The Breed (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Vampire	Dolby Digital Trailer-City Audio Commentary Filmographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Trailer-The Forsaken; Creature Feature; Hollow Man
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	87:30
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Oblowitz
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Adrian Paul Bokeem Woodbine Bai Ling Peter Halasz
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	Roy Hay

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish German Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    For centuries, this particular "breed" have walked among us unnoticed and have lived off humans to survive. It was not until a synthetic compound was developed that these Vampires could finally suppress their urge for human blood and make a pact with the humans a reality.

    The story focuses on FBI agent Steve Grant (Bokeem Woodbine) who loses his FBI partner to one of these Vampires in a bloodthirsty attack. Grant is made aware of the vampires' existence and is reluctantly teamed up with one of their own law enforcement officers, played by Aaron Grey (Adrian Paul). Together, the pair must track down the killer while trying to overcome their differences and obvious distaste for each other. During their field investigations, we meet several vampires with more notable roles being played by Bai Ling and Peter Halasz.

    The deeper Grant and Grey dig, the more questions that remain unanswered. Things soon turn out to be far from what is first revealed. Remember, the night has a breed of its own . . .

Video

    The video transfer of this movie is quite good.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is clear and sharp for the majority of the film. Shadow detail is poor, with a very little detail revealed in the murky lighting of this production. As this is a vampire movie, most of the movie is shot within the twilight hours, making this poor shadow detail a problem. To a certain extent, the darkened footage was used to create the "feel" that the director wanted, but my personal opinion is that there is too much "feel", with several scenes being very difficult to make out. On the plus side, there is no low-level noise. Dark scenes are perfectly grey-shaded and the blacks on my display device were as black as the night sky when camping 400km from the nearest light source.

    The colours were deliberately muted and drab, again to provide the effect the producer wanted for this retro-future world. There were no irregularities with the colour rendition of this transfer - just don't expect any splashes of bright primary colours, since there aren't any.

    There were no MPEG artefacts to be seen. Aliasing is also something that I did not notice. Film artefacts are common but small. The majority make an appearance whilst the opening credits are playing and then settle down to a more acceptable level.

    The subtitles are close but not exact to the spoken word.

    This disc is a single layered disc, and therefore there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and relatively easy to understand at all times.

    Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot on.

    The musical score by Roy Hay was well mixed and a fitting choice for this style of movie. The peaks and troughs of sound came together nicely and made this eerie and mysterious storyline all the more interesting. The volume levels did not drown out the dialogue at any point during the movie, but overall the dialogue level was too low in comparison to the higher special effect levels. Some listeners may have to keep riding the volume control to increase the dialogue volume and reduce the sound effects volume.

    The surround channels were beautifully used for ambience, music and for special effects. The opening scene is in a thunderstorm with realistic rainfall surrounding your chair. Perfect examples can be heard from 2:10 to 3:45. The rolling thunder sounds exactly like a real storm, complete with the odd bang that always seems to catch you unawares.

    The subwoofer was used throughout the movie and when its presence was required it was used tastefully, always adding to the effect or feel of a particular scene. Examples where it gets a solid workout can be heard at 24:18, 46:44 or 60:23.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    A moderate selection of extras is present.

Menu

Audio Commentary

    This is of excellent quality, being presented with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded sound.

Filmographies

    The three main characters and director are featured here. Each is given one page which lists their film credits with the year of production.

Features;

• Michael Oblowitz (Director)
• Bai Ling
• Adrian Paul
• Bokeem Woodbine

Theatrical Trailers

• The Breed (1:27)
  Presented in fullscreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio. The video quality is comparable to the main feature.
  
• The Forsaken (1:49)
  This trailer is in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, complete with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.
  
• Creature Feature (2:46)
  This trailer is in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. This features 5 classics that have been remade for a whole new generation of viewers;

1. Earth vs The Spider
2. She-Creature
3. The Day The World Ended
4. How To Make A Monster
5. Teenage Caveman

• Hollow Man (1:27)
  This trailer is in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, complete with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Fullscreen 1.33:1 version

• Nothing

    Overall I found The Breed to be an average movie which seemed to lose direction about three quarters of the way through.

    The stylistically poor shadow detail was annoying, so make sure you closely control ambient light in your viewing room if you want to get the best out of this transfer.

    The audio quality was a blessing and certainly added to the story.

    The extras are only average. If you are running short of titles to hire from the video shop then give this one a go, although I wouldn't go too far out of my way to get hold of a copy.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall