The Revenant [Blu-ray]

I just got this film on Blu ray from my German store and watched it in English.

It's an excellent film, funny, inventive, sad, happy, crazy, bloody, violent, tragic and personal. It was strong through beginning, middle and end and I laughed a lot, especially at the end. It is an excellent zombie film.

The picture and sound are very good. The acting is very good. The effects are excellent. This is a director who worked as a special and visual effects guy on a lot of major sci fi films (I looked on IMDB and he worked on The Abyss, Lost Boys, Bubba Ho Tep, etc etc etc etcs and he clearly knows what he is doing. This film looks great, the effects are great and a lot of fun.

This film is a MUST for any zombie fan. Also for any fan of buddy horror comedy films like Tucker and Dale vs Evil.

I just wish there were more films like this around. I hope the director makes some more films soon. His last film before the Revenant was in 1996!

This mix of action, horror and comedy is quite enjoyable. There are a few moments it would had benefited by a better budget; but still the movie is work watching.

The BD is not spectacular; better than the DVD but not on par with other releases

A combination of intriguing clips from this on the net and good reviews here convinced me to give this film a shot, but I have to say I was very much let down. For a film with a less than massive budget the fx are excellent, and the quality of picture and sound are pretty good too. The acting is variable, as is direction. But the script really lets it down. Normally the writing and ideas are the strong point of an indie film, but though this has some funny ideas and an entertaining concept, it just doesn't work. It's too garbled and scrappy, veering from gore to comedy to sentiment without ever really making the elements work together. There are moments when the plot suddenly skips a beat, hurling you into a new scene without logic or connection; I actually rewound once, because I thought my copy must have skipped or I'd nodded off and missed a bit. But this wasn't the case. Frequent drug references make me suspect that the team behind this had been indulging in a bit too much of that type of recreation themselves, and the script was cobbled together as they came up with 'cool ideas'. Some scenes could have been funnier if the direction or acting had had that little bit of comic timing, but I'd say there were just as many that simply aren't funny unless you're viewing from a chemical haze.

The blu ray is a good transfer, no issues with sound or vision. The extras are three commentaries, a short making-of and 12 minutes of deleted scenes. I did watch the deleted scenes in hopes that some of the disorienting plot leaps would be explained, but they were not very interesting and to be honest, it seemed pointless putting them on the disc at all. On the whole, I'd say this is one I'd strongly recommend you rent before buying. It may be that it appeals to your sense of humour more than it did mine. But for myself I think Deadheads covers much the same ground, and with a lot more laughs.