The Film (3/5)

A mother, Sara Hansson (Lina Sunden) looks for her missing daughter Jenny, who was lost inside a building with her father. She is stuck in an uneasy alliance with a janitor, Vaktmästaren (Martin Jirhamn) who is rather creepy. The two of them, along a character named VHS-Mannen (Patrik Karlson) venture to find Jenny, and encounter strange horrors along the way such as shadow creatures. They find the daughter but there is still something even more sinister going on in the darkness. And it isn’t the creatures.

Feed the Light, which was said to inspired by HP Lovecraft, is one oddball of a movie. For some reason it reminded me of both Cube and Sin City. It’s a different kind of film which may not appeal to everyone. It’s a creepy, bizarre and surreal horror movie. The story doesn’t get lost in subplots; and thankfully due to the short running time, the film doesn’t really drag or lose focus. The acting is really well done, and even though I don’t understand Swedish language, I can tell by the actors’ expressions that were giving their all. There are some really gross, disturbing scenes and images in this movie, including a few firsts for my eyes. Director Moller, who I admit to not being all that familiar with, certainly has an eye for being a creative, eclectic filmmaker. If he is striving to be different, he is succeeding.

Audio/Video (4/5)

Severin unleashes Feed the Light on Blu-ray in 1:78:1, in 1080p with and MPEG-4 AVC encode and image quality is terrific overall. The film is black and white (technically greyscale) with some color scenes here and there. During the color sequences, flesh tones look amazing and true and the colors do look pretty vivid. Reds, yellows and oranges are very strong what there is of them. The black and white parts of the film, which is about 90%, are also pretty bright, crisp and sharp, with solid black levels. There are some parts of the film which are in darkness that are a little hazy and dull to look at, as dark grey isn’t exactly a bright cheerful color, but I believe that’s due to how the film was shot. I feel if the entire film was in color, this would have been just one spectacular viewing.

The audio for Feed the Light is Swedish: LPCM 2.0; English subtitles are provided. Sounds such as the score, dialog, screams, gurgling all come in clear, without neither sounding too strong nor too weak.

Extras (2/5)

Two featurettes, The Making of Feed the Light and The Lovecraft influence – Interview with Director/Co-Writer Henrik Moller, plus a trailer are the supplements for this release. Not a lot but better than nothing.

Overall (3/5)

Feed the Light if anything at all, is an interesting, short (under 90 minutes) movie that packs a few shocks. Severin/Intervision has given this film a really good Blu-ray release and if you want to check out something different and have no problems with a contemporary horror film being shot in black and white, then this is a film to pursue.