Why So Blu?

House In The Alley (DVD Review)

Scream Factory delivers its first real foreign film import in 2012’s Vietnamese ghost story House In The Alley, arriving on DVD May 27.  The case for the film claims that its the highest grossing film in Vietnam history.  That’s kind of unique and interesting that a horror film gets to claim that title for that of an entire country.  The film also is pretty low budget too, so I’m sure its likely one of the most profitable movies in Vietnam film history as well.  As an added bit of humor, the film was released on Valentine’s Day back in 2012.  And while it seems kind of funny, Valentine’s Day weekend is gangbusters for a horror movie as they work as great date movies.

Film 

We open House In The Alley with a pretty rough and discouraging scene of a woman going through labor.  We’re in a bedroom with our couple Thao (wife) and Thanh (husband) as well as Thanh’s mother.  We see plenty of blood on the bedsheets and Thanh’s mother informs him of the worst; a miscarriage.   The film then revisits the couple a week later and Thao is still bedridden and refuses to let the miscarried child’s body leave the home.    Thao begins to have strange visions and starts exuding weird behaviors.  On the other end of things, Thanh begins to experience a strange phenomena around the house.  He then decides he needs to uncover mysterious regarding his home in order to help his wife before things get to crazy and ultimately take a turn for the very worst.

I was very intrigued when I first heard about this film and all the raves that came with it.  The images and art I saw from the film were pretty creepy.  And, don’t get me wrong, the film is still a very solid horror film, but its not something we haven’t already seen before in the genre.  It falls in with that genre of films whose base of their mystery is something like Stir Of Echoes or The Ring.  This one I would classify as Rosemary’s Baby by way of Stir Of Echoes if I was the guy in the studio office pitching the screenplay.

Le-Van Kiet’s film comes at you in the slow burning variety.  The film takes its time and is slowly but surely building its dread, leading to the film going more all out in its finale.  I’m a fan of this type of pacing, but in this film things were almost going too slow at times.  And because you kind of have an idea of where the film is headed it sort of makes the trudging feel a little longer than it otherwise necessarily should.

There’s some really good gore in the film and nothing too over the top to make one believe this is an exploitative gore fest.  Where the film does excel is in some of its haunting imagery.  And the thing I enjoyed about it, was that it was a ghost story and didn’t really go too extreme with the ghosts and their effects.  Things are kept to a relative restraint and minimum in terms of scares, makeup and camera trick effects.

House In The Alley is a solid ghost story that provides some unsettling and spooky moments.  Le-Van Kiet shows enough here that I am definitely interested in checking out some of his other output listed in his filmography.  Its nothing you haven’t seen, but its a film that does do the things you have seen very well and makes them its own.

Video 

Encoding: MPEG-2

Resolution: 480i

Aspect Ratio: 1:78.1

Clarity/Detail: This is a rather solid looking DVD.  Detail is very much above average.  You can see texture on surfaces as well some good definition on fabrics and items (like…an axe!)

Depth: This is a DVD, so the picture proves rather flat aside from a few bright spots

Black Levels: Blacks are pretty strong and crushing does appear throughout.

Color Reproduction: Its not a bold or striking film in terms of color, but the blood looked rather rich.

Flesh Tones: This surprised me, while skin tones are usually pretty smooth on DVDs, this film featured high detail on facial features, including stubble and blemishes.

Noise/Artifacts: Nothing too damning.  Its a DVD so I’m going easy on it.

Audio 

Audio Format(s): Vietnamese 5.1 Dolby Digital, English Dubbed 2.0 Stereo

Subtitles: English

Dynamics: The film starts out pretty dynamic, but once it settles in its a normal compressed track.  Things sound clear, but lack that looseness of an lossless track.

Low Frequency Extension: Subwoofer usage was rather light.

Surround Sound Presentation: Mainly contains ambiance and a muted score.

Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue is front heavy, loud and clean.

Extras 

There is some extra art on the inside cover.

Play Trailer (SD, :49)

Summary 

Scream Factory gives as best a presentation a film can handle in their release of the Vietnamese classic House In The Alley.  There’s really no extras here to beef up what I considered to be merely a solid film.  If you’re curious about the film and you can find it to rent or stream (though, honestly their pricepoint for this one really is very reasonable to just outright buy it), I would definitely take that avenue first before renting it.  But, if you’re like me and a Scream Factory enthusiast, you need to have this one in your collection.  I am definitely looking forward to giving some further study in the future and showing it to others that crave unique takes on things in the genre.  This  is a good output for them as they continue to find some special modern films to put under their label.