Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) is convinced by his psychiatrist (David Cronenberg) that he has been murdering people during blackout periods. Boone seeks refuge among the Nightbreed, a civilization of monsters that live beneath a necropolis called Midian. Boone learns he's innocent, and in an attempt to rejoin his girlfriend in a normal life, accidentally leads humans, intent on destroying the monsters, to Midian.
I've been waiting for the director's cut since I saw the movie opening night at a movie theater in New York City and noticed that scenes from the trailer were missing from the actual movie, and subsequently learned about the studio interference which led to reshoots that completely reversed the intentions of the film, which were to portray the monsters as heroes and the humans as monsters. The director's cut is not much longer than the theatrical cut and there aren't any "holy crap" new scenes added to the movie, but more time is spent on cementing Boone's relationship with his girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobby) and turning the movie's perspective back to one in which the monsters are definitely the sympathetic, peaceful, people that Clive Barker intended them to be. I always hated the exploding bloodbath that was the climax of the theatrical cut, but here a lot of nuanced scenes are woven into the fabric of Midian's apocalypse, that the feel of the climax completely changes. The restoration of the newly reintroduced footage is pretty seamless, especially considering the poor quality of some of the footage when it was rediscovered. I also sprung for the deluxe edition blu ray which has lots of extras in the form of making of documentaries, still galleries, and further deleted scenes that were not reintroduced back into the movie. I have only tapped the surface of the extra features, but it's a treasure trove I look forward to diving into completely.
No comments:
Post a Comment