DVD Reviews

Case 39 (Blu-Ray)

Renee Zellweger isn’t exactly known for being in genre films so when I heard of her being in the supernatural thriller Case 39, I was more than a little bit intrigued. Would Zellweger be a scream queen, or would she fizzle and end up cowering in the corner? Unfortunately I ended up being too distracted by other things, good and bad, to really take note.

Renee Zellweger stars as a social worker who has been assigned the unusual and disturbing case of Lillith Sullivan… a girl with a strange and mysterious past. When Emily opens her home in an attempt to help Lillith, it turns into a deadly nightmare she may not survive.

Audio is presented in an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless track but it isn’t top of the line good. The track suits the film well enough but could have been better. Of course, much of the suspense created by the audio, or lack thereof, matched the actual lack of suspense found in the film. That being said, you might consider the audio a perfect match for the visuals. Dialogue is always understandable, though at times, it is slightly overpowered by the music. Surrounds range from light use to quite heavy. The hornet death sequence is a great example of heavy use of the surrounds. The hornets buzzing around give a real sense of being in the scene. Subtitles are available in English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

The video for this release is clean and clear on this AVC/MPEG-4 1080p/24 transfer framed at 2.35:1.  The image starts off a little bleak and washed out. Colours eventually become more bright and “accurate” as the story seems to get happier only for things to get dark and gritty later as evil takes hold.  Detail ranges from crisp in both well lit and in dark scenes to soft depending on the style of the film. Blacks are very inky throughout the film but skin tones range from accurate to pale in some of the high contrast scenes. Unfortunately, with a clean, crisp picture also comes the fact that a good deal of the CG imagery in the film tends to stand out and look less realistic. This is a pretty solid presentation for a less than stellar film with most of the problems seeming to be slightly intentional.

The disc opens with trailers for The Romantics, Paranormal Activity 2, and Mean Girls 2. These are not accessible from the discs menus. The main extra of the disc is a making-of featurette called “Filed Under ‘Evil’: Inside Case 39.” The piece runs about 8 minutes long and consists mostly of cast and crew interviews and a little bit of behind-the-scenes footage but has very little production insight. In fact, it’s basically everyone patting themselves on the back. Next up is “Turning Up the Heat Chill Factor” which runs about 4.5 minutes and takes a look at the makeup work for the burn scene. This is followed by “Inside the Hornet’s Nest” which is about 3 minutes long and is all about the hornet death scene which, while everyone who apparently read the script loved it, I personally found the scene out of character and unbelievable. “Playing with Fire” is a 4.5 minute piece dealing with the pyrotechnics used to do the burning house scene. A nice little extra though it was a little short. Finally there are 18 deleted/alternate scenes which can be watched individually or by using the Play All feature. To watch all the scenes will take you about 30 minutes and while you can see why most the scenes were cut, there are a few that would have added a new dynamic to the film. Unfortunately there are no commentaries on this release but oddly enough, there is no trailer for Case 39 on the disc either.

While good picture and sound may not save this release, I will still give it a recommend for at least a rental. The beginning of the film is quite good. It isn’t until the supernatural aspects of the film kick in that things start to get sour.  Callum Keith Rennie proves yet again why he is one of my favourite, underused and underappreciated actors. He practically steals every scene he’s in. Oddly enough, the film started going downhill as soon as CKR seemed to be finished his part in the film. If you really enjoyed the film, this Blu-ray release will adequately please but if you haven’t seen the film yet, try a rental first.

Review By Rob Harding