South of Heaven (2008)

Studio: Synapse
Theatrical Release: 2008
DVD Release: October 11th, 2011
Rating: Unrated
Review by Craig Sorensen

Roy Coop (Adam Nee) finishes his tour of duty and returns home to visit his brother Dale (Aaron Nee) and to write the best-selling novel that will make them both rich and famous.  However, Dale seems to have his own get-rich scheme in the form of kidnapping the daughter of a violent mob boss.  Two men show up at Roy’s door mistaking him for his brother.  Fast forward a few days (because I don’t want to write up the whole fucking plot) and Roy is missing every finger but his thumbs and had his face charred in the burning remains of his great American novel.  Finally Roy is consumed with enough rage to take his revenge.

OK, so I think that director J.L. Vara has seen one too many Coen Brother’s movies.  The whole film stinks of their influence (and maybe a little Guy Madden in the sparse sets but I’ll give them that).  I like the Coen films just as much as the next film nerd but at some point you need to keep your hero worship in check.  The dialog in this could almost be a parody of their work, although I really don’t believe that to be the case.  If you’ve seen Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink then you should have a good idea what to expect here.  Really, this feels like it came straight out of that mid 90’s “cult” movie boom.  It would fit in with things like The Dark Backwards or Wilder Napalm.  You know, those kids who grew up with Blue Velvet and Raising Arizona and graduated film school in 1995 and went on to make films just like those.  Rather than just see what Lynch and the Coens did at the time and let that subtly influence what they thought was possible in the genres, they said “hey, let’s make a film just like those” (this is also what’s ruining the modern horror genre).  While that may be fun for the filmmakers, the audience can’t help but think “hey, haven’t I seen this before”?

Despite the (too) obvious influences, there are still things to like here.  I do think that this is fairly well directed for what it is.  The Nee brothers tend to overact quite a bit but they have screen presence, which is more than a lot of these types of films have.  Shea Whigham gives a good performace as the psychopathic hood “Mad Dog” Mantee.  There are a couple of nice cameos from George ‘The Animal’ Steele and Sy Richardson that put a smile on my face.  And the film is shot well, despite basically being confined to three sets.

The new DVD from Synapse looks great.  It’s not that old of a film so I doubt that there had to be much restoration done.  I would be more surprised if this looked like crap, especially from Synapse as they usually do very good work.  The sound was fine as well.  Russ Howard III’s score came through loud and clear, as did the dialog and effects.  I really have no complaints at all with the tech specs of this disc.  As far as extras go you get three audio commentaries (one with the director, one with the cast & crew and one with critics Todd Brown, Scott Weinberg and Devin Faraci) and a collection of short films by the director.  No trailer or image galleries with this one.