Back, way before I existed on this Earth, Hammer Films was a revered film company that brought to life many of the monsters that we hold near and dear and made a legend out of actors Lon Chaney and Christopher Lee. Slowly but surely the monster film genre died out, or at least in the style that Hammer was used to telling them. Wake Wood represents Hammer’s step into a new world of horror, only, this step they’ve taken falls into the footprint of an already outdated and overused formula.

Take a mother and father who have lost their child and been given the opportunity to bring them back, have the kid turn out to be a bad seed, and, well, you know the rest. Pet Cemetery is the title that is being brought up when comparing this film to anything but really, subtract the dying child bit, you have films very similar like Orphan, Joshua, Mikey. While Wake Wood did throw a new twist on the resurrection ritual everything else was simply treading the same old ground. Not even the inclusion of Timothy Spall (Enchanted, Harry Potter Franchise) or Aiden Gillen (Identity, The Wire) managed to up the entertainment factor on this often told story. Better luck next time Hammer.

QUALITY:
Wake Wood has the look of a clearly independent feature. It promises a 1080p picture but really I’d say, aside from close knit shots that have less to emphasis things like clarity and definition, the film has a real 1080i look to it. Grain is a major issue, color being slightly off in most scenes, almost to the point that the black levels take on a gray hue instead of being completely solid, and definition is never really solidified throughout the film with a massive amount of soft shots both in exterior and interior scenes. It has its moments but for the most part Wake Wood misses the mark. Audio is actually pretty nice offering up a cinematic experience with a great amount of bass to scare the hell out of you during those quiet to loud moments in the films soundtrack. It even offers up a bit of immersion applying eerie sounds through the side channels to put you right into the paranoia of the moment. I had to raise the bar just a little higher then I’m used to catch every word but it was worth it for those moments when the film’s soundtrack did manage to freak me out.  

BONUS FEATURES:
~Deleted Scenes: There’s not much here that would aid you in obtaining a deeper feel for the film. Some deleted scenes are actually pretty useless. For example in one scene Gillen is seen inspecting a horses teeth and in the longest running deleted scene we get an alternative look at the resurrection ritual. While it has a few deviations there’s nothing there that justifies this particular deleted scene running as long as it does.
~Theatrical Trailer