from the ever-reliable Tim Lucas is top-tier and, for me, the key selling point.

The Double will be a huge disappointment to those expecting anything like Guerrieri’s previous thriller, The Sweet Body of Deborah / Il dolce corpo di Deborah (1968). Whereas that proto-giallo was efficient, elegant, and plot‑driven with a functional editing style, this indulgently experimental offering is anything but—though Jean Sorel is back as the male lead.

Within the first few minutes, we’re shown a bewildering torrent of images that comprise fragments of every key element to follow, reminiscent of the pre-show episode teasers for television series. After driving his sleek black Citroën DS through the streets of Rome, a man we will soon know as Giovanni (Jean Sorel) pulls into an underground car park where a sinister man in black awaits. We later learn that man is Bergamo (Antonio Pierfederici), a physics professor who shoots Giovanni repeatedly. Between each gunshot, we see incongruous images of other people for whom we have no reference point: a fierce glance from an attractive, mature woman; the alluring smile of a younger blonde; a shirtless man casting nets on a sunny beach; and his dead eyes as he lies on a parquet floor. It’s enough to evoke Giovanni’s own confusion and signal that we are seeing people and places from his past as his mind reels from the shock realisation of his own mortality.

It would be nice if, after establishing that the story is told entirely in flashback, the style settled down. It doesn’t, though we’re granted time to review and reconsider during several long sequences where nothing much happens. It seems that, in Giovanni’s mind at least, the series of events that led him to his demise began with his honeymoon in Morocco…

From the fractured and non-linear narrative, we glean that he leads a privileged life with a trust fund that allows him to take sporadic architectural commissions. He appears to have a brattish, immature attitude to life, which explains why he’s married Lucia (Ewa Aulin), a woman at least a decade his junior. Yet, there’s no doubt he’s flirting with her mother, Nora (Lucia Bosé), who must be ten years his senior. No, this isn’t going to be one of those commedia sexy all’italiana, but the ménage à trois dynamic is set up early and will be echoed in various social situations between an array of characters. There always seems to be an individual facing some doubt or dilemma concerning two other similar, yet subtly different, people. Both Lucia and Nora flirt with Eddie (Sergio Doria), a Vietnam veteran they meet on the beach, whom Giovanni comes to resent because he embodies everything Giovanni pretends to be…

The original Italian title is La controfigura, which has a range of subtly different interpretations. Normally meaning a stand-in or stunt double, it’s sometimes used to describe a very close family resemblance or doppelgänger, but can also imply an inferior imitation or counterfeit. The whole film deals with falsity and how misleading appearances can be. Not that the plot rests upon any straightforward mistaken identity—not that there’s much of a plot at all.

The finished film feels like something rescued from a production catastrophe. On first viewing, I guessed that some of the stock had been cooked in the Moroccan heat, necessitating a complete rehash of the script to rescue and rework the surviving footage. That would explain the incongruous scenes of murder that we eventually have to accept as the insubstantial fantasies of our troubled protagonist. However, as there don’t seem to have been any extenuating production problems, we must assume this is exactly what Guerrieri intended. Perhaps we can be kind in affording him some degree of kudos for brave experimentation, despite the decidedly uneven result.

Cutting for atmosphere and psychological tension rather than narrative beats obfuscates the story so much that we can never really be sure what occurs and what is figmental. What plot there is falls nicely into place with the final few lines of dialogue, and that final reveal is a clever little twist, but it doesn’t warrant the stylistic indulgences that seem to be there to detract from the dire lack of narrative integrity. But then again, do we really want just another elegant, cleanly conveyed thriller instead?

In Italy, it would be categorised as a giallo, which simply indicates a thriller. However, used by foreign critics, the term “Italian giallo” refers to a specific subgenre of whodunit, usually with added skin and blood spatter. Typically, there will be multiple murders investigated by an amateur sleuth in a cleverly contrived narrative delivered with stand-out set-pieces. Classic examples often feature audacious camerawork, stylistic flourishes, and a convoluted plot leading up to a surprise, last-minute reveal. Not to mention the maniac. A good giallo needs its maniac.

The Double falls short on nearly all counts, though it is reminiscent of Aldo Lado’s giallo Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971), made the same year, also starring Jean Sorel and following the internal narrative of a dying man. By any meaningful measure, it also pales in comparison to Elio Petri’s disquieting psychosexual thriller A Quiet Place in the Country (1968), which is a far bolder cinematic experiment resting upon the perspective of an unreliable narrator.

Jean Sorel was fresh from Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) and carried some arthouse cachet since starring in Luis Buñuel’s provocative Belle de Jour (1967). Here, his performance is workmanlike and conveys a good spread of arrogance, envy, paranoia, and immaturity well enough. This is mainly expressed through his misogynistic obsession with the two women he’s torn between. The machismo and use of coercion—sometimes physical force—when subduing Lucia and ‘seducing’ Nora will be problematic for some viewers.

The psychological excavation of gender dynamics is a prominent thread, and in some ways we’re dealing with a similar scenario to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950); we’re presented with events as he sees them, but we realise the experience of the women involved may differ. For example, in one scene he is clearly assaulting one woman who then becomes compliant. He believes he’s won her over with an impressive show of dominant masculinity; we may see it as rape.

Ewa Aulin is the real star here, and certainly her name would’ve been the bigger box-office draw since earning a certain notoriety as a ‘sex kitten’ for her lead in Christian Marquand’s Candy (1968), a philosophical sex romp and very loose reimagining of Voltaire’s Candide. Though I recognise her from Giulio Questi’s unique giallo, Death Laid an Egg (original title: La morte ha fatto l’uovo, 1968), she was said to have the finest posterior in the business, and Romolo Guerrieri capitalised on this by presenting her fully nude early on in the film. However, she’s more than just ‘eye candy’, as we see her framed by Giovanni’s perception as his property. Our own position as disempowered voyeurs and the male gaze of the lens are also acknowledged here. She’s often presented as an object, shot like part of the landscape, especially when her curves echo those of the dunes and her blonde hair blends with the golden sand. And like sand, Giovanni will have trouble keeping hold of her as she begins to assert her individuality, bucking against traditional notions of what a wife should be.

Our fantasist protagonist is inherited from a story by Libero Bigiaretti, the original source material. This is the second of his literary works to be adapted for the screen after The Fire Trap / La trappola di fuoco (1952), though La controfigura is by far his most successful novel and recipient of the prestigious 1968 Viareggio Prize. Apparently, Guerrieri wished to reflect the thematic nature of the novel, which is written from the first-person perspective and unfolds within a psychological terrain as much as in the so-called ‘real world’. Without having read the book, it’s impossible to gauge how successful he is, but one must concede that book and film are very different media.

Though the novel was apparently a pleasingly intellectual puzzle, Guerrieri focuses more on emotional logic. The Double is a slow but hypnotic neo-giallo with a psychological narrative that builds around various atmospheres instead of plot points or twists. Sure, there’s an element of mystery, but its resolution only coalesces in the last ten minutes, and it’s always easier to create an enigma than to deliver a satisfying dénouement. Another director could’ve worked that kernel into a gripping narrative, perhaps even a classic thriller. Clearly, Guerrieri’s interests steered him elsewhere. Perhaps attempting to capture the source material’s structure, he deliberately avoids traditional exposition methods, opting instead for visual textures to capture the hot, languid atmosphere of Morocco and pacing to emphasise distance—both spatial and psychological.

During long, voyeuristically detached sequences with minimal dialogue, we are invited to unpick a time-based collage of dreamlike sensuality interrupted by more shocking, disorientating images that evoke the confusion and paranoia of a nightmare. If one doesn’t try to grasp the plot, there are some compelling compositions and inventive cinematography from Carlo Carlini, who provides sparse clues to indicate when psychotic fantasies impose upon perceived reality.

Though often lumped in with early gialli, The Double is more akin to the French nouvelle vague of Jean-Luc Godard or the melancholic character studies of Italy’s Michelangelo Antonioni. Guerrieri edits for the psychological transitions of the characters, not the mechanics of a movie. The picture may blur and dissolve, but this is to imply emotional states along with Giovanni’s failing grasp of boundaries: between reality and expressions of his Freudian impulses; between his own desires and the needs of others. As the narrative progresses, so does his paranoia and panic, and there are enough flashes of his shooting and physical anguish to remind us why it’s the paranoia that wins him over before fantasy intervenes to offer some relief.

ITALY | 1971 | 88 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ITALIAN

Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

• 4K restoration from the original negative
• Optional Italian and English audio tracks
• Original uncompressed mono audio
• Audio commentary by Tim Lucas (2026). He begins with solid contextual information, placing the film, cast, and crew against their historical backdrops. As usual, there’s a wealth of trivia and fascinating asides. Usefully, he points out locations and notable landmarks in Rome. He explores the socio-political climate through a narrative lens, unpacking themes of the Vietnam War and dualities expressed through gender gradients, ideas of homeland and foreign shores, working life and holidays, and reality and delusion. His knowledge of related works is exhaustive, tracing connections through overlapping filmographies and recurring motifs in the cinema of the era. He aptly describes Guerrieri’s approach as “psychological trespass”.
• Archival 14-minute interview with director Romolo Guerrieri and star Ewa Aulin newly edited for this release (2026). Newly edited for this release, this featurette finds the duo reminiscing about their differing experiences of making The Double. Guerrieri explains much of his thinking behind how he approached adapting the literary source material. He agrees that the film is an outlier in his filmography and remains philosophical about its initial box office success before its popularity fell off sharply, leaving it just short of breaking even. He’s interested to see if a 21st-century audience will warm to a film dealing with themes instead of action, or if the lack of a Hollywood-style structure will alienate them. Recalling the cast and crew, he speaks very highly of his team and gives credit where it’s due, careful to refer to them as collaborators. Aulin provides some context on what it was like to be a starlet in the 1960s and ’70s, coming across as intelligent and eloquent as ever. The segment was originally filmed across 2013 and 2017.
• 26-minute appreciation by author Stephen Thrower (2026). Thrower introduces the film by explaining how the English-language title may be too simplistic, before discussing how unlike a typical giallo it is, sharing plenty of solid analysis and astute personal responses. He then digs into the symbolism of pairs and triumvirates, touching upon archetypal motifs relating to how self-image doesn’t always match real-world actions, and how personal perceptions can be at odds with consensus reality.
• Easter egg (2 mins). Two scenes retrieved from a Greek VHS release—usually referred to by its alternative title, Love Inferno—extend two sex scenes between Lucia and Frank, which also contain some rather pertinent dialogue. There’s no surviving documentation to indicate whether these partial scenes were censored for other territories or if they were distributor-specific inserts.
• Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original posters
• Limited Edition booklet featuring new writing by author and critic Nathaniel Thompson. Not available at time of review.
• Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

Cast & Crew

director: Romolo Guerrieri.
writers: Sauro Scavolini, Sandro Continenza & Sauro Scavolini (novel “La controfigura” by Libero Bigiaretti).
starring: Jean Sorel, Ewa Aulin, Lucia Bosé, Silvano Tranquilli, Sergio Doria, Marilù Tolo, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Antonio Pierfederici.

The post THE DOUBLE (1971) appeared first on Frame Rated.

As with many like-minded horror aficionados, I’ve been a huge fan of the Evil Dead series since I was a teenager. I remember seeing the first movie when I was about 13 on a grainy, pirated VHS copy because, at that time, it was still banned thanks to the UK government introducing the Video Recordings Act (nicknamed the “Video Nasty” Act) in 1984. Looking back at Sam Raimi’s 1981 debut, with the exception of the notorious tree scene, the rest of the film is relatively tame compared to today’s far more extreme offerings — one actually being its 2013 remake.

You may recall that, in director Fede Álvarez’s 2013 version, there were two particularly gruesome sequences: one where a woman hacks off her own arm with an electric meat saw, while the other standout horrific scene has the film’s possessed protagonist, Mia (Jane Levy), using a box cutter to slice into her tongue. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart. Well, after just seeing Evil Dead Burn, the newest entry in the seemingly endless, blood-soaked franchise, I can go on the record to say this, for better or worse, goes even harder on the brutality and gore. You’ve been warned!

