"Laid To Rest" DVD

I EXPECT more out of Anchor Bay than this. Really I do. Anchor Bay has been responsible for giving me a LOT of positively amazing stuff, from Hatchet to Behind the Mask and a host of other nifty pieces. The Anchor Bay name has always meant quality to me. Quality. Innovation. A never-ending flood of high-quality top-drawer titles.

The LAST thing I expect from them is cheesy slasher flicks.

And today, we're talking Laid To Rest, a cheesy slasher flick involving a fellow with the charming nom de boucherie of Chromeskull. It's even on his vanity license plate, for crying out loud. Anyway, Chromeskull has this charming habit of filming his kills via the shoulder-mounted video camera he constantly carries around, and as such, he's racked up quite a set of tapes. But for a young woman who just woke up in a coffin, she may well be the first one to get away from Chromeskull. Now, Chromeskull's got to catch up to the one that got away, and anyone else around her, who will also be getting killed in a loud, grotesque fashion.

First off, I don't know what the deal with this chick is, the one played by Bobbi Sue Luther, actor and producer. Because apparently she also lost about fifty IQ points in her tango with Chromeskull, insisting people call her Princess Gemstone on the strength of vague memories of a childhood toy. She's also forgotten how to speak like an adult, calls caskets "dead boxes" and is quite thoroughly confident that the "police lady" is the answer to all her problems.

Worse, Robert Hall clearly didn't have a lot of editing help with this beastie because he's left a goodish number of plot holes in the piece. Really baffling plot holes, like how does Stephen have an online connection in the middle of the country but no telephone? It's sure not cable, and I saw neither dish nor antenna around his house. Or how impossibly sharp is Chromeskull's knife that he can cut a person's skull in half at the jawline? Or better yet, how does a small convenience store in the middle of nowhere stock microcassettes for Chromeskull's camera AND every kind of ammunition EXCEPT the kind the people trying to escape Chromeskull need, .45 ACP?

There are entirely too many problems with Laid To Rest. Thankfully, they're small, it's just that there's a great whopping LOT of them. When you add this to an overall lackluster presentation to begin with, you get a recipe for disaster.

Especially when you add on the ending, where everyone just seems sort of confused for a while, then the credits start in.

The special features include audio options, a commentary track, English subtitles, a making of featurette, a special effects featurette, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and a collection of trailers, most of which can only be accessed by starting the DVD. I wish they'd start making the trailers accessible from the DVD again, frankly.

All in all, this warmed-over drivel isn't worthy of Anchor Bay. I expect more from them, I really do, and half-baked slasher fare just doesn't cut it.

Laid To Rest
**
DVD
Directed by Robert Hall
Written by Robert Hall
Starring Lena Headey, Bobbi Sue Luther, Kevin Gage, Sean Whalen
Produced by Bobbi Sue Luther, Chang Tseng
NR
90 mins
2009

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