Tunnel, The (2011) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 22, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
-
Director
Carlo LedesmaRelease Date(s)
2011 (May 28, 2024)Studio(s)
Distracted Media/Zapruder’s Other Films/DLSHS (Umbrella Entertainment/Vinegar Syndrome)- Film/Program Grade: C+
- Video Grade: B-
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: A+
Review
Carlo Ledesma’s The Tunnel was the first Australian horror movie to land at the intersection between two different modern cultural trends: “found footage” films and crowdfunding efforts. It was hardly the first Australian found footage film, of course, with others like Lake Mungo having broken that ground previously. And just like Lake Mungo before it, The Tunnel doesn’t use the found footage conceit as a mere stylistic affectation, but rather weaves it into the fabric of the film itself. That’s because both films are full-fledged mockumentaries that use found footage material as part of a retrospective examination of previous events—supposed footage from those past events is incorporated into a “new” documentary structure. In all other respects, however, The Tunnel is pure Blair Witch Project, with more than a whiff of Gary A. Sherman’s debut feature Raw Meat thrown in for good measure. It’s a journey to a dark destination where the participants end up finding more than they bargained for. It’s really the crowdfunding angle that sets The Tunnel apart, at least from a behind-the-scenes perspective, but more on that in a moment.
The actual story for The Tunnel operates within the framework of the film being a 2011 documentary about mysterious incident that occurred back in 2007, featuring interviews with the surviving participants mixed with the footage that they had shot four years earlier. Water shortages in New South Wales had forced the local government to think outside of the box, so they came up with a plan to recycle the water that was trapped in a network of abandoned train tunnels beneath Sydney. Yet the authorities ended up dropping the project with no explanation, and at the same time, homeless people who lived in the tunnels had started to disappear. Television reporter Natasha Warner (Bel Deliá) suspected that the two things were connected and that the government was engaging in a cover-up, so she led a crew into the tunnels that consisted of producer Peter Ferguson (Andy Rodoreda), cameraperson Steve Miller (Steve Davis), and audio technician “Tangles” Williams (Luke Arnold). Naturally, they ended up discovering that there were more things in heaven and on earth (and underground as well) than were dreamt of in their philosophy.
That’s pretty standard fare for a found-footage mockumentary, but the devil is in the details, and the real wrinkle with The Tunnel was in terms of how the film was actually put together. Writer/producers Julian Harvey and Enzo Tedeschi decided to forgo traditional investors and opted to crowdfund it instead. They ended up choosing a somewhat novel approach: they pre-sold single digital frames from the finished film for $1.00 each, with the goal of raising $135,000 for the ultra-low budget production. Dubbed the 135K Project, they were essentially selling the non-blockchain equivalent of NFTs before there even was such a thing. Even more audaciously, they essentially crowdfunded The Tunnel’s distribution, too. It did receive limited theatrical screenings and was available on conventional streaming platforms, but Harvey and Tedeschi took the internet bull by the horns and voluntarily made it available on BitTorrent as well.
The Tunnel may not have been the first found-footage horror movie or even the first crowdfunded film, but it was probably the first film ever to be torrented legally. As horror movies go, it’s a solid effort that takes advantage of the found footage format in order to turn the vice of a having a limited budget into a virtue. Yet there’s no getting around the fact that it’s most significant in terms of how it was produced, marketed, and distributed. The world is changing and traditional filmmaking has needed to change in order to keep up with it. The Tunnel is a great reminder that the cinema will never die, but it has continually transformed ever since its inception more than a century ago, and it will continue to transform over the next century and beyond. Film fans just need to let go of their biases and allow their own expectations to transform along with it.
Cinematographers Steve Davis and Shing Fung Cheung shot The Tunnel on digital video in a variety of formats—DigiBeta, Betacam SX, and XDCAM-to-HD. Davis was responsible for the actual found footage material, which was shot on several different cameras and camcorders (including an iPhone), some of it in SD and the rest in HD. The interview segments and title sequences were handled by Chueng in full HD. This witch’s brew of footage was cropped and rescaled during post-production, framed at 2.35:1 for The Tunnel’s eventual theatrical, streaming, and BitTorrent releases. Everything looks as it should in this 1080p version, which is to say, relatively smooth and resolved for the footage that Chueng shot, and pretty rough for nearly everything else. That’s the aesthetic that the filmmakers were going for, and this master replicates it perfectly.