French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček (Infested) certainly pulls no punches from the get-go with a prologue that takes place once again on the same lake that set things in motion in Evil Dead Rise (2023). Two young men are out fishing when they fall foul of a Deadite demon — with typically gruesome results — and before you can say ‘Kandar!’, the scene is set for more savagery and the taking of souls. As the lakeside location suggests, there may be some universe-sharing between this and its predecessor, but I’ll leave it to you to find out for yourself.

This latest instalment introduces its audience to four twenty-somethings: Alice (Souheila Tacoub) and her husband Will (George Pullar), Will’s brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan). It’s Joseph’s birthday and they’re celebrating at a nightclub, where you can see immediately that things are really not going well for the married couple. Cue Will driving off in a rage and running into the Deadite that emerged from the lake — which, shall we just say, doesn’t end well for him.

Following Will’s funeral, the young group, along with parents Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Erroll Shand), and grandmother Polly (Maude Davey), head back to their old lake house for a bit of much-needed family time. Unfortunately for all concerned, Deadite mayhem quickly ensues, taking you through all manner of gruelling, gory violence.

Now, just so you know, I usually have no problem with horror films and the subsequent nastiness that is par for the course in this genre, but there were times here where I began to feel almost numb and detached from the film because the relentless viciousness was so overwhelming.

Yes, one could argue that the past two movies were also fairly extreme, but at least Evil Dead Rise featured moments of over-the-top, schlocky comedy that introduced some much-needed levity to the proceedings. None of that is on show here. There is some humour throughout, mostly at the expense of the grandmother, but the whole film’s tone, alongside its themes of family dysfunction and domestic abuse, is so mean-spirited and downbeat that what few laughs there are get lost amongst all the carnage.

Aside from these problems, the film does have its good points. For starters, the performances are all solid. New Zealand actor Erroll Shand takes what could have been a very one-dimensional part as father-turned-Deadite Edgar, and instead has you wrestling with conflicting emotions ranging from hatred to sympathy, and sheer terror. Tandi Wright’s mother, Susan, and Maude Davey’s grandma, Polly, also bring a lot of value to the film. Their relationship dynamic, and how it changes over the course of the narrative, makes for interesting viewing.

However, lead actor Souheila Yacoub (Climax) really is the star of all this bloody chaos. Her character, Alice, is put through the wringer emotionally and physically; watching her wrestle with past trauma from an abusive ex, then having to cope with his sudden death and in-laws from hell — figuratively and literally — is quite something to behold. Yacoub’s acting delivers on every level.

Of course, an Evil Dead film wouldn’t be an Evil Dead film without set-pieces and action, and this certainly doesn’t disappoint. Vaniček must be applauded for injecting moments of dizzying camerawork that will, at times, leave your jaw dropping in awe. The part of the film used for the teaser trailer is one such example. You watch as a terrified Alice makes her way through the house while absolute destruction and blood-splatter surround her at every turn; the way this is filmed is simply breathtaking. Some directors may have been happy to leave things there, but there are at least four other sequences that are equally impressive.

And this is what is most frustrating about Evil Dead Burn. While on one hand you can’t deny the technical excellence on display, the way it’s all delivered against such an oppressive atmosphere definitely leaves you with something of a nasty aftertaste that, for me, made the whole affair a bit of a slog to get through. The dark, muted colours and lighting by cinematographer Philip Lozano don’t help matters either. It also suffers from pacing issues; a film of this type shouldn’t be longer than about 90 minutes; 109 is excessive and unnecessary.

Some viewers may revel in all the prolonged bleakness and scenes of horrific bloodshed. But, for this viewer, I feel future films need to have a bit more of Raimi’s trademark comedic tone put back into the creative mix. After all, laughs and scares work brilliantly together when done well. Bloody mayhem alone is never enough. Here’s hoping the next film rediscovers that balance.

NEW ZEALAND • USA • CANADA | 2026 | 109 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • FRENCH

Cast & Crew

director: Sébastien Vaniček.
writers: Sébastien Vaniček & Florent Bernard (based on ‘The Evil Dead’ by Sam Raimi).
starring: Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand & Maude Davey.

The post EVIL DEAD BURN (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

It was a remarkable time to be a connoisseur of the grotesque during the 2010s. Following a decade largely defined by gratuitous gore and manufactured frights, the horror genre moved beyond its longstanding association with funhouse thrills as a new wave of filmmakers embraced psychological complexity and artistic ambition. Whether it was the nightmarish psychodramas of Ari Aster (Hereditary) or the haunting folktales of Robert Eggers (The Witch), audiences were introduced to a form of terror that was unsettling on both an emotional and intellectual level. Yet, amid this surge of contemporary horror auteurs, few matched the prolific output and critical acclaim of Mike Flanagan.

Since emerging from independent cinema, the writer-director has steadily established himself as one of the industry’s most engaging storytellers, routinely transcending the boundaries of both film and television. His acclaimed Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) proved that episodic horror could be as emotionally devastating as it was terrifying, while his adaptations of Gerald’s Game (2017), Doctor Sleep (2019), and The Life of Chuck (2025) earned him a reputation as one of the most accomplished interpreters of Stephen King’s fiction. Yet long before these high-profile successes, Flanagan had already delivered one of the most understated entries in his oeuvre. Stripped of the supernatural mythology and emotional grandeur that would define his later work, Hush is a lean, economically constructed thriller, and perhaps the filmmaker’s purest exercise in suspense.

The story centres on Maddie Young (Kate Siegel), a successful horror novelist who lost her hearing and speech after contracting meningitis as a teenager. Following the success of her latest book, she swaps the commotion and distractions of New York City for a secluded home deep in the woods. Maddie enjoys a relatively independent life; her days are filled with writing her next novel and her evenings are spent chatting with her sister (Emilia Graves) via FaceTime. Her only regular companion is Sarah (Samantha Sloyan), a friendly neighbour who frequently visits to practise sign language. However, Maddie’s tranquil existence is abruptly shattered when a masked intruder (John Gallagher Jr.) begins stalking her property. Armed with a crossbow and a knife, the unhinged assailant decides to make her his next victim after quickly deducing that she’s deaf. Isolated from the outside world, Maddie is forced to rely on her wit and resourcefulness to outmanoeuvre the unnamed man tormenting her.

At first glance, it’s almost impossible not to compare Flanagan and Siegel’s screenplay with Don’t Breathe (2016). Released in the same year, both place a character with a sensory impairment at the centre of a home invasion, demonstrating how vulnerabilities can become unexpected strengths. Yet, beyond these superficial similarities, Hush differentiates itself through its approach to suspense. Rather than punctuating the narrative with a succession of explosive shocks, Flanagan allows the tension to ferment before its eventual release. This methodical approach may lack the propulsive intensity of Fede Álvarez’s thriller, but it creates a psychological dread every bit as gripping as its visceral counterpart.

That sustained sense of dread finds an excellent visual accomplice in Michael Fimognari’s understated cinematography. Rather than overwhelming the audience with frenetic camerawork, Fimognari favours measured movements and rigorously controlled compositions to heighten the foreboding atmosphere. As Maddie cautiously navigates her home to evade her masked tormentor, he frames her against a vast amount of negative space. The expansive windows and darkened hallways are weaponised to great effect, forcing the audience to search the shadows alongside Maddie for an unseen presence. Even during moments of complete stillness, there is an unnerving expectation that something might emerge from the dark.

Perhaps the film’s greatest strength lies in its sound design. With the exception of Maddie’s video call and a brief exchange with her neighbour, a large portion of the 80-minute runtime unfolds without dialogue. This provides Flanagan with the perfect opportunity to manipulate the audience’s relationship with audio, using sound to build genuine tension. The opening sequence establishes this approach immediately. As Maddie prepares dinner, the soundscape is deliberately exaggerated: the roaring gas flame beneath a pan of aggressively sizzling asparagus, the sharp chime of a text message, and the piercing shriek of the smoke detector are all heightened to an almost overwhelming degree. Then, the perspective abruptly shifts to Maddie’s experience. The vegetables continue to hiss and the alarm continues to sound, but the viewer is plunged into complete silence.

In less capable hands, these repeated auditory transitions could easily have become a cheap gimmick. However, Michael Koff and Steven Iba’s meticulous sound design heightens the viewer’s awareness of Maddie’s reality. Heavy footsteps creaking across wooden floors, a sharp knife scraping against glass, or a sudden knock at the window all become profoundly unsettling because we are acutely aware that Maddie cannot hear them. Even seemingly inconsequential noises like laboured breathing, the rustling of clothing, or the crunch of leaves gain dramatic weight. This contrast creates a tense dynamic where the audience constantly possesses more sensory information than the protagonist, knowing exactly how close the danger is while she remains oblivious.

Flanagan remains surprisingly reserved where other filmmakers would instinctively rely on cheap jump scares to keep the audience engaged. Rather than withholding the intruder’s identity for a climactic reveal, the unidentified man removes his mask within the first act. It’s a decision that initially feels counterintuitive, but it proves incredibly effective. By abandoning the mystery of who the assailant is, the film redirects our attention toward his motives. Flanagan deliberately refuses to offer an explanation or moral justification for the violence; the man simply exists to terrorise Maddie. While some might argue this lack of characterisation reduces him to a one-dimensional bogeyman, it’s this very absence of reason that makes him so disturbing. There’s no logic to bargain with, just the terrifying reality of a man capable of extraordinary cruelty.

That same refusal to embrace cliché extends to the heroine herself. Horror has long maintained a troubled relationship with disability, often reducing characters with impairments to harmful stereotypes—either portraying them as the source of monstrosity, as seen in Split (2016), or treating them as helpless burdens destined for doom, like Franklin in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Admirably, Flanagan avoids both traps, refusing to romanticise or sensationalise Maddie’s condition. Instead, he uses it to reshape the familiar “Final Girl” archetype. Her plight may unfold in silence rather than through the iconic screams of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (1978), yet she proves every bit as resourceful as her predecessors. The filmmaker affords his heroine genuine agency, showing that survival depends entirely on intelligence and adaptability. For a genre that has so often failed to represent disability with nuance, Hush is not just a compelling thriller, but a deeply human one.

Of course, Kate Siegel’s magnetic screen presence is central to this success. As Maddie, she uses little more than sparse American Sign Language (ASL) and vivid facial expressions to communicate her shifting emotional state. Her eyes are profoundly expressive, conveying exhaustion and determination more effectively than words ever could. Reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn’s performance as the blind heroine in Wait Until Dark (1967), Siegel transforms a conventional vulnerability into a source of resilience, continuously demonstrating her ability to outsmart her tormentor in highly demanding situations.

If Hush has a weakness, it lies in the occasional narrative convenience required to maintain its simple premise. Without venturing into spoilers, certain decisions made by the characters occasionally stretch credibility. However, these shortcomings feel minor when weighed against Flanagan’s exceptional command of suspense. Viewed through a contemporary lens, it feels like a defining milestone in his career. The filmmaker demonstrates a masterclass in how tension can be economically constructed, crafting a claustrophobic nightmare through inventive sound design, restrained cinematography, and an unnerving authenticity. He understands that horror does not require bombast or spectacle to disturb its audience. Sometimes, the most terrifying sound imaginable is silence.

USA | 2016 | 82 MINUTES | 2:35:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE

Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD Special Features:

Arriving on physical media for the first time in the UK, Hush has been given a wonderful 4K restoration courtesy of Arrow Video. This release includes both the original colour version and a newly conceived monochrome presentation entitled the Shush Cut. Both versions showcase an immaculate 2160p Ultra HD transfer, presented in the film’s original 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

For too long, Hush languished in streaming limbo, meaning its presentation was constrained by the natural limitations of digital bitrates. Arrow’s 4K restoration finally allows the film to be appreciated as intended, boasting an increased resolution and a refined encode that lets the image breathe. The Dolby Vision HDR grading adds a pleasing visual depth to the presentation, lending a gentle vibrancy to Flanagan’s intentionally restrained palette. Woodland greens remain rich, and the cooler blues of the evening sequences carry a far more convincing sense of atmosphere, while skin tones look natural and consistently accurate.

