Plot: What’s it about?
After something hits their car and cause it to run into a ditch, four teenagers are stranded on a lonely country road with nothing around. They soon realize they may be in a lot more trouble than the first anticipated. They decide to walk along a fence they saw down the road in hopes that it will lead them to a house where they can ask for help. Upon arriving at the house they find it to be abandoned. They decide to split up as two of them walk back down the road to find help the remaining two stay at the house. Allison and Elliot begin to get impatient at the house so Elliot begins to explore the area. After entering the barn, Elliot is not heard from again. Trevor and Brian eventually find a police officer that is patrolling the area and explains their situation. Once they arrive back at the house they begin to look for Elliot and things begin to get strange. They discover that the barn is filled with large bats that seem to attack anyone that comes near them, but that’s not all they do. Once dead, the bats swarm the body, biting and gnawing on it and eventually raising it from the dead into flesh eating zombies.
A simple premise and good use of the unknown, The Roost does a good job as a low budget horror movie. Even though the bats and the “zombies” are not seen much throughout the movie, it does a great job of creating an unsettling atmosphere. If you enjoy interesting low budget horror movies where fear of the unknown is heavily relied on, then you will enjoy The Roost.
Video: How does it look?
Right off the bat you can tell that this one is super low budget and it doesn’t help that everything is shot at night. The quality of the video is very poor. I understand that movies like this use a grittier look to add to the movie, but I think the quality of this one is due to the budget rather than effect. Throughout the entire movie it is very noisy and grainy. In one scene in particular right after the car crash when the teenagers look over a bridge into the water below, you can’t even tell that it’s water because there is so much grain. I think that the amount of noise in the video transfer is a little distracting from the movie itself. I think it would have been just as effective if everything was clear. I hope that the grittiness of the film wasn’t done on purpose to try to add to the movie, but rather based on the low budget. The video is presented in 1.85: 1 anamorphic widescreen.
Audio: How does it sound?
The choice of a 2.0 Stereo track and a 5.1 Dolby digital track are both available on this disc. I don’t think a 5.1 track was necessary for this movie, as it doesn’t utilize it very much. At some points I completely forgot the movie was in 5.1 except when the loud crashes from the soundtrack would kick in. The soundtrack itself is very limited, there isn’t much music per say, but there were some loud instrument chords and screeches that were played at different points during the movie. The dialogue was pretty good throughout most of the film, although it wasn’t as consistent as most DVDs. There were times when the dialogue would get quite for a few words and then pick back up to normal volume. The soundtrack does the same thing. Between the inconsistencies in the dialogue and the soundtrack, I wish they would have had a better mix to the movie, but again It’s hard to do a lot on a low budget.
Supplements: What are the extras?
I am actually impressed with the amount of extras featured on this disc. As I’ve been saying throughout the review, this movie was shot on an extremely low budget. But for them to pack in a 30 minute behind the scenes featurette along with a 10 minute documentary on bats, and the short film “Prey” by the director Ti West, I think they did a pretty good job with supplemental material for this one. There is also a photo gallery and a few trailers for “The Reeker” and “The Curse of El Diablo” that round out the extras on the disc.
