Scary Just Got Sexy. Apparently. (Supernatural - Season 1 Vol. 1 (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Supernatural - Season 1 Vol. 1 (DVD)
Date:	06/06/06 (510 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good pace, simple and fairly entertaining stories and good special effects for a TV series

Disadvantages: Rapes the genre for ideas, premise is a little implausible

When a young mother is killed in a mysterious house fire, the lives of her two young sons will never be the same again. Convinced that the fire was brought about by supernatural causes, their father becomes obsessed with finding out what caused his wife’s death. As the two boys grow apart, one of them chooses to pursue an academic career, whilst his brother follows in his father’s footsteps to hunt all things supernatural. But twenty years later, when the boys’ father disappears on a “hunting” trip, the brothers are reunited as they follow the clues leading to their father’s whereabouts. What starts as a temporary reunion, becomes a permanent road trip when tragedy reminds the boys exactly what it is that they’re up against.

Alternative horror / action series seem uncomfortable in UK television schedules. Buffy The Vampire Slayer seemed to find something of a niche on BBC2, whilst The X Files seemed to shift from BBC2 to BBC1 and back in to the depths of BBC2. Millennium tested the late night ITV1 schedules for the competition, but with limited success, and now the latest in a long line, Supernatural, has barely even made it into the depths of ITV2’s rather limited scheduling. More often than not, it is in the DVD / video market that these series find a cult following and so, with the first series still airing on terrestrial television, the first DVD set of the American show has been released to try and find a new audience.

Retailing somewhere between £20 and £25, the first part of season one is certainly good value for money. With eleven, forty-five minute episodes, and a total running time of some eight hours or more, your cost per minute is pretty fantastic. The presentation is tops, too. The episodes are arranged across three discs, each of which sits in its own mini plastic case (kind of like a normal one, but skinnier) with the three of them slipped into a glossy cardboard case. I for one am sick of folding, “gatefold” sleeves, which get battered and worn after little more than one or two viewings and in which the discs so easily get mixed up. So far then, it’s so good.

The special features are extremely disappointing. There are none. The picture is presented in wide screen, the crisp Dolby Digital sound means that every shriek and bang has maximum effect and there are subtitles for the hard of hearing. But that’s about all. For a series inspired by the incredibly far-reaching world of the unknown, it seems so disappointing that the creators couldn’t come up with something additional to reward loyal fans / newcomers alike. There are no commentaries from any of the writers or creative team members. There is no background to any of the stories and no featurettes or documentaries exploring some of the myths and legends introduced throughout the series. So now, it’s not so good. The only thing left to consider is the quality of the programme itself.

Supernatural was a show that I really wanted to like and at various intervals in the episodes contained here, I actually did. It isn’t, however, anywhere near consistent enough and suffers from countless comparisons to similar shows / films / dramas. Indeed, at times, Supernatural feels as though it is pillaging the archives of every classic or modern horror film that you can imagine. Episode four (Phantom Traveller) steals its inspiration from The Exorcist. Episode five (Bloody Mary) is like a combination of Candy Man and The Ring. Episode six (Skin) steals from the X Files and episode seven (Hook Man) might as well be called I Really Do Know What You Did Last Summer. The list goes on and on. At times, it actually becomes quite embarrassing and you wonder whether the creative team will be able to come up with any new ideas.

It’s all rather too tame for my liking, too. The show’s creator (Eric Kripke) clearly has a love for the genre, but lacks the dark vision to do anything truly groundbreaking with it. When you consider that his previous works include the dire pseudo-horror film Boogeyman, you will get a feel for the level at which the series is pitched. In fairness, Supernatural is generally better than Boogeyman (itself ripped off in episode nine, Home) but it could still have been enormously better than it actually is.

The premise is quite watchable, if not a little unlikely. We are led to believe that in twenty years, two young boys have grown up in the care of a man who has devoted his life to tracking and hunting down all things supernatural, and yet the knowledge they have picked up could surely only have been gleaned over generations. Conveniently, on the trail of their father, they pick up his discarded journal, that reads like an A-Z of the unknown and it all feels a little too contrived. Indeed, as one episode progresses to another, the “find your father” storyline drifts, stalls and is even occasionally forgotten. This is a real shame, and a genuinely clumsy mistake. Using the sub-plot of the search for the boys’ father could have been a well-executed, solid means of keeping the series going in the right direction, rather like Fox Mulder’s search for his abducted sister in the early days of The X Files. Sadly, in Supernatural, the individual stories somehow eclipse the back story and you forget what started the whole thing off. And, just as things start to get interesting at the end of episode eleven, the first set of discs draws to a close.

Of course, the upside of this is that Supernatural is far easier to watch than the overly-complicated X Files. Each episode is pretty much self-contained, self-explained and appreciated in its own right and the series simply doesn’t require the concentration of more convoluted tales. The pace of each of them is pretty relentless, with little time for the audience to start picking holes in things, with each episode written and timed perfectly to support the obvious natural advertisement breaks that US television dictates. The special effects are competent enough too, proving that even lowly US television series can still be technically impressive these days.

The two leads – Dean and Sam – also share a realistic, fraternal bond that works pretty well too. Each of them spends some time dealing with his own issues (relationship with father, grief, frustration) but never at the expense of the stories and from time to time they share some great banter too. As the tag line suggests, they’re a fine looking pair of fellas too, although pretty boys never really sit well in the reality stakes. Sam (Jared Padalecki) is the sweet, sensitive younger brother, who doesn’t really want a life of things that go bump in the night. Dean (Jensen Ackles) is the brawnier one, always up for a fight and has a keen eye for the ladies. These attributes can, unfortunately, wear a little thin as each story somehow seems to yield a helpless, yet beautiful young female that the two brothers can fawn all over.

Highlights of the episodes contained here?

Asylum (a haunting tale set in a disused lunatic asylum) comes the closest to being a real shocker, with a great setting and an unsettling storyline that almost does the trick.

Phantom Traveller is intriguing and heads off in quite an unexpected direction.

Wendigo goes for a more traditional “there’s something in the woods” story, and probably can’t be bettered here for action and suspense.

Lowlights?

That would probably be Bugs (a wasted opportunity that ends up as a very poor man’s answer to The X Files) and Bloody Mary, which is such a rip-off of so many other things.

Alas, Supernatural’s greatest failing is that it simply isn’t scary enough. Targeted at the Dawson’s Creek generation and yet screened when they’re all in bed, it doesn’t stand up well to a more demanding DVD audience, looking for thrills and spills. As one episode lurches into another, it becomes engaging more through familiarity and determination to see it through, rather than finding yourself truly hooked. This is all a real pity. The leads are funny and charismatic, the wealth of stories varied and entertaining and the quality of effects more than adequate enough. When push comes to shove, it simply isn’t gritty enough and that superb price tag still isn’t quite enough for me to recommend that you try this one out.

Summary: Entertaining as far as it goes, but a nastier, darker feel would work wonders here.