Blu-ray Review: Wrecked

posted on
03.01.2012

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STUDIO: IFC Midnight
MSRP: $9.99
RATED: R (language and some violent content)
RUNNING TIME: 90 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:

“The Making of Wrecked” Featurettes
Theatrical Trailer

The Pitch

Survival thriller with a thespian.

The Humans

Adrien Brody

The Nutshell

Damn nature, you scary!

The Lowdown

So what would you do if you woke up at the bottom of a ravine with two dead people and a loaded gun next to you? You’d probably run right? Well, what if your legs were pinned beneath the caved in dashboard of the car, what would you do then? Well, that’s the predicament that our “nameless” protagonist played by Adrien Brody has to figure out before time runs out and the elements along with the wild animals rend him limb from Oscar-winning limb. The scary part is that they may not wait until he’s dead before they try to get their grub on.

This...does...not...look...good...

In between trying to figure out how to free himself from the wreckage Brody will encounter visions and/or hallucinations that will give him clues on how he got down there. This would be a perfect time to state that Brody’s has no memory. Yep, they threw in the ‘ol woke up in a car wreck without my memory scenario. It does keep the story interesting, though. Michael Greenspan makes his feature film directorial debut and I’d say the man has done a pretty good job with Wrecked.

The animals outside want to eat me

Wrecked was shot on the cheap and with an extremely minimal cast and crew and it doesn’t always show. These are real locations and real world climates. You can totally tell Brody was feeling the cold bite of the wind while sitting there all trapped and stuff. The film, at least in the beginning, doesn’t expand until after you’ve been with Brody stuck in the car for a bit. It’s as if the film wants to make you feel the pain and isolation of what the character is going through. This is also why the film is slightly above average. Another plus is that the film clocks in at just under 90 minutes without credits, so that helps move things along a bit.

I have yet to see 127 Hours, but have already heard of the numerous wannabe comparisons, but I really can’t comment on that since I haven’t seen the latter picture. I do give props to IFC and their Midnight banner for releasing non-typical genre pictures like this one. It does help that Adrien Brody is in it, because I’ve always liked the chap.

Good morning

The Package

Wrecked on Blu-ray is presented in 1080p; 2.40:1 widescreen. The film was shot in glorious 35mm and looks gritty as hell. This is a good thing. Grain levels are fairly consistent throughout the film and the color palette is lush when it needs to be. Keep in mind that we’re stuck at the bottom of a cliff for a good portion of the film, though. Contras does boost a bit, but it’s all aesthetics. Black levels also crush when they don’t have to.

The back of the case states that Wrecked states that it’s presented in Dolby Digital 5.1. This is true, but there is also a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless mix included. Bad labeling! The sound field is very aggressive and realistic. You may think twice about going camping or driving near a cliff after watching this film. Night time ambient sounds are realistic and the speakers do a good job of handling the various assortment of things that go growl in the night.

Wrecked is loaded up with a few featurettes, so don’t let the fact that they’re not actually listed on the back of the box sway you, if featurettes are your thing, that is. They’re the usual talking head fluff pieces that we’re all accustomed to seeing nowadays. “I was attracted to the script,” blah, blah, blah. The good news is that they are not very long and some of them feature some pretty rad location footage. I would suggest to those that film featurettes for a living that you should make sure that the cast and crew are in a positive state of mind before filming. I almost dosed off when Brody was talking about the project. You could totally tell he did not want to be there, but had no choice. I felt bad.