Blu-ray Movie Reviews

New York City, year 2095. A floating pyramid has emerged in the skies above Manhattan, inhabited by ancient Egyptian Gods. They have cast judgment down upon Horus (a falcon headed god), one of their own. With only seven days to preserve his immortality, he must find a human host body to inhabit, and search for a mate. In the city below, a beautiful young woman, Jill, with blue hair, blue tears and a power even unknown to her, wanders the city in search of her identity aided by a doctor who is fascinated by this mystery of nature. Reality in this world has a whole new meaning as bodies, voices and memories converge with Gods, mutants, mortals and extra terrestrials.

This is one of those films that looks really good from pictures and descriptions, but falls well short of expectations. Immortal is a bizarre mix of sci-fi themes and imagery and is almost too dense for its own good. The film is a combination of live action and CGI with the emphasis on the latter. Unfortunately that CGI doesn’t hold up well, especially with the characters. Animation is about the same level as most cut scenes on older video games so it can be distracting at times. The story is also all over the place and doesn’t make a lot of sense making the experience a bit tedious. While there are some interesting ideas here, they just get drowned out by the rest.

This is a very disappointing HD presentation. The back cover states a 1.85:1 transfer but it is close to 16x9 and looks more like an upscaled DVD than a Blu-ray presentation. Halos are abundant and fine detail is never near the quality of a good high definition transfer. The animation doesn’t hold up that well either. Line twitter and moir are noticed more often than one would like and banding is evident from time to time. The image has a very contrasty look but black levels are a bit of a wash making image depth a bit flat.

The audio presentation is also a miss. The back cover states a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix and a DTS logo. Unfortunately the soundtracks are limited to a Dolby TrueHD stereo mix and a standard Dolby Stereo mix. The TrueHD mix is pretty bad with hard panning to the left and right speakers and poor imaging across the main soundstage. I tried this disc with two players and a SSP that could decode and the results were the same every time. Most of the dialogue is panned to the right main speaker and visual cues don’t match the soundstage at all. The track also lacks any real dynamics and instead comes off as overly loud and bright. Switching to the Dolby Stereo track was a big improvement as imaging came together far better, especially with the dialogue. I honestly don’t know what went wrong here.

Extras include a making of feature that looks at the process of blending CG and live action as well as the themes of the film. The trailer is also included.

Despite the strong visuals this one was a pretty big disappointment. The film is confusing and borrows a lot from other productions (see The Fifth Element) and the A/V presentation is more in line with an average DVD upscale than a Blu-ray. I’d recommend skipping this one.