Audio is offered in English 5.1 and 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. Befitting a found footage title, the dialogue and effects are mostly focused on the center channel, with the music providing the bulk of the ambience. That’s especially true above ground, but when the news crew does actually enter the tunnel, the sound effects open up a bit more. Underground, there are a few more ambient effects and some noteworthy moments where off-screen sounds are used to help build suspense or provide jump scares (and yes, that includes our old friend, the obnoxiously loud stinger). It all works well enough for this kind of horror movie.
Umbrella Entertainment’s North American Blu-ray release of The Tunnel comes with a 24-page booklet featuring an introduction by Enzo Tedeschi and an essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There was a slipcover available directly from Vinegar Syndrome, but that was limited to just 1,000 units and it’s sold out at this point. The following extras are included—note that they’re all presented in HD, but like the film itself, the majority of them are mixed media that includes upscaled SD footage:
- Audio Commentary with Carlo Ledesma, Enzo Tedeschi, and Julian Harvey
- The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness (90:31)
- The Tunnel: Beneath the Surface (76:55)
- Popcorn Taxi World Premiere Q&A (56:27)
- Alternate Ending (9:25)
- Meet the Cast (7:22)
- Timelapse Videos (3:25)
- Production Videos (11:23)
- The Tunnel at Screamfest LA (2:18)
- Press Sneak Peek Hype Reel (1:43)
- TV Crew Bootcamp (4:40)
- Music Videos (6:14, 2 in all)
- Trailer (1:50)
The commentary unites director Carlo Ledesma with producer/writer/editor team of Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey. It was originally recorded shortly after they completed the film. The trio tend to focus on the practical details about the production rather than its prehistory, breaking down each scene and explaining how they were shot. They also offer some thoughts about the story and their feelings about finishing the film—they enjoyed themselves enough that it never really felt like work.
Umbrella has also included not one but two different feature-length documentaries about The Tunnel, each of which was made from different perspectives. The Tunnel: Beneath the Surface was produced by Julian Harvey back in 2011 to accompany the film’s initial release, mixing fly-on-the-wall production footage with on-set interviews. The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness is a retrospective documentary that was produced in 2021 to mark the 10th anniversary of the film’s release. Directed by Adrian Nugent, it examines the broader context surrounding The Tunnel, including the state of genre filmmaking in 2010/2011. Taken together, Beneath the Surface and The Other Side of Darkness leave pretty much no stone unturned regarding The Tunnel, and they’re essential viewing for fans of the film.
The Popcorn Taxi World Premiere Q&A was recorded in 2011 at the premiere for The Tunnel. Hosted by Popcorn Taxi’s Chris Murray, it includes Carlo Ledesma, Enzo Tedeschi, Julian Harvey, and producer Andrew Denton. They respond to a series of questions from Murray and then take questions from the audience. While they do cover a lot of material that’s also available elsewhere in the commentary and the documentaries, they still provide a few different insights here.
The Alternate Ending opens with Julian Harvey and Enzo Tedeschi explaining the editorial process and why they decided to discard the ending that they had originally scripted and shot. Since it was dropped early on, it’s shown here in raw form with incomplete audio mixing and no finished grading or visual effects. It’s really an extended version of the ending that made it into the final film, with a bumper at the conclusion that provides a partial explanation about the fate of one of the characters who had previously gone missing. Frankly, it’s a bit of a reach, and an unnecessary one at that, so it was best left on the cutting room floor.
The rest of the extras consist of various brief featurettes, trailers, and music videos. Meet The Cast offers EPK interviews with Bel Deliá, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold, and Andy Rodoreda. The Timelapse Videos demonstrate the application of makeup effects, set construction, editing, and shooting. The Production Videos are more fly-on-the-wall videos that were shot on set, covering the first three days of the production and the location wrap near the end. The Tunnel at Screamfest LA is a hype reel from The Tunnel’s U.S. premiere in 2011. Speaking of hype, the Press Sneak Peek Hype Reel is another EPK offering with clips from the film, behind-the-scenes footage, and review snippets. Finally, the TV Crew Bootcamp is a featurette with Steve Davis demonstrating camera techniques to the rest of the cast (Davis is a cameraman turned actor).
That’s an impressive slate of extras, and it’s laudable that none of them are the standard talking-head interviews that are so prevalent on modern day boutique Blu-ray and UHD releases. Instead, any interview footage is incorporated into proper making-of documentaries—and the fact that one of those was created by the filmmakers themselves proves that they understood their potential audience all too well. Umbrella’s Blu-ray version of The Tunnel is an essential purchase for fans of the film, and a great introduction for anyone who may be unfamiliar with it.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).