The most significant improvement, however, comes during the nighttime sequences. Black levels are satisfyingly deep without ever sacrificing shadow detail, and highlights glisten with a pleasing luminosity without blowing out. Despite large portions of the action unfolding in dim environments, Arrow’s presentation delivers a remarkably sharp, richly detailed image. Background elements inside Maddie’s remote home remain crisply defined without ever appearing artificially sharpened or digitally processed, while tight compositions reveal everything from intricate clothing textures to the subtle beads of sweat forming on Maddie’s face as she fights for her life.

Many strengths of the original version carry over to the Shush Cut. This monochrome reimagining of Flanagan’s home invasion thriller is equally breathtaking, meticulously graded to evoke the visual language of classic horror. A healthy layer of film grain lends it the quality of a forgotten classic while retaining the same stunning detail as its counterpart.The contrast ratio across the greyscale is extraordinary, allowing luminous whites to create a haunting counterpoint to the impenetrable blacks. While both versions of Hush are a visual feast, the Shush Cut offers a fascinating new way to experience the story. The removal of colour only enhances the primal tension of the film, pushing its emotional and psychological stakes to new heights.

This 4K release features two audio tracks with optional English subtitles. Both the original version and the Shush Cut enjoy an immersive Dolby Atmos mix alongside a DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track.

While both options are wonderfully balanced, it’s the Dolby Atmos presentation that deserves the most attention. It’s a deeply enveloping mix, impressively engaging the listener through carefully heightened sound design. Most effective during the physical confrontations, the track makes full use of the soundstage to create a powerful sense of space and directionality. The bass also lends these suspenseful moments a palpable weight, steadily rising to coincide with the imminent action.

The Atmos mix is equally effective during the film’s quieter passages. Subtle environmental sounds have been amplified for maximum impact and rendered with exceptional clarity. The rear and overhead channels, in particular, are put to excellent use; whether it’s the rustling of leaves or the whisper of wind, each noise pierces the silence to heighten the sense of unease.

The Shush Cut offers an especially brilliant reinterpretation of the film’s soundscape. As revealed in the director’s commentary, this presentation reflects Flanagan’s original vision for the film’s audio. The track completely removes the musical score by The Newton Brothers, opting instead for an intensified emphasis on diegetic sound. By placing environmental effects firmly at the forefront, the mix heightens every ambient noise to an almost assaultive level.Every footstep, breath, and sudden movement lands with a visceral punch, transforming the track into a fantastic alternative that complements the film’s visual isolation perfectly.

Disc 1—Original Version

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in HDR10 of the original, full-colour version.
• English Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio options.
• Shush Cut audio mix in DTS-HD MA 5.1.
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.
• Audio commentary with co-writer/director Mike Flanagan, co-writer/actor Kate Siegel, and actors Samantha Sloyan, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Trucco.
• Picture-in-picture commentary with Flanagan, Siegel, Sloyan, Gallagher Jr., and Trucco.
• The Dance Macabre, an interview with Mike Flanagan.
• To Stand Alone, an interview with Kate Siegel.
• The Constant Reader, an interview with Samantha Sloyan.
• The Shape of Silence, an interview with John Gallagher Jr.
• Silent Witness, an interview with Michael Trucco.
• One Good Scare, an interview with actor Trevor Macy.
• Violent Strains, an interview with composers The Newton Brothers.
• One Terrible Night, an interview with cinematographer James Kniest.
• Original trailer.
• Image gallery.

Disc 2—Shush Cut

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in HDR10 of the Shush Cut, presented in black & white with a revised audio mix.
• English Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio options.
• Original version audio mix in DTS-HD MA 5.1.
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.
• Audio commentary with Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel.
• Mike Flanagan Artist Talk, a feature-length Q&A with the filmmaker, recorded at Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal in 2024.
• Beyond Fest Q&A with Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, recorded at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles in 2024.
• The Silent Mask, a brand new visual essay by author and critic Alexandra HellerNicholas on the film’s representation of deafness.

Cast & Crew

director: Mike Flanagan.
writers: Mike Flanagan & Kate Siegel.
starring: Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr. & Michael Trucco.

The post HUSH (2016) appeared first on Frame Rated.

If not for Legally Blonde, the rampant persecution of vapid, golden-haired sorority presidents would go unsung. Without it, how could one learn how to swap fashion school for heroism at none other than Harvard? Charting the rise to glory—and the trials and tribulations preceding it—of the outlandish, tenacious Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), the film is frequently ridiculous without letting its frills stifle its comedic potential.

Two years before the iconic Elle Woods, there was Tracy Flick: the irrepressible go-getter and goody-two-shoes student at George Washington Carver High School who would stop at nothing to achieve her fleeting dream of becoming student government president. On the surface, the only similarity between the two young protagonists from Legally Blonde and Election (1999), respectively, is Witherspoon’s note-perfect portrayal. Elle is a vapid, fashion-obsessed sorority girl who ticks every Hollywood cliché imaginable, while Tracy is a prim, proper sharpshooter whose relentless need for leadership makes her a formidable enemy.

Beneath the surface, the pair are linked by a remarkable drive, couched in films that at first appear to mock their ways but grow more appreciative the more time you spend witnessing their journeys towards success. When you get down to it, Tracy is just as vapid as Elle; she wields politics as a weapon for personal gain and treats pressing issues as accessories to complement her never-ending thirst for power. It is difficult to come away from Election without feeling jaded about politics and the role of the world’s Tracy Flicks in the system, but there is no doubting her zeal. She rises above her station time and time again, carving out the trailblazing path she has always dreamt of.

Legally Blonde is the mainstream antidote to Election’s bitter dark humour, in which the Tracy Flicks of the world are sanctified through the lens of an improbable, virtuous success story. After Elle Woods is dumped by her douchebag boyfriend, Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis), she vows to win him back by doing the impossible: getting into Harvard Law School with him, and thriving. It doesn’t take long for her to see that nothing she does will ever be good enough for him, so she becomes possessed by an even stronger drive: to succeed for her own validation. In one pivotal scene, Elle delivers a rousing speech that is not all that dissimilar to what Tracy would have told her student body, or what you could imagine her one day articulating to the entirety of the United States—but there is no irony, duplicity, or self-interest at play. Here, she simply wants to strive for the betterment of all, with no hidden agenda. Of course, this tone suits the movie, which is frequently ridiculous, charting the arduous but fulfilling journey of a fashion student who thrives in the most alien of environments.

The joke-per-minute ratio is noticeably lower here than in most other comedies, but that often works in the film’s favour. One could easily imagine a lesser movie employing inane side characters to hinder Elle’s goals, or using them as stepping stones for the protagonist to demonstrate her growth. There is one wayward scene that falls into the latter category, with Elle pretending to chide a socially stunted male classmate, David Kidney (Oz Perkins), to boost his popularity. These Clueless (1995)-inspired moments are not always unwelcome, especially when they feature the wonderful Jennifer Coolidge, portraying Paulette Bonafonté, a shy hairdresser in need of a confidence makeover.

But the greatest moments in Legally Blonde are those where you feel like scrubbing your eyes at Elle Woods’ obliviousness to the social mores of her new backdrop—a studious environment where the Tracy Flicks of the world would have ingratiated themselves with ease. You expect devastation at every turn, whether she is accidentally revealing her academic ignorance to a professor or showing up in a bunny outfit to a house party replete with cashmere jumpers in lieu of costumes. Viewers are spared this misery; Elle is ridiculous, but rarely worthy of contempt. If it does appear, it is of the most superficial kind, easily won over by her replenishing supply of optimism and verve. One runs the risk of making this outlandish comedy come across as a timely feminist masterwork with comments like these, but there is an earnestness to Elle’s characterisation, carefully half-concealed beneath Legally Blonde’s frills and sass, that is as delightful as its light mockery.

It’s the film’s other syrupy-sweet elements that disappoint, recalling the pitch-black bitterness endemic to Election that’s lacking here. Elle’s a triumphant hero and totally ridiculous all at once, with obliviousness acting as her superpower. It gives her the right to storm through the wave of judgement and condescension levelled at her, whether because she doesn’t notice it or simply knows better than to acquiesce. The rivalry forged between herself and fellow student Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair) is easily the highlight of Legally Blonde, with both Witherspoon and Blair turning a feud largely comprised of insulting or outraged expressions into a fine art. Instead of overcrowding the film with constant gags, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith’s surprisingly, satisfyingly restrained script gives each of these glorious moments its chance to shine.

Why, then, must bitter rivalries give way to treacly sentiment about female bonds overcoming all odds? The desire to inspire young girls is an admirable goal, but the essence of this wonderful protagonist already fulfils this role amply. Everything else is an insincere abandonment of conflict. It’s the kind of late-stage softening of deliciously mean, catty characters that the otherwise excellent Mean Girls (2004) fell prey to. Both films miss out on being comedic masterclasses because of this, though Legally Blonde has other detractions. The blossoming romance between Elle and the vaguely mysterious, undefined Emmett Richmond (Luke Wilson) leaves much to be desired. An endearing introduction bottoms out into a small handful of scenes lacking the spiritedness and drive that make Elle a star in the making, and this film a worthy champion of her essential characteristics.

It’s easy to spot this lack of developed chemistry, or personality, in the film, given that some of these interactions feature such extensive dubbing that entire lines of dialogue are uttered while Elle and Emmett are plainly in sight, their mouths clearly closed. One can’t help but wonder what misplaced words these performers were given to work with during shooting, since the amended dialogue neither humours nor charms. Emmett undergoes no development throughout Legally Blonde, persisting in his role as a supportive background figure in Elle’s life, entirely sincere in his belief in her abilities. It’s gratifying for someone, anyone, to be in her corner after her fellow students kick her down in frequently amusing ways throughout the film. But Elle, and viewers, still deserve better.

Thankfully, Witherspoon is an absolute powerhouse here, committing so fully to the bit that you always buy into this protagonist’s ridiculousness, her chipper attitude towards life, and her burning hunger for success. Elle is absurd, smart, sexy, oblivious, relatable, charming, kind-hearted, ruthless, and fallible. Just because she is not the heroine that the rest of these characters, or the world, asked for, doesn’t mean she’s undeserving of the role. In fact, the world is lucky to have her grace its presence. There is a parallel between those who refuse to relate to Elle and people who dismiss the likes of Legally Blonde and Mean Girls in an instant, refusing to acknowledge the incisive screenwriting and note-perfect comedic acting at play in either film. Light mockery is almost always at play in this film, but it is sincere at its core.

It is the rest of the film’s moralising which betrays this protagonist. The real lesson here is not that determination or optimism transform the world into sunshine and rainbows, but that they can overpower the callousness and condescension of others. Whether that is its own form of fantasy is another debate entirely. What is incontestable is that this message is far more relevant than the overladen sentimentality abounding in Legally Blonde, or the hasty, unconvincing way in which the film incorporates it.

USA | 2001 | 96 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • VIETNAMESE

Cast & Crew

director: Robert Luketic.
writers: Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith (based on the 2001 comic novel by Amanda Brown).
starring: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber, Jennifer Coolidge, Holland Taylor & Ali Larter.

The post LEGALLY BLONDE (2001) appeared first on Frame Rated.

Olivia Wilde follows the poorly received Don’t Worry Darling (2022) with one of the most critically beloved films of the year. Directed by and starring Wilde, and written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (Celeste and Jesse Forever), The Invite is a tight 107-minute character study that rarely strays from one location.

Adapted from Cesc Gay’s Spanish film The People Upstairs (2020), The Invite is a tense exploration of a failing marriage, highlighted by the introduction of sexually liberated neighbours. It’s the type of grown-up comedy that rarely makes the big screen anymore.

Joe (Seth Rogen) is a miserable, brutally honest, failed musician. He’s zoned out of everything in life, including his marriage to Angela (Olivia Wilde). Angela is a stay-at-home mother to a 12-year-old; having given up on her own aspirations, she now pours all her love into shopping for home décor.

