- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24
- Audio Codec: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
- Region: A (Region-Locked)
- Rating: R
- Discs: 1 (1 x Blu-ray)
- Run time: 91 Mins.
- Studio: Anchor Bay Entertainment
- Blu-ray Release Date: October 18, 2011
- List Price: $29.99
[amazon-product]B005CA4SKG[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase The Howling Reborn on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:1.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Film
[Rating:1.5/5]
Where there are vampires, werewolves must follow, right? I suppose that is the reasoning behind giving us this vapid reboot of the 1980s horror flick The Howling. Enter: The Howling Reborn. You can pretty much add it to the pile of useless twenty-something gothic horror we are forced to suffer through endlessly these days. It plays like a really bad extended episode of The Vampire Diaries and offers an opportunity for young fans of Pretty Little Liars to get a glimpse of Lindsey Shaw. Besides those things, it offers nothing, unless your idea of “romance” is lines like “Why me?” “Because everything else is in black and white, but you’re in color.” Kill me now. Oh, no, wait, does that mean I’ll turn into a charming, but useless young werewolf too? Uh, never mind then.
In case you still want to know what the “story” is to this clunker, on the eve of high school graduation, eighteen-year-old Will Kidman (Landon Liboiron; TV’s Terra Nova) finally gets the girl he’s been dreaming about, Eliana (Shaw) throughout high school, but he also finds he’s going through some serious biological changes. He’s turning into a werewolf. He survived an attack in his mother’s womb when she was killed by a werewolf – or was she? Now there is a pack of werewolves led by a woman claiming to be his mother that want to force him to join them and Will must choose between his primal urges as a werewolf and his love for Eliana. Oddly enough, Eliana doesn’t bolt right out the door the minute Will starts talking aloud about “thinking” he’s a werewolf and even sticks around when she finds out he’s one for real. Umm, right. Even the werewolves the few times they actually turn into wolves rather prancing around as preening, muscular teens in this ridiculous film look silly. How this one got out of the boardroom, I will never know.
Video Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Reborn was shot in high definition on a RED One camera at 4K resolution and it looks rather pristine and digital throughout most of this AVC/MPEG-4 1080p/24 encodement from Anchor Bay. Most brightly lit scenes don’t show much video noise at all, but darker scenes do have some, but it tends to look a bit soft and less offensive than usual for video noise. The biggest issues with the overall image here are skin textures, black levels, and the overall contrast of the image. Skin textures look rather smooth and waxy in a lot of the scenes, black levels are very washed out most of the time, and overall contrast is not very great at all.
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is good, but it could have been so much better. Low frequency extension is deep, but tends to get a bit boomy and out of control. The surrounds have a nice amount of atmospherics that hold the mix together, but there is an odd use of discrete sounds that sound out of place, since things are mostly front-heavy, until we get to the last third of the film, when there are some gimmicky pans of voices around the room and such.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2/5]
There isn’t much on offer in the supplementary department, but fans of Pretty Little Liars might find the audio commentary with director Joe Nimziki and and actor Lindsey Shaw a nice inclusion.
The supplements provided with this release:
- Audio commentary with writer/director Joe Nimziki and Actor Lindsey Shaw
- The Making of The Howling Reborn (1.78:1; 1080i/60; 00:29:57)
- Storyboard Gallery (1080p/24)
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Howling Reborn is an absolute mess. My advice would be to avoid it like a rabid dog on a full moon.
Additional Screen Captures
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[amazon-product]B005CA4SKG[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase The Howling Reborn on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:1.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2/5]
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