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Released By: Shout! Factory
Released On:November 10, 2015
Director: Jose Manuel Cravioto
Cast: Tina Ivlev, Richard Tyson
Year: 2015
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The Movie:
Eve has got a lot going on; she's young, she's attractive, she's got a swell boyfriend who seems to care a great deal for her... and she's been chained to a mattress in a dirty basement for quite some time. Fortunately, for Eve, things are about to change, courtesy of the brick that she's managed to work from the cellar wall. When her captor shows up to give her some soup that he's lovingly prepared and presented with a single rose, she bashes him to a bloody, barely breathing pulp, and frees herself from her shackles. Her horrible ordeal would seem to finally be at an end, were it not for the fact that the house she's been imprisoned in is little more than an isolated shack in the middle of the desert.
Searching through the house for some idea of her location, Eve finds some clean clothes, a shower, keys to the van outside, a gun, and a number of photographs of other girls obviously in the same predicament that she's so recently found herself in. A bullet in the leg and a hastily-constructed leash convinces her captor to take her to free the other girls, with the agreement that she'll drop him off at a hospital once they're done. Arriving at the first house, it seems like the good guys are going to come out on top when Eve unchains a terrified girl, but things go horribly wrong when the terrified girl flees and impales herself on a wrought-iron fence. Similar events unfold at a second house, where a girl in a metal face mask flips out and attacks her rescuer, forcing Eve to employ drastic measures in order to defend herself.
Most would give up by this point, but not Eve. Determined to free every single girl that she's seen in the pictures, she has her hostage lead her around the city, uncovering a ring that deals in girls for sale. As they get closer to the final prison house, her captor hints more and more at a bigger picture that will make Eve realize that she should have just maybe called the police when she had the chance.
There's no denying that Bound To Vengeance has got some interesting ideas going on, and a fair bit of talent, as well. Jose Manuel Cravioto keeps things moving along at a fast pace, for the first while, anyway, coupled with a frantic and abrasive soundtrack. That, along with some pretty dark visuals and an overall gritty aesthetic do a convincing job of stimulating fear and unease. The acting capabilities of the two leads is nothing to scoff at, either, bordering on surprisingly good for a lower-budget venture.
The last third of the film, however (and it is a short film at about 80 minutes) shows some serious cracks in the formula as minor developments that are clearly supposed to be major developments fail to mix things up enough to keep it interesting. That, along with Eve's bad guy hinting over and over again at what Eve doesn't know sets the payoff up as being fairly obvious; not to mention that the last act of Bound To Vengeance is bound to being dragged out way longer than it should be, stifling the effective opening. By the time the credits roll, the interesting start has been fazed out by the memory of how poorly the film maintained its momentum.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Shout! Factory brings Bound To Vengeance to Blu-ray in an AVC-encoded 2.35:1 transfer that looks great. No detail is lost during the darker scenes, of which there are plenty, and the picture is crisp-looking while exhibiting a dynamic colour palette. No evidence of visual artifacts are to be seen.
Two soundtracks are available, a DTS-HD MA 5.1, and a DTS-HD MA stereo track. For the purposes of the review, I watched the film with the surround track. Dialogue was clear and consistent and balanced nicely for the most part, while the surrounds and LFE were almost overused, to the point of being intrusive. In some areas of the film, this worked well...not so much in others. Regardless, the track is sonically stable, with no hissing or other issues.
English Subtitles are included.
There are no extra features to speak of on this disc.
The Final Word:
A nice try, anyway. Bound To Vengeance starts off strong with a what could have been, and ends poorly with a what definitely wasn't.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