Angela decides to invite their upstairs neighbours, Pína (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), round for dinner. Joe isn’t impressed—mainly because he’s been kept awake by the sounds of the couple’s boisterous lovemaking—but Angela is keen to connect with their “cool” neighbours. While Joe has formed a one-sided feud with the couple upstairs, Angela is desperate for them to like her.

Over the next 100 or so minutes, the film follows how this dinner party goes awry. Don’t expect any massive twists or turns, or for the trailer to have hidden any major secrets. There is one revelation that shifts the film’s trajectory and alters the tone, but it feels totally natural and an almost inevitable conclusion to their night. The Invite brings together four brilliant actors, playing lived-in characters, in one apartment over a single evening. While the concept is simple, nothing about the film is basic.

Joe, Angela, Pína and Hawk feel like people we all know and, infuriatingly, see ourselves in. Scripts can often be scared of making their protagonists dislikable, but The Invite proudly presents a room of annoying adults. Joe is the type of man whose anger at life is misdirected at others, while Angela has a pathological need to impress, even if it’s through cured meats and rugs. Hawk is smug as an enlightened man of the world, while Pína’s European, psychosexual talk intimidates the room.

The script knows that, in these situations, everything is subtext. Someone bringing a flan that is better than the host’s soufflé means far more than meets the eye; an argument between a married couple is far more than just a disagreement; a compliment on a rug hits deeper than it should. The Invite actually allows people to sit in the subtext, never feeling the need to explain itself.

McCormack and Jones have put together a deceptively complex character study of middle age, wrapped in a sex comedy. While all the talk of failing marriages, adventurous sex lives and psychotherapy could weigh an audience down, The Invite injects a large dose of relief-inducing humour right when it’s required. The script understands the relief of a good laugh when the tension ramps up, but it’s the observational comedy where the writing truly shines. If you’ve ever been in a social setting and had to hold your tongue, this is the movie for you. These characters say exactly what they mean out loud, and from that honesty comes some of the best observations in Western cinema in years.

But don’t be fooled into thinking this is another raunchy, crass sex comedy. Underneath the gags and sex positivity is a heartfelt exploration of middle-aged malaise. No topic is off the table, from chats about perimenopause to the hard truths of managing a life you didn’t choose for yourself.

The Invite feels like a film for grown-ups—something American cinema often struggles with compared to its European counterparts. It’s fast-paced and demands audiences keep up with the mile-a-minute dialogue. One glance away from the screen and you’ve missed another snide remark, another look between characters, or another great gag. It’s refreshing to use your brain and interpret subtext, rather than watching writing that panders to those scrolling on their phones.

A single-location character study relies entirely on strong performances, and this cast is up to the challenge. Predictably, Seth Rogen takes his grumpy schmuck schtick to the next level as Joe, but he also proves he can more than handle dramatic material. Olivia Wilde is also excellent as the antsy Angela, her big blue eyes frequently darting across the room and her thin frame often curling in on itself. While it’s no surprise that Rogen is hilarious, Edward Norton—better known for serious roles—delivers some of the film’s funniest moments. Cruz, looking as spectacular on screen as ever despite a peroxide wig, plays up her Spanish flair as the type of confident woman many of us want to be. You can completely understand why this seemingly normal couple feel totally intimidated by their sexually adventurous, open-minded, well-travelled counterparts.

Director Wilde has had a bumpy career behind the camera. She burst out of the gate with the vibrant Booksmart (2019), before controversy and a certain pop fandom dampened Don’t Worry Darling. But The Invite more than cements her as a talent to be taken seriously. The film is dedicated to “Diane”—a nod to the late, great Diane Keaton. This film feels exactly like that type of 70s irreverent Keaton dramedy that is as heartfelt as it is hilarious.

USA | 2026 | 107 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Olivia Wilde.
writers: Will McCormack & Rashida Jones (based on the 2020 film ‘The People Upstairs’ by Cesc Gay).
starring: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz & Edward Norton.

The post THE INVITE (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

“Mortal Kombat!” Remember that kid? The legend in the iconic 1993 commercial for the home release of the original game, screaming that battle cry and drawing in crowds from the street? That’s what owning this boxset feels like. Alright, that’s a bit much, but Mortal Kombat is an enduring pop-culture phenomenon that—whether fuelled by old-school nostalgia or cutting-edge releases—never fails to get people hyped.

The last mainline entry for the video games was 2023’s Mortal Kombat 1, followed more recently by the impressively extensive Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection in 2025, which boasted 23 older games in all their various builds alongside a feature-length documentary. A boxset with just two films might not measure up in quantity, but Arrow Video brings us a beautiful restoration of two very significant entries in the video-game-to-feature-film adaptation venture.

Some people may be more familiar with the recent 2020s versions, but these original films should be appreciated for their historical impact. It isn’t simply because they belong to the same franchise; Mortal Kombat (1995) was the first genuine proof for mainstream audiences that a video game could be adapted for the big screen… and actually be good.

Generations of gamers have lamented the ‘curse’ of their favourite titles being mistranslated and butchered, leaving general audiences with the impression that the source material is just as awful. Even Paul W.S Anderson, the director of Mortal Kombat, is no stranger to this phenomenon. His exponentially cursed Resident Evil (2002–2016) series and Monster Hunter (2020) possess the barest qualifications to be considered films. And yet, here is one of his earliest works, and it remains one of his best.

It’s all too easy to say Mortal Kombat is a slam dunk. Knowing the answer is in this kollection, I ask rhetorically: how could you screw this up? It’s a fighting game; people fight. In a modern era where it’s easier to name franchises that don’t explore the multiverse, these combatants were already competing for the survival of their entire worlds. Their eclectic backgrounds were cherry-picked from everything a teenage boy might doodle in his notebook during class: ninjas, cyborgs, vampires, soldiers, wizards, and monsters. Over time, those elements would cross over and combine to build an ever-convoluted mythology.

Both movies in this kollection have their own lore, largely shaped by producer Lawrence Kasanoff, who deserves equal praise and blame for the highs and lows of Mortal Kombat cinema. On the positive side, his impact led to romantic entanglements between characters like Liu Kang and Kitana, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa reprising his performance as Shang Tsung in the later video games, and a truly ridiculous Australian impression that forever changed Kano’s nationality. Conversely, Annihilation (1997) became the poster child for what not to do when making a video game film, giving it an equal, if infamous, significance.

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Three unknowing martial artists are summoned to a mysterious island to compete in the eponymous tournament whose outcome will decide the fate of their world.

Dawn of Time: The One Being is felled by the Elder Gods, carved with the Kamidogu into the realms of our multiverse. Antiquity: War threatening to restore the realms establishes the tournament of Mortal Kombat. Nine Generations Ago: The Great Kung Lao fails as Earth is primed to be conquered. 1993: Super Mario Bros. 1994: Double Dragon. 1995: Street Fighter. They all sucked. But Mortal Kombat promised to be different…

It may sound like an epic opening to rival The Lord of the Rings (2001-03), yet the production history of this unassuming adaptation is as wild as the video game’s mythology. Mortal Kombat—both the 1992 arcade fighter and the 1995 film—follows a simple, high-concept pitch: what if the ninjas in Enter the Dragon (1973) were really into Dungeons & Dragons? Three protagonists—vengeful monk Liu Kang (Robin Shou), tough special forces operative Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson), and Hollywood actor Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby)—arrive on a mysterious island to compete for the fate of their world against the villainous sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).

Modern video games emulate cinematic aesthetics with expansive cutscenes and expensive voice actors. In contrast, Mortal Kombat had brief character biographies scrolling past when nobody was playing. A rare sight when the eye-catching visuals of colourful ninjas, four-armed monsters, and heads being ripped off drew a constant crowd of players. The appeal was clear, but retooling an arcade fighter into a compelling big-screen narrative was always going to be a challenge. Screenwriter Kevin Droney had only a few television credits to his name before Mortal Kombat promised to kick-start his movie career. Unfortunately, his subsequent video game adaptation, Wing Commander (1999), swiftly ended it.

Mimicking the influences of Hong Kong action cinema gives rise to an obviously formulaic structure. Characters often use their full names and state their motivations aloud, as if the audience were similarly just walking past. As the god and mentor Rayden, Christopher Lambert delivers cryptic exposition in a wry tone that keeps you guessing just how seriously he is taking the material. The fantastical nonsense is frequently lampshaded by the clueless movie star Cage, who routinely reacts with, “I give up, what’s going on?” While action is peppered throughout the script, a meandering first act leaves our heroes lollygagging with side-quests—such as attempting to ask Princess Kitana (Talisa Soto) questions they never actually manage to pose. This information should have been distributed during the second act’s fight sequences, rather than being so heavily front-loaded.

Paul W.S Anderson had only directed one film, Shopping (1994), budgeted at around £100,000, and spent his earnings playing Mortal Kombat in arcades between industry meetings. Anderson is now better known for his billion-dollar Resident Evil adaptations, but he honed his directorial skills right here. Some might even argue he has regressed since.

The film features impressive practical effects and luscious set-dressing, with every scene bookended by stage-like entrances and exits. The island itself is impossible to map, blending gorgeous location scenery with otherworldly sets that share zero logical geographical connection. Anderson at least delivers on the titular kombat, with each contestant bringing a distinct, believably exhausting style of action. Shou revealed that they were originally directed to shoot fights entirely in master shots, until the actors finally cracked and asked the director if he was familiar with the concept of a close-up. Following a complaint from a bloodthirsty fan during a test screening that there wasn’t enough fighting, two entire set-pieces—’Cage vs. Scorpion’ and ‘Kang vs. Reptile’—were added late in the day. These bouts showcase a newly learned expertise, featuring superior coverage, slicker choreography, and better fatalities. It helps immensely that the tournament-bracket framework smoothly patches over the assemblage of new and old bouts.

Anderson’s best decision was allowing ad-libs to lighten the performances in an otherwise wooden script. Without them, we’d never have heard lines like, “Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole”—a moment so iconic it has been immortalised in the sequel, later video games, and the rebooted Mortal Kombat II (2026). It was a brilliant move to make the cast feel comfortable, given that the ensemble was almost entirely recast early on.

Cameron Diaz had just finished The Mask (1994) and New Line Cinema had started her martial arts training before a broken wrist took her out of the running. Steve James tragically died of pancreatic cancer before production began,Brandon Lee was infamously killed while making The Crow (1994), and Jean-Claude Van Damme turned the film down to star in the rival adaptation of Street Fighter. The absence of JCVD is highly ironic: game developer Midway Games originally intended to release a Universal Soldier (1992) video game, but when the licence fell through, they repackaged those ideas into what became Mortal Kombat. His spiritual replacement, Johnny Cage, would eventually receive a Van Damme skin with unique dialogue in Mortal Kombat 1.

Star power may have been lacking from the actors who ultimately took on these roles, but each does a commendable job of injecting personality into ridiculous stereotypes. Bridgette Wilson tries her best to fulfil Sonya’s brief revenge arc an hour in, whilst dutifully handling damsel-in-distress duties in the finale. Robin Shou’s martial arts prowess is backed up by genuine charm. Mortal Kombat is hard to take seriously, so his earnest quest comes off as less memorable than Linden Ashby’s sarcastic, fish-out-of-water routine, but Shou fits the heroic lead well. He had appeared in around 40 Hong Kong films and was even trained by Jackie Chan before moving to the US, only to be underutilised by Hollywood.

Christopher Lambert is a strange sight in general, let alone playing a French-American white guy revered by Asian monks. He doesn’t get any action, unless you count occasionally zapping electricity at people, but he imbues the stilted,wise-leader role with an alien eccentricity. Lambert’s five-week contract prohibited him from participating in the extensive Thailand shoot, but the veteran talent decided to go anyway for free—and he even paid for the wrap party.

