- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24 (23.976Hz)
- Audio Codec: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit)
- Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
- Subtitles Color: White
- Region: A (Region-Locked)
- Rating: PG-13
- Discs: 1 (1 x Blu-ray)
- Digital Copies: N/A
- Run Time: 97
- Studio: Anchor Bay Entertainment
- Blu-ray Release Date: January 15, 2013
- List Price: $24.99
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Overall
[Rating:3/5]
The Film
[Rating:1.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1.5/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(All TheaterByte screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG at 100% quality setting and are meant as a general representation of the content. They do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Film
[Rating:1.5/5]
Love Me, from director Rick Bota (TV’s Beauty and the Beast; TV’s Supernatural; TV’s The Vampire Diaries) making his feature-debut, purports to be a thriller that will keep you guessing until the very end. Well, about the only thing you’ll be wondering about with this film is why you bothered to sit through until the very end, if you make it that far.
Set in what seems to be a sleepy town called Ridgefield that could have been pulled right out of any number of the glossy, teen-angst melodramas Bota has directed numerous episodes for from The CW. The teens of the local high school are split into your average cliques of cool kids, freaks, rich kids and not so fortunate ones. Three months earlier, the disappearance of pretty blonde high shooler Melissa Kennedy (Kristina Elliott) set the townies abuzz, and her disappearance remains unresolved by the local, incompetent police department. And it’s no wonder, considering the way these people handle (or should I say, mishandle?) evidence. Grabbing pages from diaries with their bare hands, doing searches of comic stores, umm, with their bare hands, and no forensics team in sight, grabbing up a found sneaker with a pen – need I go on?
The first three-quarters of this “thriller” involves itself with the so sugary it’s terribly gauche and cliche romance between the “poor girl” Sylvia – who likes to spend her time at home making miniature sculptures in shoeboxes out of matchsticks and paper – and the recent bad boy, super rich transfer student Lucas Green (Jamie Johnston), who’s the quintessential tortured soul – puppy dog eyes, a leather jacket, and notebooks filled with personal reviews of “cool” records prove this. Lucas is, of course, the prime suspect in the disappearance of Melissa Kennedy since he was dating her when she disappeared, and Sylvia doesn’t seem to care when she finds out, even though he’s been covering this up from day one. Her friends don’t see it the same way, especially Harry (Jean-Luc Bilodeau) who’s had a crush on her since they were kids, and is a “tortured soul” himself, spending his spare time drawing comic books, and her BFF Dayln (Kaitlyn Leeb), who’s jealous of their relationship and has been sort of stalking Lucas since she had a brief thing with Lucas in middle school.
Eventually, you get past the awful angst and nonsensical melodrama in Love Me and realize that the entire film, as bad is it is on that count, is even worse as a thriller. If you don’t already know who the real killer is (not to spoil anything, but it’s quite obvious pretty early on, considering they spoil it right from the start too), then you need to maybe try out Lumosity.com to exercise your brain. This screenplay from Kat Candler is, in a word, lame, and the direction from Rick Bota leaves one feeling he’s out of his depths in the world of feature films. It has the feeling of a bad extended episode of The CW’s now cancelled campy series Ringer, but with teens.
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Love Me looks well enough in this AVC/MPEG-4 1080p/24 transfer from Anchor Bay, so one can’t really complain. It has nicely extended shadow details, good close-up details and little in the way of noise. There aren’t any post-processing misdeeds to speak of either.
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
The English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) soundtrack for Love Me is underwhelming. While there isn’t anything really wrong with it, per se, it doesn’t do much at all with the surround channels. That makes the overall sound seem a bit dry and front-heavy. For a “thriller” like this, atmosphere in the soundtrack really makes a big difference, and here they sort of dropped the ball.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1.5/5]
Nothing to get worked up about here either.
The supplements:
- Love Me: Behind the Scenes (1.78:1; 1080p/24; 00:07:14)
- Love Me: Stories from the Set (1.78:1; 1080p/24; 00:06:10) – Blooper reel
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:3/5]
Skip this one. It isn’t worth the money or the time to sit through. It’s not even worth renting, really. It’s that bad.
Additional Screen Captures
[amazon-product]B009WIHL0I[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase Love Me on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
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[amazon-product]B009WIHL0I[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase Love Me on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:3/5]
The Film
[Rating:1.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1.5/5]
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