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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Scorned Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Allie Schembra
If you’re going to cheat on your lover, don’t get caught.  And if you do get caught, you’d better hope your lover isn’t secretly insane.  Kevin (Billy Zane, Titanic) learns the hard way when his girlfriend, Sadie (AnnaLynne McCord, 90210) discovers that he’s having a scorching affair with her best friend (Viva Bianca, Spartacus). Now Sadie has planned a romantic weekend getaway for just the three of them, complete with terror, torture and twisted psychosexual games.  The trap is set.  The party has begun.  And tonight, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.


Film (3 out of 5 stars)
The film starts with some very sexy text messages.  And then moves into the present time, which then quickly shifts back 28 hours.  From there, it catches up and we meet Sadie, Jennifer and then Sadie’s boyfriend, Kevin.  Little does Kevin know that after finding text messages on Kevin’s phone which prove he’s having an affair with Jennifer, Sadie invites Jennifer to the house under false pretenses.  Jennifer thinks Sadie has left Kevin and that Kevin has sent her the text message inviting her to the house.  When she arrives, she finds champagne, rose petals and a note with instructions leading her to the bedroom.  It’s at that point that Jennifer finds out that Sadie is not only still there but that she also knows about the affair and is now out for revenge.

Sadie begins her revenge spree, tying up Kevin and Jennifer and torturing them in various ways.  Sadie (an appropriate name for someone as sadistic (get it??) as her) as she is uses everything around her to help with her torture, including threatening Jennifer’s dog, to drugging her victims and using the tools that she finds around the house. While this is going on, local police are out searching for a prisoner who escaped from the nearby prison, and as luck would have it, Sadie comes across him and is able to work him into her plan.

I wanted to dislike this movie.  From the disappointing dialogue to the douchiness of Billy Zane’s character, Kevin, to the similarities and references to Fatal Attraction and Misery, it’s not a movie I thought I would enjoy.  But, I did.  A lot.  I’m always pleasantly surprised when I like a movie I don’t expect to like.  Billy Zane plays a douchebag really well, and AnnaLynne McCord plays a believable crazy person.  Despite the bad start to the dialogue, the random escaped convict, and not so great acting, it turned itself around and I really did enjoy the movie.
Video (4 out of 5 stars)
The 1080p, 1.78:1 transfer of Scorned was really good.  While the majority of the film took place at night, both in and out of a house, the colors were really well done.  In the daylight scenes, the colors were bright and clear and did not run together.  I especially noticed the green shades of the trees in one scene were so bright, the popped off the screen.  The blacks and muted colors in the night scenes were crisp and sharp.  Candlelit rooms had a realistic glow and the lights in the pool were also clear.
Audio (3 out of 5 stars)
Scorned is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 with Spanish subtitles and English subtitles for the hearing impaired.  The sound quality was good, though in the very beginning the rain on the windows was much louder than the dialogue and it was hard to hear without adjusting the volume.  After that, the sound was good, yelling and screaming wasn’t too loud and the background noises faded a bit and were not distracting. 
Extras (0 out of 5 stars)
There were no special features on this Blu-ray, which was really disappointing.  To be honest, I am not normally a “watch-the-special-features” kind of gal, but have lately found myself becoming more interested in the extras.  I was surprised at how disappointed I was that there are none for this movie.
Summary (2 1/2 out of 5 stars)

While I enjoyed the movie, the overall score is brought down a lot by the lack of extras.  This isn’t an edge-of-your-seat movie – it’s quite predicable – but it’s good enough to find a home in my small but increasing Blu-ray library.  

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