Two members of the cast Anderson had real trouble wrestling with were Reptile and Goro. The former’s CGI inclusion was pushed for the sake of innovation, but frankly, it feels more like a tech demo than an actual character. Goro was very real. It cost $1M to produce a practical costume, which required 13 to 15 puppeteers to operate the colossal animatronic arms and face created by Amalgamated Dynamics. Fighting the giant is one thing, but he still impresses today in extensive dialogue scenes opposite ordinary actors.

It would be criminal not to mention the iconic soundtrack. Even if the film’s visuals didn’t stick with every teenager of the 1990s, everyone has had this particular earworm at some point. It is impossible to imagine Mortal Kombat without the monumental “Techno Syndrome” wailing of the title. The Immortals released the track as a single, which was then packaged into Mortal Kombat: The Album (1994) to coincide with the game’s home console release. Soon, every cool kid was executing fatalities in their bedroom whilst jamming to KMFDM, Orbital, Juno Reactor, Fear Factory, and three Stabbing Westward tracks.

Producer Lawrence Kasanoff was previously behind the likes of C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud (1989) and Ghoulies Go to College (1990), but his true talent lay in marketing, having made a fortune from merchandising Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). One of Kasanoff’s golden geese was the impeccable T2 light-gun arcade shooter produced by Midway, who happened to show him another title they were excited about. He instantly described Mortal Kombat as “a whole phenomenon” to be explored “in every medium in the world”.

On a modest budget of $18M, Mortal Kombat shattered all expectations by grossing $122M, proving Kasanoff right: Midway had crafted a saga too big for the arcades alone. He insisted that “the video game is the first incarnation”, chasing that belief with an animated prequel, Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins (1995), and an animated series, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm (1996). The actual cinematic sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), was far from a flawless victory…

Yet, the grand tournament couldn’t be stopped. A live-action series, Mortal Kombat: Conquest (1998), followed, but its cancellation left a gulf that Midway filled by continuing their original success with video game sequels. A well-received web series, Mortal Kombat: Legacy (2011), suggested the audience was still there, and the animated feature Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020) further tested the waters. As inevitable as the interdimensional contest itself, Mortal Kombat returned in a live-action reboot in 2021. The rematch failed to repeat the same explosive box-office numbers, but it persevered with a 2026 sequel that cost more and made more, proving it’s entirely possible for the saga to continue. Kasanoff may not be shepherding the franchise as closely as Rayden, but he has endured for 30 years to remain an executive producer on Mortal Kombat.

USA | 1995 | 101 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Rayden and his martial arts warriors have no time to celebrate their tournament win as otherworldly emperor Shao Kahn ignores the rules to take over Earth.

The production schedule for Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was described as “like being on a train going 120mph down an icy slope, but somehow we’re making the corner.” The quote belongs to Lawrence Kasanoff—screenwriter,producer, and CEO of Threshold Entertainment—who successfully steered the Mortal Kombat video games into a multimedia phenomenon, whilst simultaneously setting up easy punchlines about Annihilation being a monumental trainwreck.

The tracks were originally laid out perfectly for them: the 1995 original cost $20M and grossed $122M. Two years later, the sequel was granted an increased budget of $30M. Yet, when you watch the film, the numbers simply do not add up. It cost significantly more, so how did it end up looking so terrible? The missing, yet glaringly obvious, factor was time. Kasanoff was given a brutally tight deadline by the game’s publisher, Midway, who were developing a fourth entry. As Kasanoff recalled, they told him: “You promised us a movie and you’ve got to deliver, because we’ve got a game to promote.” In a 1997 article for Sci-Fi Entertainment, author Cory Doctorow revealed: “One of the people I interviewed for this said that he couldn’t give me a plot summary because ‘we won’t know what it’s about until we finish the post and figure out what effects worked.'” Given that none of the special effects actually worked, it is safe to assume they never found out what the film was about.

The first Mortal Kombat was beautifully simple, and the sequel wastes no time giving the people what they want by blasting that kick-ass theme tune, “Techno Syndrome”. This is immediately contrasted by a deafening lack of score as ninjas limply tumble from the sky, miniature ruins are lightly toppled, and elderly monks look utterly befuddled by the badly composited storm effects. The ensemble cast look just as confused, a feeling entirely shared by the audience, who barely recognise most of the people on screen.

The production budget clearly went elsewhere, as the studio could only afford to bring back Robin Shou and Talisa Soto to reprise their roles. Kasanoff regularised the issue by noting: “Now everyone wants twice the money, ten times the money. In some cases they deserve it and in other cases they don’t.”

Of the original cast, only Gregory McKinney was unable to return as Jax due to ailing health; he tragically passed away in 1998. It says a great deal about the project that almost every other original actor preferred to star in alternative critically panned ventures rather than return for a supposedly safe sequel. Bridgette Wilson turned down the role of Sonya to film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). Chris Casamassa could not return as Scorpion due to stunt commitments on Batman & Robin (1997). Christopher Lambert expressed an interest in returning as Rayden but committed to Beowulf (1999) instead, later admitting he simply disliked the script.

Linden Ashby has the most colourful story of all: his request for a pay rise resulted in Johnny Cage being abruptly killed off in the opening minutes. As Ashby later recalled: “The second movie sucked ass. What fucking morons. How would you like to see The Empire Strikes Back, but Han Solo is played by someone else?”

Do not expect anything resembling Empire with this sequel. The plot dictates that Outworld will consume Earthrealm as long as the magical interdimensional portals remain jammed open by a resurrected queen. To be fair, that particular nonsense is lifted directly from the games. Audiences, however, still expect more satisfying narrative explanations than fantasy warlord Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson) merely “cheating”. The heroes’ journey is weighed down by vague mysticism, with Rayden (now played by James Remar) spelling out that each fighter must become stronger through fortune-cookie lessons like: “Alone you are vulnerable, but if you work together as a team, you can do much.”

Some of the best entertainment value in Annihilation comes from watching the actors try their absolute best with clunky dialogue like, “Pretty cool, huh? It’s my animality,” alongside the classic cliché, “You should’ve killed me… when you had the chance.” In one bizarre scene, Liu Kang (Shou) looks for Rayden by casting a single glance at a massive historical ruin a mile away, declaring, “He’s not here”—only for Rayden to immediately appear from that exact direction. Scorpion (played by J.J Perry and voiced by game co-creator Ed Boon) plunges into a portal whilst yelling, “Suckers!”—which is not only a nod to the games but the most personality any character displays in the entire film. The arbitrary words spoken between fight scenes were written by Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, and are delivered across vacuous sets whilst characters flip and roll through the air just to be heard. Not a single dialogue scene goes by without acrobatics.

Promoted from cinematographer of the first film, director John R. Leonetti makes an ambitious feature debut here. Unfortunately, his efforts—alongside those of his brother and cinematographer, Matthew F. Leonetti—suffered heavily under severe production woes. Establishing shots adventurously pan through vistas of digital lava and lightning before settling on the actors, but the individual pieces of footage are so clearly mismatched in visual quality and clumsily strung together that they strip bare the patchwork nature of the post-production.

Matters were hardly helped by the James Bond-style array of international locations, with the production charting the globe across Wales, London, Jordan, Israel, and Thailand. While the carved city of Petra and the Ayutthaya Historical Park are easily recognisable, much of the washed-out cinematography squanders that time and money. Ultimately, the exotic locales end up looking exactly like one of the many English quarries used to shoot classic episodes of Doctor Who.

“I’m telling you the effects in that movie are not the final effects. I never anticipated that someone would take the movie and go, ‘it’s good enough’. We weren’t done. We never finished that movie. But the studio said, ‘we don’t care’. We sacrificed quality for business. There was supposed to be another entire second pass of visual effects and editing but New Line said ‘it’s testing so well, it doesn’t fucking matter.'” —Lawrence Kasanoff, producer.

Roughly 90% of this film feels like a series of martial arts music videos set to another banger-heavy 1990s catalogue featuring Scooter, Lunatic Calm, Juno Reactor, Pitchshifter, Alien Factory, Psykosonik, KMFDM, Megadeth, and more. Yet, even with this heavily streamlined approach, what little narrative remains still feels entirely incoherent. Take Jax (Lynn “Red” Williams), who receives his signature cybernetic arms. Instead of this serving the plot, he reacts as though he were caught mid-haircut. He was left completely alone in a lab with a sheet draped over him—a lazy attempt at verisimilitude, but also clear evidence of post-production struggles.

Cyber Smoke (Ridley Tsui Po-Wah) enters one scene with absolutely zero introduction, our logical questions promptly drowned out by EDM as the kicks start flying. A character can look like a Power Ranger whilst making mechanical noises, but surely the film could pause to explain why there are suddenly robots? The second cyborg, Cyrax (J.J Perry), receives a far more dramatic introduction involving explosions, shattering glass, and robotic dialogue, topped off with Jax yelling, “Who the hell is that?” All of this strongly suggests that this sequence was originally intended to precede Smoke’s entrance.

Logic within the scenes themselves collapses just as readily. Sindel (Musetta Vander) possesses the power to destroy the historic ruins of Petra with her supersonic scream, yet the blast fails to blow up our fleshy heroes. Rayden literally stops for a haircut. Furthermore, despite having known Jax for all of 30 seconds, he immediately begins lecturing him that his robot arms are his greatest weakness. In one of the film’s more baffling moments—which is saying a great deal—a giant, skinless digital monster is repeatedly punched in the ass by Jax. Elsewhere, Jade (Irina Pantaeva) and Sindel announce their villainy upon springing a trap, laugh, and simply walk away. Shao Kahn is understandably furious that they forgot the most crucial component of a trap: actually killing the targets. How did these antagonists launch a successful interdimensional conquest when they are so consistently inept?

Then there is Shao Kahn himself. While some comic book purists were disappointed that the Marvel Cinematic Universe ditched Thanos’s original motivation of desperately pining for the physical manifestation of Death, Annihilation serves as an excellent reminder of the alternative. Having your towering, muscle-bound antagonist whine and pout whilst trying to impress his deadbeat dad completely ruins the intimidation factor. Given that his daughter, Kitana (Talisa Soto), is 10,000 years old, Kahn suffers from an all-time case of arrested development.

Kasanoff maintained that he strictly adhered to the Mortal Kombat lore: “I can’t tell you how many corporate meetings I’ve been in where I’m sitting across from some toy guy, where I have to stand up and say, ‘Sorry, Shao Kahn doesn’t do that.'” Apparently, what he does do is execute one of his own generals for “claiming thousands of innocents” instead of making two of Earth’s champions beg before dying. Kahn at least kills one of the original leads to retain some sense of dominance; it is just a shame it had to be fan-favourite Johnny Cage (now briefly played by Chris Conrad).

So, the main villain is a failure, yet he still commands an invading army. Surely the kombat itself must be good? Leonetti confidently boasted at the time: “Our worst fight from this movie is better than the best fight from the last movie.”

On screen, actors are kicking and punching, the music is thumping, and magic and missiles are flying. Yet none of it possesses any real panache; it just feels… fine. Perhaps the overwhelming lack of quality simply suffocates any competent stunt work. We are treated to Sub-Zero (Keith Cooke Hirabayashi) and Scorpion fighting on a collapsing ice bridge, but the sequence fails to connect. The discordant musical scoring hardly helps; mid-fight, one track abruptly ends and another begins, as though the film’s playlist had been left on autoplay.

Oddly, despite the transparently sexualised framing of Sonya (Sandra Hess) and Mileena (Dana Hee) wrestling in a mud pit, their choreography is by far the most grounded and effective in the film. Then there are the fights that we don’t see. The four-armed warrior Sheeva (Marjean Holden)—serving as the female replacement for Goro—does not throw a single punch before being instantly crushed by a falling cage. Meanwhile, the film’s living MacGuffin, Queen Sindel, is defeated entirely off-screen whilst Rayden deals with three random ninjas. The film cannot even execute its “Animalities”—a mid-’90s game mechanic where fighters transform into animals—properly, as the digital creatures merely fall over and instantly revert to human form. They’re fatalities, but they don’t kill with them! Even Shang Tsung’s demise in the original film involved being impaled on spikes; here, Shao Kahn merely lands awkwardly on some stairs and is considered defeated. It’s Mortal Kombat—what actually killed him?

