What They Say:
Open war against humanity rages. Five survivors, lost and on the run. The pursuit is relentless, the bullets are dwindling and the battle is everywhere. This is a 24hr look into their lives. Fight or die. Starring Dominic Monaghan (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, ”Lost”) and Shawn Ashmore (X-Men 2&3, The Ruins, Frozen).
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original English language track only in 5.1 encoded using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. The film is a pretty sparse work in general so the mix here doesn’t get much of a workout. The bulk of it is either quiet or dialogue as the action pieces are few and far between, though they’re decently done. The feel of those segments is done with a bit of a quick burst approach and some strong loud moments, but there’s not a lot in terms of directionality for it. The dialogue side works a bit better as there’s some decent moodiness that’s put into play to convey certain scenes and going with a generally quiet approach to the mix that sets the atmosphere right. But overall, it’s a decent if unexceptional mix that comes across cleanly and clearly without any problems such as dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in theaters in 2012, the transfer for this film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The film is done in a black and white style, but it’s more nuanced than that as you get into it. At first it looks like it’s going with that approach, but instead it’s going for a bleak look with everything washed out. When color does come into it, it’s very muted and earthy in tone and very minimal at that. That ends up catching your eye more and reinforcing the bleak feeling that the visual presentation as a whole has. The transfer here captures the look well as it has that whole real and gritty side that certainly fits the tone that’s being sought out there. The film look works well as the darks maintain a solid feeling about them and detail holds up well, though it’s not looking to be a strong film in that area.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Directed by Douglas Aarniokoski and written by Luke Passmore, The Day is a 2012 Canadian film that got a very limited run in the US through Anchor Bay in just twelve theaters, which made for a meager $20k box office total. Part of the WWE Studios slate of films, the picture didn’t surface until earlier this year for me as I came across a trailer somewhere, recognized Shawn Ashmore from his stint in three X-Men films and found myself curious based on the premise. Though it’s easy to say it’s a film trying to cash in on the Walking Dead popularity, and I’m sure there’s some subset of truth to that, the simple thing is to understand that films like these have been made for decades. While some of the special effects are more advanced than they would have been forty years ago, this film could have been made and looked the same in the 70’s as it does today.
The premise of the film is certainly simple as we follow a group of five survivors in a post-apocalyptic world that was once a group of twelve. What happened to the others is never mentioned, but these five are definitely falling apart overall as they’re weak, sick, running low on food and supplies and is desperate to keep moving to find a place to survive in. How the world went to hell is not dealt within the slightest, but all that we know is that there are groups of cannibalistic survivors out there that everyone is in fear of. These clans are powerful in their territories and knowing that they’re all about keeps those that aren’t cannibals on the move. With one of their members, Henson, slowing them down due to being sick, they opt to get out the coming storm that’s about to hit by taking refuge in an abandoned farm house. It makes sense to set up there for a bit and avoid the storm before moving on. But once you stop moving, you become an even easier target.
Honestly, it’s easy to see how this will unfold, especially since the movie clocks in at an hour and twenty-four minutes – with credits. The five survivors, two women and three men, are sparse in their dialogue because of their overall weariness and what they’ve been through. The ostensible leader, Rick, has a dream of finding a place to start truly living again since along the way he acquired a pair of jars with seeds that could provide them with real sustenance, but everyone else is just trying to stay alive and ahead of what’s out there. There’s some snippy moments between people that fits the situation and the worry about Henson and his illness, but mostly the real divisive nature that comes in early on here is that some want to get moving again while others think its best to sit tight and stay for a bit so Henson can recover. And with the big storm coming through, it certainly makes sense to sit tight.
Naturally, the house itself is a big trap laid out by the cannibals, things go south quickly and it’s a situation that’s all about attrition as the cannibal group shows up in waves and the survivors use the house as a way to defend themselves. We get a bit of background material at times for one of the survivors, Adam (played by Ashmore) as we see how things went bad when his wife and daughter were taken by cannibals awhile back and that’s certainly emptied a lot of life out of him because of that. Interestingly, these brief flashbacks are the main area of color we get, but even that’s pretty washed out. This helps to give him a little more for the viewer to connect with, but here’s just such a sense of emptiness about the group as a whole, and the minor internal conflict within them about whether to fight or flee once they know the cannibals are coming, shows that there’s not a strong group dynamic here overall.
While The Day has a pretty straightforward premise, works like these can be made something more by the trappings of the story. The story of survival is basic and the character dynamics don’t offer much, especially since people tend to do stupid things repeatedly as is the norm in films like this, but you can latch onto it a bit more when you know the why of the situation. The why of it never enters into it here as it’s just something that happened, and it’s not even clear what kind of apocalypse happened that put everyone in this situation. This may work with some other things, especially if you saw particular types of monsters or zombies ambling about, but having groups of people turning into territorial cannibals in the space of what seems like maybe ten years at most? It just doesn’t work.
In Summary:
Sometimes a trailer can get you to watch a movie you know you shouldn’t. I had seen a trailer for The Day awhile ago and threw the film into my Netflix queue and the disc came in and literally sat here for four months since I had so many other things to watch. With a short running time and a very basic and bleak approach to presenting the story, it works well enough in what it wants to do but it lacks the bigger picture to make the more personal elements work right. The cast handles things well enough, though naturally motivations are weird at times and it makes odd leaps that are admittedly a staple of the genre in many ways. I really liked the visual style of it since it tried to do something a bit different there, but that can carry it only so far. Fans of this genre will see all the staples of it here but nothing that will let it stand out among the sea of similar works. Which is unfortunate because it could have done just a bit more and been a bit more interesting.
Features:
English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Language, English Subtitles, Spanish Subtitles
Content Grade: C-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Released By: Anchor Bay
Release Date: November 27th, 2012
MSRP: $24.99
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
