The Thompsons Blu-ray Review
An American Family in (and Near) London
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, December 30, 2012
Following a template created by Kathryn Bigelow in
Near Dark (1987), the writing and directing
team known as "The Butcher Brothers" have stripped the vampire legend of its mystical and
religious trappings so that they can use it for something else. Bigelow made a contemporary
western, in which an outlaw band roams the countryside, raiding and killing at will, until a
righteous father and son make a stand and dispense frontier justice. The future Oscar winner was
so determined not to have her cult classic typecast as a vampire film that the term "vampire" is
never used. The Butcher Brothers, which is the working name for Mitchell Altieri and Phil
Flores, also avoid the word "vampire", but the characters' fangs and red contact lenses tend to
give the game away. Still, the Brothers have transformed vampirism into a genetic disorder that
drives its victims to feed on blood, while amplifying their strength, speed and senses through
standard biological pathways. All the rest—sunlight, coffins, crosses, holy water, garlic, wooden
stakes, bat wings—have been dropped.
The Thompsons is a sequel to the 2006 film
The Hamiltons, which recounted the tale of four
siblings coping with the death of their parents. In the best gothic tradition, they gradually uncover
the family secret, which is that they're all "different". By the end, all four, plus a younger fifth
sibling they didn't know existed, have embarked on a nomadic existence for their own
protection. They've also assumed a new identity as the Thompsons. Their goal is to live under
the radar, but that turns out to be impossible.
Especially in the first half, which is the best part,
The Thompsons is told in a fractured
chronology knit together by the voiceover narration of the next-to-youngest brother, Francis (co-screenwriter Cory Knauf). We find him buried alive
in a wooden box somewhere in England, but
the explanation of how he got there proceeds by fits and starts.
The family of five siblings left America after a chance encounter led to a blood bath and they
became the object of a criminal manhunt. The youngest Thompson, Lenny (Ryan Hartwig,
replacing Nicholas Fanella from
The Hamiltons), was severely injured. In the world conjured by
the Butcher Brothers, the strange disorder afflicting the Thompson family leaves them as
vulnerable to injury or death as any other person. The eldest, David (Samuel Child), was told by
their late parents that, in a dire emergency, they could seek help in a small town outside London
called Ludlow. There they should ask for someone named "Manderson".
While David tends to Lenny in London, Francis ventures out to Ludlow on a scouting mission.
The remaining two Thompsons, fraternal twins Wendell and Darlene (Joseph McKelheer and
MacKenzie Firgens), wander off to Paris. The twins are irrepressible party animals who share
everything, including sex partners and meals—yes, it's kind of creepy—and as the film unfolds,
it becomes clear that they can't be trusted with anything serious. Francis is the reliable one. His
wanderings bring him to a country inn in Ludlow where the regulars stare at him like those in
An
American Werewolf in London, one of the Butcher Brothers' acknowledged inspirations. But the
landlady (Selina Giles) is a friendly sort, who promises to ask around about the name Manderson,
and her pretty daughter, Riley (Elizabeth Henstridge), is more than friendly to this lean and
handsome Yank with trouble in his demeanor.
A stranger should always be wary of getting too friendly with a local bar maid.
Without getting into spoiler territory, one can reveal that Francis' mission to Ludlow brings the
Thompsons face to face with an older, better established family of creatures suffering from the
same blood condition. But this family, the Stuarts, has embraced their fate, glorified it and
learned to manage it, even enjoy it. Indeed, the junior members, Ian and Cole (Tom Holloway
and Sean Browne), are vicious sociopaths of the first order (and their parents seem very proud
indeed).
Because of the news reports from America, the Stuarts have expected the Thompsons' arrival,
and at first they appear to be all smiles and welcomes. Their goal, so they say, is to join the two
families. Their real purpose is something else, which bring us back to that coffin in which we
first find Francis buried. Meanwhile, a brute named Cyrus (Sean Cronin) is dispatched to London
to deal with David and Lenny.
The Thompsons loses some of its momentum in the latter half; the ending drags on for far too
long. But the Butcher Brothers manage to sustain the energy of their jigsaw puzzle opening for a
impressively decent interval. Like all properly structured horror films,
The Thompsons has a
viciously gory opening designed to let an audience know what kind of ride they're in for. It's
significant, though, that these opening cruelties aren't the result of vampires feeding. They're
more like something out of the sadistic games in the
Saw franchise or a zombie biker movie. Or
even
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The Thompsons Blu-ray, Video Quality
The Thompsons was shot digitally with the Red system; the cinematography credit is shared
between two young cinematographers, David Rom, who shot the initial U.S. sequences, and
Matthew Cooke, who took over in the U.K., when Rom became unavailable. The image on ARC
Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is generally consistent with Blu-rays from other
Red-originated projects, in that it's sharp and detailed, has good depth of field and deep blacks,
and reflects the generally bland color palette that is typical of Red productions except where
someone has made a conscious choice to intensify and saturate colors in post-production.
Obviously, no such choice was made here, where the gentle earth tones of the English
countryside were intentionally a major element of the production design.
The single greatest flaw in the image is aliasing. This only occurs in a handful of shots, but it's
substantial and noticeable when it appears, always on a horizontal surface reflecting light back to
the camera. Whether this is an artifact from the initial capture, introduced at the digital
intermediate stage or in connection with Blu-ray mastering is impossible to say, but it's
surprising to see this kind of issue at this stage in the development of digital technology.
The Thompsons Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Despite being nominally a horror film,
The Thompsons has a fairly restrained soundtrack,
presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. Though filled with gore effects, the film is largely
dialogue-driven, and there's little of the elaborate sound-mixing that, say, Robert Rodriguez
might bring to the party. The occasional voice or sound effect is placed off-screen in the
surrounds, and the guttural, bestial roars of the vampires in their rampage mode are rendered with
depth and intensity. The serviceable score is credited to Kevin Kerrigan, who is part of the team
that worked on Michael Mann's
Collateral. More memorable are some of the atmospheric rock
tunes, especially those by a band called The Break Mission.
The Thompsons Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Vampire films have been a cinematic staple since Murnau's 1922 classic
Nosferatu and certainly
since Tod Browning's immortal
Dracula with Bela Lugosi nine years later. While we seem to be
in a period where vampire films are appearing in exceptional numbers, that is merely testimony
to the genre's enduring vitality. During the heyday of the studio system, westerns were produced
with equally numbing regularity, most of them forgettable, but when audience interest
disappeared, so too did the western (except for the occasional nostalgia act). The same will
happen with vampire films. For now, though, it's worth paying attention when someone tries to
make something of the genre besides another tale of teenage angst.
The Thompsons offers flashes
of genuine originality, and the film and the disc are recommended for those interested in a
change.
