by Kevin Lovell

Capsule review: ‘Blackout’ is an entertaining and often fairly bloody werewolf tale that’s quite different than many of your average werewolf films, exploring the psychological struggle of our lead as he tries to piece together the reality of his situation while trying to find a way to stop it before things grow further out of hand and those he cares about suffer the consequences. It’s a generally solid, entertaining and at times quite emotional werewolf film that changes things up from the standard formula in some intriguing ways.

DISC REVIEW

The Blu-ray release of ‘Blackout’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation with the film’s original 1.85:1 Aspect Ratio. The video presentation looks wonderful as a whole and delivers a clean, sharp and richly detailed presentation from start to finish that never suffers from any notable troubles or faults along the way. Detail is impressive throughout with everything from character specifics and vehicles, city streets and trees, along with the forest and werewolf details looking spectacular, while colors are bright and clean and nicely balanced by capable black levels and shadowing that hold up splendidly throughout. Overall, this is a great high definition presentation that looks quite gorgeous at every turn and it should easily please fans of the film as well as first time viewers.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. This multichannel soundtrack offers a clean, crisp and at times nicely immersive audio presentation throughout. It takes advantage of all five available channels in order to send music, nature, action and vehicle effects, along with more whipping throughout the various speakers when appropriate, all while making certain that all dialogue and other audio elements that might be occurring simultaneously with one another remain clean and fully audible. Overall, this is a solid 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack that makes a great complement to the film and shouldn’t disappoint in the slightest.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Darky Sky Selects Limited Edition Blu-ray release of ‘Blackout’ features a nice collection of bonus content that fans of the film should enjoy. Included on the release is an ‘Audio Commentary with Writer/Director/Editor/Producer Larry Fessenden’, in addition to an in depth look at the making of the film in ‘Blackout: Behind the Scenes’ (running approximately 77 minutes in length), plus a look at clips from Fessenden’s monster-like outings in ‘Larry Fessenden’s Monsterverse’ (running approximately 6 minutes), a ‘Monster Mash Photoshoot Timelapse by Beck Underwood’ (4 minutes) and the ‘Blackout Audio Drama’ (26 minutes). Also included is the film’s ‘Teaser Trailer’ (2 minutes), ‘Theatrical Trailer’ (2 minutes) and a physical 12-page booklet with an introduction by Fangoria’s Phil Nobile Jr.

Film Rating: 7/10
Disc Rating: 9/10

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