The Winchester demon-hunting brothers, Sam and Dean, are back for Season Three, but with only one problem: Dean Winchester is going to Hell. Bummer. At least we can enjoy their plight in high-def.
I must say that I've been surprised by the two television shows I was recently asked to review on Blu. They were both entertaining and more well-written than expected with 'Supernatural' being a particular surprise considering its teenybopper 'The CW' centered-ads and commercials that I've caught over the years.
Two Abercrombie dudes with fancy duds and blue steel smoldering looks usually don't entail a good time for me, but 'Supernatural' strikes a great mix between comedy, smart referential writing and genuine, eyebrow-raising horror thrills.
Seriously, the horror in this show approaches and sometimes wallows in unadulterated R-rated territory with blood being freely splayed across the screen, fingernails are ripped out, victims following on a barbecue forks and table saws, hollowed-out corpses and then some. As a genre fan expecting some watered-down television effects, I gotta say the effects outclass many of the recent big-budget horror flicks I've seen.
So confessional time - I never saw the first two seasons of 'Supernatural'. Crazy, huh? Still, despite a definite mythology involved with the show, I didn't find myself particularly confused and by the end of the first episode, had a pretty firm grasp of who's who and why.
The only time I felt lacking was when some guest-spot characters from the first two seasons popped in every so often but the episode recaps do a pretty good job establishing who these peeps are.
For those in the dark (and proceed carefully if you don't want any spoilers from the first two seasons), the show follows the Winchester brothers, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) who specialize in hunting - mostly demons, but also a variety of supernatural creatures - who took up the family business when their father John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an ex-marine, vowed revenge for the death of his wife. With Dean's life on the line, John sells his soul to a yellow-eyed demon to save his son's life and dies.
With Dean carrying the guilt of his father's death, he turns around and does the exact same thing at the end of Season Two exchanging his soul for Sam with the agreement of having one year to live before having to go to Hell. They also, in the Season Two finale, manage to open up the gates to Hell and let loose hundreds of demons which is where Season Three picks up.
Hitting the various locales and tracking down the demons they've managed to let loose all the while trying to figure out a way to get Dean out of his deal with the crossroads demon amongst the endless brotherly bickering makes up the bulk of the season.
Along the way, they get some help from Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver), the crotchety old demon hunter pro who is sort of their father surrogate now, Ruby (Kate Cassidy) another demon slayer packing a mean knife who happens to show up at just the right times and Bela Talbot (Lauren Cohan) a conniving thief who prides herself on her efficient methods of swiping mystical artifacts to line her pockets.
Most of the episodes do a great job offering just enough new material and continuity to make each episode worth watching for newbies and fans alike. And horror and genre enthusiasts can look forward to a lot of sly references and episode narratives built around a 'homage'.
We get changelings resulting in a children of the damned tone, a coven of witches, zombies, an evil Santa Claus, Grimm Fairy Tale copycat murders (resulting in a bloody great Hansel & Gretel sequence), and nods from everything including 'Seven' and 'Twilight Zone' to 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Assault on Precinct 13'. I imagine the staff of writers wears their genre geek badge proudly.
The episodes are presented in a 1.78:1 1080p VC1 encode and the results are quite good, better than the no doubt bigger-budgeted 'Chuck' that I reviewed earlier. Obviously a darker show overall, relying on a lot of shadows and grit for its atmosphere, there's still a lot of color and while grain is present, it's not bad enough to distract. Pretty solid overall.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is good but a lossless track could have been better...Warner Brothers is very spotty about including lossless on their feature film Blus and it seems that track record comes off even worse for their TV output.
A collection of featurettes make up the most of special features that include 'A Closer Look', a 20-minute set mini-featurettes that take a look at some of the highlights of the season, 'From Legends to Reality: Supernatural effects', a featurette that looks at the special effects, 'Ghostfacers! confessionals', a longer reel taken from the episode of the same name, 'Supernatural Impala' which looks at the brothers' Impala and finally the requisite 'Gag Reel'. A code for downloading digital copies of the entire season is also included.
For already established fans, this Blu-ray release is a no-brainer with great video and nice selection of extras. For the uninitiated curious how the show is, I gotta say that I highly enjoyed the show's well-done amalgam of dark humor, clever writing and surprisingly over-the-top gore and can certainly recommend it for genre fans in general, film junkies or not.
Supernatural - The Complete Third Season is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
USA
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