________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DVDSleuth.com is your source for daily DVD news and reviews.
The Shed (2019)
RLJ Entertainment
Blu-ray Disc Released: 1/7/2020
All Ratings out of
Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: No Extras
Review by Mike Long, Posted on 1/15/2020
I have an odd confession to make – I actively avoid short films.
Now, if a short is truly short, like 6 minutes, I’ll watch it.
And, I obviously watch a lot of feature-length films.
But, if a movie is anywhere between 15-50 minutes, I will not give it a
shot. Why?
I don’t know. One would
think that I would be more inclined to invest my time in a brief movie as
opposed to an hour and a half, but I simply can’t do it.
However, I occasionally run across a longer movie which should have been
a short film. These films have an
idea, often a good idea, not necessarily an idea which can muster the prowess to
fill 90-120 minutes. The Shed
is a low-budget horror movie which is cinematic equivalent of two kids in a
trench coat.
As The Shed opens, a man (Frank Whaley) is attacked by a monster in the
forest. The man then drags himself
into a shed. Life is not much
better for Stan (Jay Jay Warren).
An orphan, he is forced to live with is his demanding grandfather (Timothy
Bottoms). At school, Stan and his
best friend, Dommer (Cody Kostro), are terrorized by a group of bullies who are
led by Marble (Chris Petrovski).
Adding insult injury, Marble is involved with Roxy (Sofia Happonen), Stan’s
boyhood crush. Stan’s depressing
life takes a turn for the weird when he discovers the monster now living in his
shed. This violent creature proves
to devour anything which comes near the shed.
Can Stan use this entity to his advantage or must he find a way to
destroy it?
In my recent review for
Girl on the Third Floor, I wrote about how young filmmakers must hate
old critics like myself, as I’ve seen a lot of classic films and I can spot
“inspiration” from a mile away.
Once the horror plot of The Shed arrived, I was immediately reminded of
“The Crate” sequence from 1982’s Creepshow, where Hal Holbrook leads
unsuspecting victims to an old crate which houses a vicious monster.
We get the same concept here as Stan realizes (well, Dommer convinces
him) that the shed and the thing inside can be an easy way to dispose of their
problems. This is an interesting
concept, even if it’s far from original.
The issue with this part of the movie is that it’s very underwritten.
We never learn a lot about the monster in shed, save for the fact that it
behaves by rules similar to those followed by vampires, and that it’s dangerous.
We definitely don’t get any more information about thing which created
this creature. Is it still out
there in the woods? I think that
everyone should be more worried about that.
While I love horror movies (y’all know I love horror movies), I actually found
Stan’s story to be more compelling than the thing in the shed.
A clever flashback illuminates us on how he came to live with his
grandfather, and we can’t help but feel for the boy with the torment which he
receives at the hands of the old man.
But, beyond that, this part of the movie is also underwritten.
Marble is a cookie-cutter bully and we don’t learn why he’s after Stan
and Dommer save for the fact that that’s what bullies do.
We know that Roxy and Stan have a past, but that’s murky as well.
The movie is about 60% drama and 40% horror, but neither is fleshed out
in the way that it should be. This
either could have been a heart-breaking story about a boy who the world has left
behind, or a crazy monster movie, and it turns out to be neither.
There’s no doubt that many will come across a movie called The Shed and
assume that it’s some sort of joke.
And, it easily could have turned into parody.
However, everything is played completely straight and the movie earnestly
wants to be taken seriously.
However, there simply isn’t enough content here.
As noted above, The Shed probably would have made a great short
film. We would have forgiven the
shortcomings with the story is the piece had narrowed its focus to Stan and the
shed. Writer/Director Frank
Sabatella does give the movie a nice look and stays classy with the gore, but he
can’t disguise the fact that this movie wants to be a mansion, but it’s simply a
shed.
The Shed
really does bring us a character named Dommer on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of RLJ
Entertainment. The film has been
letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs
at an average of 30 Mbps. The image
is very sharp and clear, showing no overt grain and no defects from source
materials. The colors look good and
the image is never overly dark or bright. The level of detail works well, as the
image is never soft, and the depth works well, as the image never looks flat.
The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio track which runs at 48 kHz and an
average of 4.0 Mbps. The track
provides clear dialogue and sound effects.
This track really comes to life during the finale when creepy sounds are
coming from all around the house. These
sounds emanate from the front and rear channels, providing a real sense of
space. The monster attacks deliver
palpable subwoofer effects.
The Shed
Blu-ray Disc contains no special features.