| "The
Other Side" DVD
The dark side of the
afterlife has a revolving door policy in the Slamdance On the
Road presentation of "The Other Side".
While waiting for the
woman he loves, Sam North is unexpectedly murdered and sent, surprisingly,
to hell. Hell, meanwhile, is an insane combination of childhood
flashbacks and plastic wrap and not a whole lot of fire.
Anyway...now Sam's
in hell, or is until a few other denizens help him, bafflingly,
escape via a corrugated plastic tunnel conveniently located not
too far from where he landed in the first place. Naturally, the
management disapproves of such things--though if they actually
DID have a distaste for this kind of thing you'd think they'd
just seal up the damn corrugated plastic tunnel. I mean, come
ON. Why don't they just put up a big sign saying "This Way
Out Of Hell" and start advertising?
"Hey kids! Sick
of being assaulted by horrible demons round the clock? Longing
for old earthly comforts like breathing and water? Can't stand
the heat? Then get out of hell's kitchen! Come on down to the
Big Corrugated Plastic Tunnel! Easy access out of hell, twenty
four, seven, three sixty five! Just take a left turn at the giant
Cerberus, and if you come to the boiling pit of human feces, you've
gone too far! That's the Big Corrugated Plastic Tunnel, where
you'll say, hell may be damnation without relief, but the Big
Corrugated Plastic Tunnel is the next best thing!"
With such an unlikely
premise in place, we follow it up by having three invincible and
ludicrously gun-crazy bounty hunters called "Reapers"
dispatched to fetch him. And so, Sam's got to dodge the Reapers
and reunite with his one true love all the while trying to keep
his ass out of hell.
Which, of course, makes
for a difficult situation. Is he going to spend his life dodging
bounty hunters? Is he even human again? There are a whole lot
of questions that need answering in a ninety five minute block
of time.
So will they answer
those questions? They will, actually. But sadly, the results are
buried under a series of logical improbabilities, massive believability
problems and a series of fantastic action sequences.
The interesting thing
is that, not only is hell an easy escape in "The Other Side",
hell's bounty hunters are also roaringly inept. Despite their
flawlessly-set grimaces and seemingly invincible nature, they
can be fooled by surprisingly simple dodges and can be knocked
unconscious for several seconds by something so mundane as a two
by four. Though they can jump handily between human bodies, and
one of the bounty hunters has shapeshifting powers, it's amazing
how many trenchcoat-wearing unconscious men seem to be within
easy possession range for them.
And as we'll discover,
there are a LOT of hellish escapees roaming around in "The
Other Side". All you have to do is look for the vaguely wrench-shaped
tattoo.
Despite some serious
problems and huge difficulties in believability, "The Other
Side" is actually a pretty action-packed mystery thriller,
as Sam attempts to reconstruct what happened to his girlfriend,
and finds out plenty else in the process.
The ending is much
like the movie itself in microcosm, an action-packed and extremely
unlikely gorefest.
The special features
include Spanish subtitles, a director's commentary track, a behind
the scenes featurette, a visual effects featurette, deleted scenes
both with and without commentary, and trailers for "The Other
Side", "Night Junkies", "Naina", "Anonymous
Rex", "Cookers" and "Footsteps".
All in all, you could
do much, much worse than "The Other Side". Though suffering
from serious believability problems and horrendously unlikely
scenarios, it's got plenty of action to it, and is fairly fun
to watch. Boxes of bullets fly literally everywhere, and though
it's laughably unrealistic, it's still a fairly solid excursion
and worth a rental.
The
Other Side
**
DVD
Directed by Gregg Bishop
Written by Gregg Bishop
Starring Nathan Mobley, Jaimie Alexander, Cory Rouse, Poncho Hodges
Produced by Gregg Bishop
R
2007
95 mins
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