LATE PHASES (2014) Blu-ray Review

Late Phases (2014) d. Adrian Garcia Bogliano (USA)

Retired Vietnam War veteran Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) has a disability and a problem. The disability? He’s blind. The problem? He’s been “reassigned” to a retirement community, or, in less politically correct parlance, an old folks’ neighborhood. As Ambrose puts it, “This isn’t where you go to live, it’s where you go to die.” Unfortunately, a bigger problem lies within the first, issuing forth once a month like a wolf in human’s clothing. Yes, Crescent Bay has become the favorite feeding spot of an insatiable lycanthrope, and the old soldier’s new neighbors are being picked off like so many sheep, quite possibly by one of their own. Will he be able to pick out/pick off the shapeshifter in time, or will the cycle of death and mutilation continue?

HERE COMES THE DEVIL (2012) movie review

Here Comes the Devil (2012) d. Adrián García Bogliano (Mexico/US)

A young Mexican couple (Francisco Barreiro, Laura Caro) takes a weekend jaunt to Tijuana with their two adolescent children (Alan Martinez, Michele Garcia). In a scene that recalls Peter Weir’s fascinating and haunting Picnic at Hanging Rock, the bored youngsters venture up a rocky hill, disappearing into a dark cave. As dusk falls and their offspring fail to return, the panicked parents call the police, haunted by guilt as they spend a sleepless, blame-filled night in a seedy hotel nearby. The next morning, the cops arrive with the kids in tow, but something is off – they seem distant, traumatized. Over the week that follows, the family is slowly torn asunder by dark forces from both within and without.

PENUMBRA (2011) movie review

Penumbra (2011) (1st viewing) d. Bogliano, Adrián García / Bogliano, Ramiro Garcia (Argentina)

The same day a massive solar eclipse is scheduled to take place, hottie Spanish rich bitch Cristina Brondo heads to Buenos Aires to show a prospective tenant her walk-up sublet, a transaction that reveals itself to be anything but standard. The purveyors of last year’s nitroglycerin-fueled chiller, the Bogliano boys go to great efforts to make their upper middle class protagonist as unlikable as possible (she tazers a homeless guy, reveals she’s having an affair with a married man, and just generally puts off everyone around her), the upshot being that when she finds herself in need of allies, they are few and far between. A well crafted thriller that treads familiar waters until its suckerpunch ending nudges into supernatural straits.