Next of Kin

Next of Kin (1982), directed by Tony Williams, Umbrella remaster, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including 5.1 remaster, two commentary tracks, and English SDH subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084408/

Video encoded in two-pass 12 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image.

English SDH subtitles OCRed, proofed and corrected.

Note : This was a suggestion/request by someone, and I'm very glad I got it, because this is a quite good Australian giallo-inflected thriller/psychological horror, which I hadn't even heard of before. The plot isn't extremely complex, although there are several red herrings, but the meticulous pacing, slowly building dread, and maybe-supernatural scary sequences are unsettling and very well done. The acting and direction is deliberately naturalistic and low-key, which helps ground what could otherwise have been a very histrionic affair (say, in the hands of certain Italian directors we're familiar with), and I think it benefits, being an almost completely believable and realistic, yet quite scary story.

Linda travels to Montclare, an isolated rural estate her mother had converted to a nursing home decades before, and which she has now inherited. She grew up there, but clearly hasn't been there or seen her mother for quite a long time. Getting busy with the minutiae of running the place and organizing her mother's chaotic accounting, and also getting busy with an old flame in town, she also starts reading her mother's diaries, which detail unsettling, possibly supernatural goings-on in the house decades earlier. She's further worried when she finds recent medical expenses for her aunt Rita, who she had been told had died many years before, and the local doctor, as well s the nursing home administrator, who seem to be having a relationship, seem dismissive. Soon, some of the residents start turning up dead, her substitute father figure and nursing home resident Lance has a minor stroke, and weird things start happening in the house that seem very similar to events from her mother's diaries...

This is an ok remaster, sometimes with some dust and some gate movement, but nothing too distracting. Blacks are a little bit crushed, but again, within the reasonable. The 5.1 remaster sounds good, and both commentary tracks are interesting.

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