Blu-Ray Spotlight: A Creature Was Stirring
Damien LeVeck’s second horror feature sees a release from Well Go USA.
Holiday horror is something we’ve been getting a lot more of these days, and while some of it has been things fans of the genre have been asking for a good chunk of the rest is stuff we didn’t want in the first place. Some is made just to say it exists now, with no real care in the craft of a good story or experience where cost-cutting measures and the look or feel of a low budget is at the forefront of its marketing, somehow used in lieu of a good hook for its viewers. Why should we care? Because it’s low budget and movies are notoriously hard to make! Watch our low budget film!
For the most part Damien LeVeck’s sophomore horror film does not exhibit any of the above traits, and has set up something of an admirable gambit in making a creature feature. It is certainly a low budget affair, but does not go out of its way to show you that it is in any attempt to try to invest you in its events. The gambit herein is that of making a monster movie work within its budget but also connecting that to true emotional beats (it’s of my own opinion that true monster stories cannot exist without an emotionally human focus symbiotic to whatever the monster’s actions or motivations are) that engage us more than anything else going on in script or set. For its outset A Creature Was Stirring becomes something engrossing, but there is a late stage shift that pushes it for most into something noticeably different.
Faith is a nurse who has taken it upon herself to take care for her only child, Charm, as she navigates a chronic illness. Charm is a stay-at-home kid due to her illness which presents flu-like symptoms as her temperature fluctuates beyond the healthy norm. But her room also resembles that of a cell, with a padlock and bars on the windowed door to keep her in, as if her temperature gets too high she undergoes severe mood swings and is apparently prone to self-harm.
On Christmas Eve during a particularly inhospitable blizzard, two burglars break into their house to life anything they can for monetary value while trying to stay out of the cold. They run into Faith who severely wounds one of them, forcing them to stay and wait the blizzard out. The more time they spend there the more they realize Faith and Charm are not the people they may seem, and someone else has been moving in and out of the house they didn’t account for.
Video
A Creature Was Stirring is presented in its original 16x9 aspect ratio, technically 2.39:1, on an AVC-encoded Blu-Ray disc. It has a native playback of 2K which looks pretty nice — I’m unsure what cameras were used for the filming but it all looks consistent in how sharp details come across. There is a heavy usage of gels throughout this whole film, so much so that it’s immediately perceptible when gels are not being used, usually through a key light on an actor’s face or the background.
Its in-camera lighting has a blurry, bloom-like effect that affects the visible Christmas lights in certain shots, making those areas seem like definition has been lost in those areas and may distract a bit as it creates a thin wide beam that takes up a bit of space in the background each time. It may call attention upon itself more than it should but is far from a visual dealbreaker for the purposes of immersion.
The creature effects are captured quite well and keeps a consistent black level to keep that critter hidden in the dark effectively until it eventually is engulfed in lighting perhaps too bright for its own good. But the definition is maintained. The creature’s features from far away and under-lit shots pitch it as purposefully fuzzy, haunting, and alien while familiar at the same time (the desired effect). But when we get up close during the final act the light betrays the creature somewhat, making certain behind-the-scenes details more visible than what we’d assume is the intention. If you’re not turned off by most shots being drowned in blue, red, and green lights the visuals may not bother you, as it does add something of an extra layer of detail to the feel of the movie.
Audio
A Creature Was Stirring is presented with two audio options, a standard stereo mix and a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track in English. When utilized the surround elements fill in the visual space, giving much-needed pushes into feelings of tension and apprehension in the viewer, aligning with the shared fears of both the houses’ residents and unwanted visitors. The low end gets most of the workout on this disc but really serves to flesh out the sonic scope of such a limiting setting that makes the house feel much bigger than it is. Well Go’s audio mixing is generally hit-or-miss when it comes to 5.1 options, but their treatment for Creature really does the film quite a few favors. Also available on the disc are optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, labeled correctly as they do provide captions of sound effects, music, timbres of voice, and so on.
Special Features
Well Go USA provides only a trailer for the film along with their other titles’ trailers. Selecting the trailer for Creature will queue up the others immediately after, which play automatically on disc startup.
It is a little disappointing that a film that does have impressive practical effects in a genre that doesn’t get to see much of that anymore doesn’t have something on the craft of their film. Perhaps there just wasn’t any in the works during production. Maybe budgetary restrictions made it that only the film could have been made with no other parallel special features projects could be done. Despite the popular consensus on the quality of the film as a whole, the quality of the special effects and makeup is truly top notch, with a nice moment thrown in for fans of blood and gore in our horror. Examinations like a dive into the SFX work help to at least keep an eye or an ear out for projects that hire on such artists and let us celebrate them a little more independently while learning how they achieved the effects we enjoyed from the film. Tate Steinsiek, who provided the visual effects here, has also worked on Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich and Piranhaconda.
Final Thoughts
A Creature Was Stirring would be a promising notch in the belt of horror that Damien LeVeck directs, putting first-time screenwriter Shannon Wells’s story to the screen. It manages to take you in for the beginning of this journey, but a third act shift changes everything about what has happened before and unfortunately cheapens everything that made it enticing going in. It feels out of place, and leads to a resolution that the film wants you to feel strongly in such a way that we simply cannot. The trick the script pulls is sufficed to say shockingly contrived and expects us to traverse this obstacle in earnest without a second thought.
This comes not from the snapping of our suspension of disbelief, this is a monster movie after all; this betrays the subset of logic everything is built upon so when the shift occurs it could just as well changed the entire setting of the film, the time period, the performers, or anything else under the sun. It’s up to the viewer to come to their own conclusions about their entertainment value and whether the shift works for them. But there is an issue at the core of where the film has always been going that makes it feel like a big missed opportunity. However, the audio/visual treatment Well Go USA gives Creature is quite stunning, so on the merits of their technical achievements and most of the movie’s proceedings, I do recommend this title.
A Creature Was Stirring will be available as of Tuesday, February 13th on Blu-Ray and DVD from Well Go USA.
If you’d like to purchase a copy, consider the following outlets instead of Amazon, if you will:
DeepDiscount | Gruv
Disclaimer: Well Go USA has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.
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