THE PLOT THUS FAR
A teenage girl is brutally murdered, sparking a hunt for her killer. But in a town where everyone hides a secret, will they find the monster among them?
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“Hemlock Grove” is such a mixed bag. The second season picked up some, but when that Eli Roth influence started to wane…you could see the show’s warts. The creative scenes started to drop away and then we got really terrible acting. At times, the show felt like a community theater production of “Sleepwalkers”. Remember that movie? Cat people and stuff like that in Indiana? I think it was Indiana. Damn Hoosiers.
There is something about werewolves that has captured my imagination since I first saw “Wolfen”. The Lycan creatures never get a fair shake on film because their transformations require a degree of skill and an FX budget to make happen for a skeptical audience. Then, you’ve got to worry about telling a story that doesn’t devolve into the usual duality of man and beast. Between the period scene and the casual obsession with flesh, “Hemlock Grove” has a far superior understanding of the creatures than I’ve seen in rival programs. However, the latter part of the season doesn’t know where to build upon this. Do you keep telling a soap opera about a weird town or do you just let the werewolves cut loose and do their thing? It’s complicated.
The Blu-Ray comes with commentary and featurettes as the special features. The A/V Quality is quite impressive when compared to how it streams on Netflix. The 1080p transfer is damn near flawless, as Scream Factory continues to kill it this year. The DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track is pretty sharp, but it gets few moments to really work all channels at once. In the end, I’d recommend a purchase.
RELEASE DATE: 10/07/2014