One only feels bad laughing because of the exceptionally hardworking cast, many of whom pulled double duty in multiple costumes to execute the stunts. Martial arts legend Tony Jaa doubled for Shou and remains criminally underappreciated. Perry filmed his Scorpion fight on a severely injured ankle, sustained when he tripped over a loose power cable during his scenes as Cyrax. He could barely see out of the bulky helmet, and between those visual limitations and Williams’s massive cybernetic arm prosthetics, Perry and Williams “really beat the piss out of each other”.

But what of the grand narrative lessons we are meant to take away from Annihilation? Rayden learns to appreciate mortality by pointlessly dying; Jax realises his mechanical upgrades were holding him back and punches a demonic centaur with his bare fists; Kitana confronts her mother’s death by kicking her mother’s ass; Sonya avenges Johnny—or perhaps learns to let go of her anger—and Liu Kang learns the power of teamwork and peace by transforming into a terrible, computer-generated dragon.

Kasanoff boldly claimed before release: “Annihilation is three times more ambitious than Mortal Kombat. Our theme for the sequel is to shoot for more—more fights, more special effects, more Outworld, more everything.” The old adage of quantity over quality rings painfully true here; the only metric they received less of was the box office. On a $30M budget, the film grossed just $51.3m worldwide. A direct threequel was swiftly cancelled, and the property languished in development hell until the Elder Gods themselves seemingly intervened, destroying the New Orleans pre-production sets via Hurricane Katrina.

Saddled with a devastating 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Annihilation was not only savaged by critics at the time, but the dead horse was continuously flogged for years as early internet meme culture blossomed. One YouTube video, “Mortal Kombat Annihilation: Worst/Funniest Scenes”, has amassed 4.7m views, while a clip titled “The Worst Line in Scriptwriting History”—uploaded back in 2008—boasts 25M views for a mere eight seconds of Sindel’s infamous retort: “Too bad… you… will die!” It is a genuine shame that Musetta Vander became the public face of this disaster, especially since the veteran television and B-movie actress delivered a performance suggesting she was the only person on set who knew exactly how laughable this sequel truly was.

USA | 1997 | 95 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

2-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray Box Set Special Features:

The retrospective on how these two films affected both the monumental video game franchise and blockbuster adaptations as a whole can be further explored across a bounty of newly produced special features from Arrow Video. Cast and crew members gladly accept praise for elevating Mortal Kombat into a multimedia empire, whilst reminiscing on fond times spent making films they had no idea would still be talked about over 30 years later.

However, if you are expecting the sharp dichotomy of these two films to be explored with retrospective honesty, prepare yourself for a slight disappointment. On the surface, it may seem that each disc has been granted equal coverage, yet very little of the sequel’s infamy is explored through a critical lens. This feels like a glaring oversight, given that the target audience for this kollection knows exactly what they are buying when it comes to these two films. It almost feels as though Arrow Video feared the licensing deal would be ripped away from them if they offended anyone involved by simply broaching the subject of the sequel’s abysmal quality.

Perhaps, though, Arrow hold a genuine affection for this entire duology, as both films are beautifully presented in a new 4K restoration. In special-effects-heavy scenes, every layer of background vista, practical set, cast member, and optical magic looks better than ever before. Even the ropier computer-generated disasters of Annihilation almost appear passable now that they have been preserved with such razor-sharp clarity.

What particularly pops in both features is the gorgeous mélange of colour, from the costuming to the lighting, all operating in sync to dazzle the audience with the strange and beautiful fantasy worlds of Mortal Kombat. To keep that kinetic energy going, Arrow have put equal care into the DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround lossless stereo audio to properly punctuate George S. Clinton’s multifaceted soundtrack. His vigorous score is captured with the same crisp precision as the visuals.

• NEW 4K restorations of the two films by Arrow Films.
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentations of the two films.
• Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio on both films.
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for both films.
• Collectors’ perfect-bound booklet featuring new writing on the films by Simon Ward and John Torrani.
• Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin.
• Two double-sided foldout posters featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin.

Disc 1—Mortal Kombat:

• 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by Arrow Films approved by director Paul W.S. Anderson.
• NEW audio commentary with director Paul W.S. Anderson.
• NEW audio commentary with comic book expert and podcast host Dave Baxter.
• Cage Match, a NEW filmed interview with actor Linden Ashby. In refreshing contrast to modern actor interviews, where performers routinely swear fealty to a video game’s source material, Ashby is remarkably honest about having never played the games. Instead, he built the character of Johnny Cage entirely from what was on the page. Even so, he warmly credits director Paul W.S. Anderson and his co-stars for their shared determination to make this big-budget gamble work; it was this collaborative atmosphere that encouraged ad-libbing and the punching up of dialogue on set, ultimately birthing many of the film’s most fan-favourite quotes.
• Leveling Up, a NEW filmed interview with cinematographer John R. Leonetti. Though occasionally rambling, Leonetti provides a number of fascinating, practical lessons learnt from adapting an arcade fighter into a blockbuster feature. He notes that working with such colossal practical sets required at least five generators simply to light characters having a conversation, and explains how opting for a purple palette over a traditional red distinguished Outworld from a cliché, hellish landscape. Leonetti also boasts that having assisted so many directors during his career behind the camera, he practically demanded to direct the sequel, asserting: “Innately, in many ways, I was meant to be a director.”
• Quarters to Millions, a NEW filmed interview with producer Lawrence Kasanoff. The producer expands upon the franchise’s origin story with a wealth of additional details, painting an impassioned perspective on the art of video game cinema. He argues that both mediums are simply adapting the broader mythology of Mortal Kombat, allowing audiences to receive different, yet equally substantial, payoffs from experiencing both. Refreshingly, Kasanoff also takes full personal responsibility for excitedly pushing the sequel into production far too soon and too fast, making for a humbling piece of retrospection.
• The Heavyweight, a NEW filmed interview with designer and suit performer Tom Woodruff. Woodruff Jr. fondly recollects the opportunity handed to his company, Amalgamated Dynamics, when stepping up for such an effects-heavy film. Crucially, he reveals that he not only helped to design Goro, but was also the man sweating inside the physical suit. The interview offers superb detail and in-depth technical explanations regarding exactly how they brought the four-armed monster to life on screen.
• Mortal Kombat: A Journey Behind the Scenes featurette. A wonderfully nostalgic promotional piece from 1995, complete with a fuzzy VHS aesthetic. While the cast and crew spend plenty of time waxing lyrical about how exciting the film is, the behind-the-scenes clips are genuinely entertaining—such as a moment where Robin Shou performs a dramatic stunt fall, prompting the crew to hold up scoring cards reading ‘9.5’ to a round of applause. Notably, both Anderson and Kasanoff are effusive in their praise of Shou and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, stressing that casting genuinely talented Asian martial artists was the absolute key to their blockbuster success in Hollywood.
• On-set interview bites with the cast and director and B-roll footage. Presented with neither rhyme nor reason, these assorted production clips are strictly for completionists, offering little in the way of revelation or entertainment value. The individual soundbites are all lifted from the primary featurette, and are better there when intercut with the raw footage of the actors performing their fight choreography.
• Theatrical trailers.
• Image gallery.

Disc 2—Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

• 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by Arrow Films approved by director John R. Leonetti.
• NEW audio commentary with director John R. Leonetti moderated by filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat.
• NEW audio commentary with comic book expert and podcast host Dave Baxter. New audio commentary with comic book expert and podcast host Dave Baxter Whilst including a podcaster seems like the obvious avenue for a bit of sharp, critical commentary, this is maybe the most boring feature as Baxter listlessly reels off character backstories from Wikipedia, scant quotes from cast and crew interviews, and offers absolutely no personal reaction to the film being watched.
• The Queen of the Night, a NEW filmed interview with actor Musetta Vander. It is an odd choice to make this the sequel’s sole actor interview, though Vander’s delightfully camp performance remains a highlight of the film itself. Stranger still, the interview is conducted with utter sincerity regarding the material and character; this approach becomes unintentionally hilarious when intercut with footage of her in a purple leotard delivering ridiculous dialogue. Not a single negative word is even implied regarding the film’s disastrous reception. Instead, Vander remains personally thankful for a role that defined her career trajectory of playing larger-than-life villains, noting that sci-fi crowds remember these films far more reverently than her more conventional roles.
• Techno, Taiko, Orcho, a NEW filmed interview with composer George S. Clinton. This feature offers a fascinating insight into how the film’s bombastic, unrelenting soundtrack was devised. When test audiences rejected a traditional orchestral temp score, the studio realised the youth market wanted something far more modern. Clinton breaks down his three-pronged soundscape—combining thumping techno beats, traditional Asian gongs and drums, and a brassy, “testosterone-driven” orchestra—to create an audio experience as eclectic as the visual adventure. Tellingly, when Clinton highlights his favourite musical moments, they are drawn exclusively from the first film, further emphasising how little anyone on this release wishes to discuss the sequel.
• The Man of a Thousand Deaths, a NEW filmed interview with stunt performer J.J. Perry, who played Cyrax, Scorpion and Noob Saibot. Though this feature charts Perry’s entire career before finally arriving at Mortal Kombat, it remains a genuinely engaging watch. Perry details serving in the military, learning martial arts in Korea, impressing Jean-Claude Van Damme at his very first audition, and eventually finding his footing as a top-tier stuntman. His approach to Mortal Kombat is well worth a listen; he speaks with great respect about how each stunt performer brought their own distinct school of martial arts to differentiate the characters, and explains how those styles had to be embellished and exaggerated for the big screen.
• On-set interview bites with the cast and director and B-roll footage. In contrast to the first disc, these assorted B-roll clips and soundbites were seemingly never edited together into a polished promotional package. Ultimately, it’s nothing special and strictly for completionists.
• Theatrical trailer.
• Image gallery.

Cast & Crew

director: Paul W.S Anderson (Mortal Kombat) • John R. Leonetti (Annihilation)
writer: Kevin Droney (Mortal Kombat) • Brent V. Friedman, Bryce Zabel (Annihilation) • (both based on the video games by Ed Boon and John Tobias).
starring: Robin Shou, Bridgette Wilson, Linden Ashby, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Talisa Soto, Trevor Goddard, Chris Casamassa & Christopher Lambert (Mortal Kombat) • Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, James Remar, Sandra Hess, Lynn “Red” Williams, Brian Thompson, Reiner Schöne, Musetta Vander, Irina Pantaeva, Deron McBee, Marjean Holden, Litefoot, Chris Conrad, J. J. Perry, Dana Hee, Ed Boon & Keith Cooke Hirabayashi (Annihilation).

The post Mortal Kombat Kollection (1995-97) appeared first on Frame Rated.

The sword and sorcery epics of the 1980s are defined as much by their limitations as by their popularity. For every grand, era-spanning concept, there was a real-world constraint. In Conan the Barbarian (1982), director John Milius’s brawn and ambition had to contend with whether Arnold Schwarzenegger—physically perfect for the role—could turn in an even passable performance.

That same year, Albert Pyun’s The Sword and the Sorcerer did decent business but was savaged by critics, who bandied about words like “nonsensical” and “inept”. Tragically, stuntman Jack Tyree was killed during production after falling 80 feet from a cliff edge and missing the airbag. These were ridiculous films, but people cared about them—and, in this case, even died for them.

With contemporary eyes, it is clear that Schwarzenegger imbues Conan with both its otherworldliness and its euro-sleaze charm. The Sword and the Sorcerer, like Conan and Highlander, now maintains a devout cult following, and qualms about quality seem by-the-by. The junkiness of these films is as inextricable from their appeal as any weapon or sword fight.

A year after Ridley Scott’s fantasy dud Legend (1985)—which struggled critically and financially before becoming, yes, a cult favourite—Highlander arrived. Yet it was actually Scott’s earlier swordplay spectacle, The Duellists (1977), that inspired it. American screenwriter Gregory Widen riffed on the concept of two enemies engaging in a series of duels over 16 years, retrofitting it for a high-fantasy audience. In Highlander, the warriors would be immortal, and their battles would span centuries rather than decades.

