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becomes a thrill-ride, not solely through their expert modulation of their suspense pieces and shock effects, but thanks to the fine en- semble work of the cast, who in- vest the film with a lot of life before the machinations of death take over. Harris and Eriksen make a resourceful and touching screen duo, so much so that one is al- most reluctant to praise them in- dividually; together, they invest the film with the suspense of pending life—the pending disclosure and pending passion of a love affair postponed too long—that is sud- denly placed in perpetual peril. Before they more fully inherit the film, Isabelle steals the first third as Tamara, one of those charac- ters who get under our skin as an uncontrollable and not especially likeable force of nature, making her an unexpectedly dear price for the story to pay. It’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that there comes a time when we must kiss Tamara goodbye (there must have been jokes on the set), and when this happens, the whole tone of the picture shifts with startling gravity, the galloping good time settling down to keep its promised body count. If the film’s first half is unexpectedly playful and buoy- ant, it is the second half that is most surprising and lingering in the mind, building to a spent and sobering conclusion that surveys all the vacant, abandoned loca- tions of the story in a manner that plays like, but possibly wasn’t, an intended nod to Antonioni’s L’eclisse.


The problem with most slasher films is that they are designed without the necessary sense of mischief which characterized the capital works of Hitchcock, Mario Bava and John Carpenter in this area. By investing all their focus on the artistry of their makeup ef- fects departments, these films of- ten default to tedious exercises in nihilism. This was the fault with


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SEE NO EVIL, which assigned no value to the lives it was designed to mow down. What is excep- tional and joyous about SEE NO EVIL 2 is that it uses the genre to celebrate life in all its variety, in laughter and shyness and mo- ments of resolve, and the dance of love whether tentative or care- less, until its story must finally keep its promises to the franchise and the genre—at which point we are made to feel something, re- peatedly—in the final tally, per- haps something more than the genre has traditionally taught us to expect. Not everyone will ap- prove of where this film ultimately goes, but its final port is a coura- geous one and wholly consistent with the Soskas’ previous work. It is bound to provoke discussion. Lionsgate’s SEE NO EVIL 2 is presented in a 1.78:1 screen ratio with a highly charged, lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack. The film is accompa- nied by optional English SDH or Spanish subtitles and the disc in- cludes a UV digital copy and ac- cess to a digital copy download. There has been some controversy about the quality of the Lionsgate transfer, but Mahlon Todd Will- iams’ digital camerawork was lim- ited at the source by shooting conditions in the dark and under artificial light that gives much of the picture an intentionally queasy color bias. Within those bound- aries, the disc looks quite good and the soundtrack is effectively manipulative.


The disc extras include “Twisted Twins” (10m 44s), a profile of the Soskas that is particularly suc- cessful in explaining how they di- vide their duties on-set and showing their rapport with cast and crew. “Autopsy: Dissecting the Kills” (8m 46s) examines each of the deaths as special effects coups, and “Kane’s Goodnight: An Icon Reborn” (7m 40s) uses footage from both films to build a case for


Glenn Jacob’s effectively brutal portrayal.


I haven’t yet seen THE ABCs


OF DEATH (2012)—a film pro- duced by Ant Timson and Tim League, composed of 26 two- minute suggestions of how people might die, contributed by such filmmakers as Bruno Forzani & Helene Cattet (AMER), Angela Bettis (ROMAN), Xavier Gens (Frontier(s)), Jason Eisener (HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN), Ti West (V/H/S) and others—but its follow-up is a fountain of maca- bre creativity, encompassing J- horror, black humor, political commentary, feminism, sexual politics, surreal satire, Bill Plympton animation and even stop-motion animation. The out- standing segments are Robert Morgan’s “D is for Deloused” (the stop-motion one), Kristina Buozyte’s “K is for Knell,” Jerome Sabel’s harrowing “V is for Vacation” and the closer, Chris Nash’s deeply unsettling “Z is for Zygote.” Of course, your mileage may differ—there is a lot of vari- ety here, and it’s all very watch- able. And, if you should ever find yourself thinking otherwise, the next segment will be along in a few minutes.


The Soska segment—“T is for Torture Porn”—feels a bit insub- stantial, even in this context, and it crams in a wealth of abusive unpleasantness directed toward its star, Tristan Risk (Beatress in AMERICAN MARY), who is shown being aggressively manhandled before she unleashes her inner Kraken. (Indeed, the T should have been for “Tentacle Porn.”) It doesn’t help matters that it’s placed alphabetically amid some of the most visually and concep- tually ambitious segments in the feature, but one feels rushed through a blunt sketch of humili- ation and inexplicable mutant re- venge that could have used more development and pay-off. That


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