Blu-ray Review Drama

‘I Kill Giants’ Blu-ray Review: A Fantastical Yet Moving Look at Grief and Sadness from a Child’s Point of View

June 4, 2018Ben MK



FEATURE: 
When you're a child, imagination can be a powerful thing, not only as a means of play, but also as a way of dealing with the stresses and the traumas of life.

In I Kill Giants, Barbara Thorson (Madison Wolfe) is a girl with a vivid imagination. An outcast at school and misunderstood by her older siblings, Karen (Imogen Poots) and Dave (Art Parkinson), she retreats into a fantasy world where giants threaten her small seaside town, and where she — with her giant-killing axe she's christened Coveleski — is the only one who can stop them. But when she meets her school's new psychologist, Mrs. Mollé (Zoe Saldana), and befriends a new student named Sophia (Sydney Wade), Barbara finds herself forced to confront the reality she's been trying so desperately to escape.

Based on the Image Comics graphic novel by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura, this feature debut by Danish director Anders Walter deals with sadness and grief, doing so in a way that will be familiar to fans of such films as A Monster Calls. Bolstered by a fearless performance from its lead actress, Wolfe, I Kill Giants is fantastical, but it's the dramatic weight of its subject matter that solidifies its status as a new contemporary classic.

AUDIO & VISUALS: 
I Kill Giants comes to Blu-ray with a fine-looking 1080p encode and a pleasing Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sound mix, both of which do justice to the caliber of the film itself. From Barbara's beachside home, to the hallways of her middle school, to an old train graveyard, image quality is nuanced and colors are appropriately vibrant, even though the movie's latter half takes on a more often than not overcast mood. Meanwhile, the sound design upholds the atmosphere of the story's setting, intermingling the sounds of waves and seagulls with an ofttimes melancholy soundtrack, as well as the low, rumbling voices of giants and their lumbering footfalls.

EXTRAS: 
VVS Films' single-disc Blu-ray release includes the following extra:

  • Anatomy of a Scene (4:50) - A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie's "Titan" sequence, in which the filmmakers recreated a beachfront filming location in Ireland on a soundstage in Belgium.

I Kill Giants is available from VVS Films as of June 5th, 2018. The Blu-ray features English and French Dolby TrueHD 5.1 tracks, and is presented with English and French subtitles. The total runtime is 1 hr. 46 min.






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