Fittingly for a story pilfered from a more successful film, Highlander feels charmingly derivative in almost every element—cobbled together from the discarded scraps of the previous decade’s pop filmmaking. It didn’t open at Cannes as Scott’s film did, nor did it have a screenplay by a heavyweight like Oliver Stone (Conan). But it had something—perhaps just the right buzzwords—and its $19M budget made the production more expensive than the year’s biggest blockbusters. Mind-bogglingly, Highlander cost half a million more than James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), several million more than Top Gun (1986), and three times the budget of Platoon (1986). It was a massive gamble, then, to feature a virtual unknown in the lead role under an Australian director known mostly for music videos.

Christopher Lambert plays Connor MacLeod, a Scottish warrior from the 16th-century Highlands whose clan likes to march around pastures, clap each other on the back, and laugh heartily at everything. The French-American Lambert was picked by director Russell Mulcahy while leafing through a magazine, where he spotted the actor in his Tarzan garb for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). As Mulcahy recognised, Lambert certainly had the right look. His heavy brow makes his eyes seem to retreat, and his permanent frown, accompanied by the hint of a smirk, suggests something villainous. Like Schwarzenegger, or Steven Seagal, Lambert is better at posing than talking.

Part of the issue stems from the accent. In the 16th-century scenes, Lambert tries out a dialect more perplexing than any of the film’s lore. It doesn’t sound like a bad Scottish accent; it sounds like a language never before encountered on Earth, made all the more galling by the actual Scottish actors and extras surrounding him. Lambert is stiff, awkward, and seems slightly embarrassed by it all. Rather than legitimising the production, the sheer scale of the endeavour—backed by that sky-high budget—gives it a whiff of absurdity. The Highland locations are astonishing and the costumes convincingly intimidating, yet rather than rising to meet the scale, Highlander shrinks under its own confused ambition.

The mandatory battle scenes are serviceable but creaky. Most of the action, particularly the swordplay, feels lumbering. Almost a decade earlier, films like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) had shown how sharp editing, choreography, and stunt work could make a sword fight riveting and dangerous. By the time broadswords are clanking slowly together in Highlander, it feels like we are witnessing the final fizzle of a flash-in-the-pan trend.

Mulcahy has more success with atmosphere than with action or emotion. Primarily a music video director (save for his under-appreciated 1984 outback creature feature, Razorback), he fills every frame with mist and gaudy lighting. His wide lenses are almost fish-eyed, moving through sets with a sense of purpose sorely lacking elsewhere. The fact that Highlander often looks like a large-scale music video—an effect intensified by the Queen songs littering the soundtrack—actually works to its benefit. There is something garish about the aesthetic: a hugely expensive yet somehow cheap-feeling activation of the senses through movement, sound, and violence. It’s a film that refuses to rise above its pulp, comic-book conception.

Highlander is at its most cartoonish when it plonks us down in 1980s New York City. For some reason, MacLeod is one of the few remaining immortals in our world. These immortals can only be killed by decapitation. One day, they will converge for “The Gathering” and fight until only one remains—because, as the film repeats, there can be only one.

Now, centuries on, MacLeod goes by the name Russell Nash and leads a quiet life as an antiques dealer, livened up by occasional sword battles with ancient enemies. In the opening scene, MacLeod squares off against one such baddie in the car park of Madison Square Garden. It sets the tone that we’re shown action before we learn anything about the stakes, or even who these men are. They jump across car bonnets, slicing the air with swords that cut through brick pillars and metal pipes. His rival, a middle-aged man in a suit, retreats via a dozen or so backflips. Here, Mulcahy has more success with the action, as he does later in a car chase through lower Manhattan. He comes alive as a director when the film is embedded in the garish, grimy streets of 80s New York.

The film flits between past and present as MacLeod learns of his magical destiny. In one of the more baffling segments, a game Sean Connery appears as an Egyptian swordsman named Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, who works for the Spanish king. Connery’s natural sparkle is in full force, even when delivering the film’s most egregious dialogue. He speaks of a power-transference dubbed “The Quickening”, warning MacLeod, “You must learn to conceal your special gift until the time of the gathering.” Why MacLeod “was born different” and what this means for humanity is largely unexplored. Instead, we get odd-couple hijinks as Ramírez demonstrates MacLeod’s immortality. Out on a rowing boat, Lambert shouts, “I don’t like birds! I don’t like water! I’m a man, not a fish!” before turning to Ramírez to bellow, “You look like a woman, you stupid Haggis!” It isn’t the scene you’d show someone to convince them the film is secretly brilliant.

Nor would you show them the scene where Connery and Lambert duel on the jagged rocks of the Highlands. Here, a mind-blowing location and excellent aerial photography cannot make up for how anaemic and laboured the choreography is. It perfectly demonstrates Highlander’s broader failings: all the money and scope in the world aren’t enough to make it feel legitimate.

Instead, Highlander is best enjoyed as an imitative oddity. Connery’s fantasy figure feels pulled from a misunderstanding of both Zardoz (1974) and Alec Guinness’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. MacLeod’s 16th-century wife, Heather—whom he must leave because immortals cannot have children and outlive their spouses—is a fair maiden designed entirely to give our hero an emotional obstacle. This goes for her modern-day counterpart, Brenda (Roxanne Hart), an NYPD forensic scientist and metallurgist. Stumbling across the Madison Square Garden crime scene, she finds a rare, ancient shard that leads her to MacLeod, with whom she inevitably falls in love. Then there is Rachel (Sheila Gish), MacLeod’s secretary. Now middle-aged, her bond with him goes back to the Second World War, when he rescued her from the Nazis as a child. Their dynamic is given little attention; there is something unspoken and mildly depressing about a Holocaust survivor devoting 40 years of her life to pining after her uncharismatic rescuer.

That Highlander fails to tie its disparate threads together only makes it more fascinating. This is especially true of the film’s scene-stealing villain, Clancy Brown’s “The Kurgan”. His appearances are erratic, but Brown makes the most of every second on screen. He growls, bellows, and stalks the New York streets looking like a cross between a Terminator and a member of The Warriors. To hammer home that he’s a true villain, he slaughters rivals, absorbs their powers, and licks the hand of a repulsed priest. “It’s better to burn out,” he proclaims, “than to fade away!” What that means in this context is irrelevant; nothing makes sense, but Brown delivers it with total conviction.

The street-punk film The Kurgan inhabits, the cop procedural led by Brenda, and MacLeod’s fish-out-of-water tale rarely mesh. The fact that Highlander went on to produce numerous sequels, TV shows, and comic spin-offs makes perfect sense. There is a hyperactive inability to focus on any one strand of the story, leaving us with a jumble of ideas told in true, image-first music video fashion.

It’s never boring, but it is curiously empty. The “chosen one” trope is best used by directors interested in applying it to real human fears. Take The Matrix (1999), where the concept of the saviour springs from modern isolation and capitalist anxieties. Or consider Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), a sumptuous film that is as much about the tragedy of time as it is about monsters. These films use their genre foundations to explore our deepest desires.

For a film trading in the concept of outliving the world, Highlander is bizarrely short-sighted. Instead, it barrels ahead with showy set-pieces, including an eye-popping battle outside the massive neon Silvercup Studios sign. There is nothing inherently wrong with the stunt-show finale—it has all the pyrotechnics and quick cutting you could ask for—but it is completely unclear why this is the emotional climax to a film that earlier featured MacLeod looking upon the mountains, wife in arm, as Freddie Mercury wails “Who Wants to Live Forever.”

It is a film pulled in a thousand directions, resulting in a feature-length sizzle reel of better movies. When an immortal is slain, they absorb their rival’s power through a storm of blue lightning. Windows blow out. The killer stands, arms outstretched, screaming as the energy fills them. This is what Highlander aims to be: a film that absorbs and outdoes its peers. But like a sponge dipped in someone else’s bathwater, it ends up soggy and stinking of a stagnant pool.

UK • USA • NETHERLANDS | 1986 | 111 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

4K Ultra HD Collector’s Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

The 4K Ultra HD presentation of Highlander is absolutely superb. Without a doubt, the film’s visuals and distinctive style are its main draw, and the immense clarity and depth of colour on display here make this a mandatory purchase for any fan. The film’s bold palette runs the gamut from the harsh, high-contrast blacks and whites of 1980s New York to the rich blues, greens, and misty greys of the Scottish Highlands—all of which are beautifully rendered. A light, natural layer of grain is preserved, maintaining a wonderfully filmic, cinematic texture throughout without ever looking overly scrubbed.

Sonically, the presentation is equally impressive. The legendary soundtrack by Queen is mixed loudly, but it never smothers the mix, proving rousing rather than overbearing. Dialogue remains crisp and intelligible throughout the film’s chaotic tonal shifts, while the action sequences—particularly the roaring car chases and explosive pyrotechnics—possess a satisfying, tactile heft. All in all, the sheer sensory upgrade of this restoration makes it well worth tracking down.

• NEW artwork by Sophie Bland.
• Removable O-ring so the clean artwork can be displayed.
• 100-page collector’s booklet.
• ‘From Script to Screen: In Search of Lost Scenes & Forgotten Immortals’: 84-page booklet including lost scenes and unfilmed script excerpts with new analysis from HIGHLANDER expert Jonathan Melville.
• 32-page collectible Titan Comics minibook.
• 2 posters: one of new art, one of original theatrical art.
• The Immortal Attraction of Highlander: Looking back at four decades of Highlander magic. This hour-long documentary, directed by Naomi Holwill, is carried over from StudioCanal’s previous 4K release, but it remains an essential inclusion. It is both expansive and informative; perhaps it is the experience of watching the film’s clips stripped of their dialogue, but the featurette does a remarkably good job of convincing the viewer that Highlandermight actually be a work of secret brilliance.
• A Kind of Magic: Music go the Immortals. This is as indispensable for Queen devotees as it is for fans of the film itself. It is a rarity in modern cinema to have a soundtrack entirely crafted by a single rock band, and it is nigh-on impossible to imagine Highlander without Freddie Mercury’s vocals. The grandiosity of both the film and the band represents a marriage made in heaven, and this extra delves deeply into that legendary collaboration.
• Capturing Immortality: Interview with photographer David James. Unit and stills photographers are an under-appreciated breed, making this profile of David James a incredibly welcome addition. Alongside his memories of the Highlander set, James touches upon his work with luminaries like Steven Spielberg, and the featurette includes some spectacular, rare behind-the-scenes photographs.
• There Can Be Only One Kurgan: Clancy Brown remembers Highlander. Given that Clancy Brown steals every single scene he inhabits, it is only fitting that his retrospective interview is the most entertaining of the lot. A natural raconteur, Brown balances infectious enthusiasm with a refreshing groundedness when discussing his career. Hearing him reminisce about his time as the film’s signature villain is a total joy.
• Audio Commentary with author Jonathan Melville.
• Audio Commentary with Russell Mulcahy.
• Audio Commentary with Russell Mulcahy, William Panzer, and Peter Davis.
• Interview with Russell Mulcahy. Another extra carried over from previous releases but still worthwhile to hear Mulcahy talk open and honestly about the process of making the film, as well as its troubled reception and ensuing cult fandom.
• Interview with Christopher Lambert.
• Making of Documentary in 4 Parts.
• Deleted Scenes.
• Audio Commentary with Russell Mulcahy.

Cast & Crew

director: Russell Mulcahy.
writers: Gregory Widen, Peter Bellwood & Larry Ferguson (story by Gregory Widen).
starring: Christopher Lambert, Roxanne Hart, Clancy Brown & Sean Connery.

