Blu-ray highlights for the week of April 22, 2008

The title for this week’s entry might as well be “Three Horror Movies I Haven’t Seen, or: The Probably-Good, the Maybe-Bad, and the Almost-Certainly-Ugly”.

Let’s start with the probably-good: The Orphanage (El Orfanato), the first film from Spanish director J.A. Bayona. This movie is being marketed with the line “Guillermo del Toro presents” much in the same way that Eli Roth’s Hostel was with “Quentin Tarantino presents”. It is not surprising, then, that The Orphanage has been drawing favorable critical comparisons to del Toro’s own The Devil’s Backbone. That’s reason enough for me to give it a rental.

The lesser two of this week’s Blu-ray releases after the break.

The maybe-bad: Sublime. I have a feeling this direct-to-video release isn’t the groundbreaking psychological thriller that its trailer made it out to be. Said trailer was vague enough as to be promising, yet critical response has generally been negative. I’ll admit that the “twist” of the film has already been spoiled for me, and while I won’t disclose it here, I will say that it was exactly what I expected. The only twist worse than one that is unnecessary and unmotivated (I’m looking at you, M. Night Shyamalan), is one that is both obvious and clichéd.

And lastly, the almost-certainly-ugly: One Missed Call. Now, this is a Blu-ray highlights column, so why am I listing something I wouldn’t recommend watching? Actually, the real reason I’m mentioning this movie is that it was discussed in the double-date scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, although not by name. Anyway, One Missed Call is yet another attempt to cash in on the success of The Ring. Instead of a murderous video tape, this time it’s a cell phone signal. Ooh, scary. (Actually I really liked The Ring, but I attribute that entirely to Gore Verbinski’s fantastic direction and the fact not even Ehren Kruger could screw up the source material, Ringu, which is one of the better J-horror films.)

Footnote: Yes, I’m aware that the “Ugly” in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was not a bad guy. I don’t even think Eli Wallach is that ugly. The whole movie’s flawed, dammit!