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A tour of a Hollywood studio led by guide Olivia (Allison Janney) ends with Henry and James, two Minions—the gabbling yellow pill-shaped creatures (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) whom we first saw in Despicable Me (2010)—whom Olivia claims “saved” Old Hollywood. Cut to a Minion tribe serving several masters, typically ending with Henry and James sabotaging them through their antics, before they come to Hollywood and are mistaken for performers after disrupting a film set. Gifted a camera by director Max (Christoph Waltz), James decides to make a monster movie based on his drawings. Assisted by Henry, James summons Goomie (Trey Parker) to fill his cast—a pint-sized Cthulhu with designs of his own…

Minions & Monsters is surprisingly fun. I think the Minions are what the Despicable Me franchise was always meant to evolve into. Freed from the restraints of standard kids’ movie tropes and structures, they’re closer to Looney Tunes productions. The plot of this one is frequently nonsensical in its particulars—a robot romances a suffragette, for goodness’ sake (that’s a whole subplot I didn’t mention above)—but in the best, zany cartoon way. And the theme of Old Hollywood is splendidly done, chock-a-block with nods for film buffs. Toss in Lovecraftian lore? You’ve got me.

There’s a charming wackiness mixed with genuine film-buff references woven throughout the movie, blending genres like horror and science fiction with the black-and-white era slapstick of the Steamboat Willie variety. The jokes and nods come so thick and fast that it’s actually worth watching more than once to catch everything you missed, like a parody film from the days when those weren’t absolute junk. In fact, if you’re looking for a parody-style film, I’d vastly recommend seeing Minions & Monsters over Scary Movie (2026) this summer; the cartoon is so much more engaged with what it’s parodying, more amusing, and strung together with a narrative through-line than the frankly embarrassing latest Wayans brothers picture.

It’s a miracle that Illumination managed to get its name attached to a movie this good. Founded in 2007 by Chris Meledandri, the studio produces a vast majority of product that is junk. In fact, I might be willing to go out on a limb and say that apart from the Despicable Me movies and their Minions-themed derivatives, it’s all junk. Apart from the relentlessly bland Mario movies, the films from its stable are largely low-rent animal pictures (Hop, Migration), mixed in with a couple of bad-to-middling Dr Seuss titles (The Lorax, The Grinch).

The Minions movies are like diamonds in the very, very rough. As cultural objects, they’ve led a peculiar life over the past sixteen years. Debuting in Despicable Me, of which they were the breakout stars, they were quickly and inevitably overexposed, their likenesses adorning as much merchandise as they could be slapped on. They then became notorious as the unlikely stars of boomer memes shared by everyone’s aunt. There was a time on Facebook when you couldn’t move for stills of Minions attached to some weirdly conservative sentiment or non-joke like, “My generation went home when the streetlights came on!”

Their first film as stars was Minions (2015), followed by Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) and now Minions & Monsters. According to their lore, their abiding goal is to serve villains, and they travel the Earth in search of their next “big boss”. It’s a testament to director Coffin’s vocal abilities that he can create distinguishable personalities for the yellow Tic-Tacs. I never once confused Henry with James, or Dick (their aptly named, unpopular leader), or Edd (a deaf Minion who helps them out).

All of the voice acting here is either great or good. Parker adopts a childlike voice similar to his South Park schtick, which really works for Goomie, the little Cthulhu who has shades of Cartman in his inflections. Waltz really works as an Old Hollywood director, Max being a clear nod (if you’re in the know) to the real-life Austrian-German Erich von Stroheim, who made the silent classic Greed (1924). Minions & Monsters could only have been made by filmmakers with a deep love and knowledge of the period and genre films. It takes as one of its plot points the transition from silent films to sound, subtly satirising how this jump in technology ended careers when once-beloved actors revealed they had less than matinee-idol voices.

Many nods are made to the era of silent comedy, with riffs on Charlie Chaplin films like Modern Times (1936) in a scene where the Minions travel between cogs in a giant machine, and a recreation of the famous Buster Keaton gag where a man survives a house’s facade falling on top of him. There’s an argument to be made that adults will get more from this Minions movie than children.

Along with the Old Hollywood themes, it includes the Cthulhu mythos of HP Lovecraft, the pre-eminent 1920s horror writer—not just with Goomie, but also a couple of friends he brings along the way who look like creatures or alien gods from stories such as The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936) and At the Mountains of Madness (1936). One particularly memorable scene pays homage to silent film chases as a squid-like monster pursues Henry around a studio backlot. The homages start almost as soon as the film does, with the Universal logo melting into old moviemaking styles.

The animation is bright and lively and the plot has a pleasantly freewheeling quality to it, reminiscent of the type of storytelling you might find in works like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or the tales of Terry Pratchett: genre-savvy, comedic sci-fi and fantasy material. It works so well as a parody film that the temptation as a reviewer is to just list gags and bits. I’ll try to abstain so your entertainment remains (mostly) fresh. Suffice to say, the yellow Tic-Tacs are back, and they’re ready for their close-up.

USA | 2026 | 90 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Pierre Coffin.
writers: Brian Lynch & Pierre Coffin.
voices: Pierre Coffin, Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeff Bridges, Zoey Deutch, Bobby Moynihan & Phil LaMarr.

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In 1981, the science fiction novel VALIS was published. It was a rambling odyssey portraying and stemming from a fraying mind, featuring a protagonist who existed as two distinct entities. The book’s first-person narrator, who occasionally refers to himself as though he is part of the story’s action, discusses the delusional headspace of Horselover Fat, the novel’s true protagonist. Fat believes he has unlocked the key to the universe through a far-fetched theory involving Watergate, aliens, and the Roman Empire. The catch is that the narrator is Horselover Fat, but, aside from one or two references to this, he is too displaced from reality to reconcile his dual identity.

Fat was a stand-in for the book’s author, Philip K. Dick, one of the most prolific science fiction writers in the genre’s history. What separates Dick from his highly esteemed peers—such as Wells, Asimov, and Bradbury—is how deeply personal his writing was. He didn’t just explore the ways mental illness and drug use took their toll on him; he brought readers into his worldview, where reality is impossible to discern. Reading VALIS, it becomes clear that Dick held contradictory views about deciphering truth from delusion. On some level, he knows his theories about the universe don’t hold up to scrutiny. Yet another part of him, just as earnest, well-meaning, and curious as his other self, is as sure of these convictions as he is of anything else in this earthly realm.

From 1974 onwards, when Dick experienced epiphanies that caused him to believe he was the reincarnation of an apostle of Jesus Christ, the author’s work took on a simultaneously more personal and philosophical bent. He explored the nature of reality by turning his own fractured psyche inside out, letting readers try to pick up the pieces of his jumbled mental state. That he could do this so freely while creating coherent, even masterful works of fiction is nothing less than miraculous. The most famous of these post-epiphany novels, A Scanner Darkly, was published in 1977 and set in 1994, 12 years before Richard Linklater would helm his film adaptation.

A Scanner Darkly follows Bob Arctor, an undercover police agent spying on himself and his friends. Thanks to the high-tech ‘scrambler suits’ at their disposal, Arctor’s identity is a mystery to his colleagues and employers. In their presence, he wears the suit at all times. Draped over his flesh, it projects images of different people, a new face forming before the old one has fully vanished. The suit is constantly in motion, though Arctor’s real life is depressingly stagnant as he and his burnout friends succumb to the drug addiction he has been assigned to stamp out. Substance D, the main drug of consequence in both the book and film, is what this protagonist must investigate. It is also ruining his life.

Who is Bob Arctor? If only he knew. To his colleagues, he is Fred—a faceless employee to make office-cooler talk with, but nothing more. To his drug-addicted buddies—James Barris (Robert Downey Jr), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), and Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane)—he’s a fellow adventurer, ready at a moment’s notice to join their schemes and descents into cosmic unknowns. Another member of the group, Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), is Arctor’s girlfriend, though you’d hardly know it from her aversion to his touch.

Somewhere deep within this fractured protagonist’s mind is a shimmering image of a wife and children whom he abandoned and, presumably, will never see again. Are they even real? They’re real to Arctor, but what does that tell you when the man is knee-deep in drug-induced hallucinations, all whilst engaged in a hunt to track down himself?

Linklater’s film, like the novel from which it was faithfully adapted, doesn’t hold your hand through its distortions of reality. Dick happily left readers in the lurch as to what separates reality from hallucination. The rambling hijinks of Arctor and his friends are frequently amusing, with their digressions forming shaggy-dog stories in an otherwise tightly plotted film. Are you supposed to be worried about the future of a world where surveillance and government deception reign supreme, or lightly giggling at the stoned ramblings of Arctor’s housemates, Barris and Luckman? These disparate tones don’t undercut one another; they only add to the intended confusion.

One moment you’re watching a stranger yelling into a loudspeaker about a plausible government conspiracy before being thrown into an unmarked black van by nameless government goons. The next minute, you’re basking in the ambience of three stoners trying to sustain a conversation, as their addled brain cells practically bounce off one another to come up with a semi-coherent thought. It’s easy to dismiss A Scanner Darkly’s tonal disparities, especially when the machinations of its plotting are occasionally impossible to discern—it happily pulls you in different directions—but there’s a beautiful formula lurking within this film.

It’s murky by design, leaving you wanting more: a better understanding of how this police force operates, more time spent exploring this protagonist’s dual identity, and more glimpses into how society at large responds to this paranoia-infused world. These elements don’t go unmentioned, but there’s always room to imagine a scope far wider than what Linklater affords.

A Scanner Darkly is haunting precisely because of these limitations. It presents a nightmarish world that you don’t immediately identify as such, even when the clues are there, because much of it is dominated by low-urgency misadventures. The biggest snag of all is that you can never pinpoint the exact moment it becomes a waking nightmare. That’s when you look back and realise it was all it ever was. The good times were the greatest trick of all, fooling you effortlessly.

As a coherent feature film, A Scanner Darkly doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. But its unevenness is a flaw that ultimately works in its favour, hoodwinking viewers before unveiling its grand message on the horrors of drug addiction. As a result, the film never feels didactic or unearned. Besides, what better ploy could Linklater have pulled than deceiving the viewer in a film crowded with deceptions? The central metaphor of drug addiction seems obvious, but the plot is intriguing enough to warrant investment in how it unfolds.

The film is largely a comedy, too, until you reach that inevitable point where you find you’re no longer laughing, and haven’t been for some time. That’s when composer Graham Reynolds works his magic with some of the most haunting compositions you’ll find in cinema. They are as sorrowful as they are bleak, embracing the desolation of long-term drug abuse. Keanu Reeves’ performance is masterful, even if it appears an unlikely choice at first. He is a talented performer, but a limited one, with a naturally vacant expression and a voice that embodies confusion and invites pity so freely that it feels too effortless to be intentional. Whether he’s portraying the spaced-out bliss of drug addiction or the existential dread it begins to impose, it’s clear that no other lead actor could have done this character justice.

A Scanner Darkly lives and dies on its bold animation choice. Just like Linklater’s Waking Life (2001), the film incorporates rotoscoping animation, where scenes were shot on location as a live-action project and then animated in post-production. This unique blend of styles lends an uncanny quality to these characters and their movements. Each figure is instantly recognisable—especially given this impressive line-up of A-list actors for a low-budget, experimental film—but there’s something not quite right about the experience. They’re a touch removed from clean-cut, straightforward animation, making it feel as though the entire calibration of the film’s visuals is just slightly askew. This is used to great effect during drug-induced hallucinations, while Downey’s knowingly obnoxious ramblings and Harrelson’s depiction of the wacky stoner make these aimless scenes feel lived-in.

But nothing is ever as immersive as A Scanner Darkly’s nightmarish qualities, which effortlessly carry the spirit of the book over to the silver screen. In the novel’s afterword—which is also depicted in this adaptation before the end credits—Dick dedicates the book to the friends he lost along the way to drug abuse, whether through death or debilitation. He cites himself amongst these poor souls. It’s a heart-wrenching piece of writing, as brief as it is moving—a eulogy even for those still alive who have been changed forever by their addictions. Linklater’s adaptation might not always seem crystal-clear in what it’s going for, but it carries over the essence of Dick’s writing beautifully, intentionally miring it in a haze of confusion before unveiling this story’s tragic depths.

USA | 2006 | 100 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Richard Linklater.
writer: Richard Linklater (based on the 1977 novel by Philip K. Dick).
starring: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, Angela Rawna, Chamblee Ferguson, Lisa Marie Newmyer & Dameon Clarke.

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