Holliston: The Complete Second Season [Blu-Ray]
Cast: Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Dee Snider
Release Date: Now Available on Blu-Ray
A Review By: Kevin Lovell
Disc Rating: 9.5/10
Plot Summary:
Two down and out aspiring filmmakers struggle with life, career, and the opposite sex as they attempt to make it out of the small New England town they are trapped in and into the big time.
The Fearnet original series ‘Holliston’ is created by one of my personal favorite filmmakers, the incredibly talented Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen, Spiral). For those not familiar with the series, it tells the story of two wannabe filmmakers who work at a local cable station and host a horror show in order to try and pay the bills and benefit from the free equipment use in order to try and get their own long intended horror film ‘Shin Pads’ into production.
Season Two brings a bunch of goofy adventures with our favorite wannabe filmmakers. First off they deal with a suicidal Kane Hodder who has been mentally ruined by the sudden realization that he was recast in Freddy vs. Jason so many years ago. Naturally the boys exploit this weakness to get him on board with Shin Pads, and even go so far as to use him in order to try and get the gorgeous Danielle Harris involved. Naturally this is only the beginning of the season and throughout the course of the Second Season you’ll have the pleasure of watching the gang as they deal with werewolves, a psychotic little girl and a whole lot more, even being turned into animated characters in order to fight an evil blob that Laura accidentally creates.
While I wasn’t quite sold with the first season of ‘Holliston’, season two seems to have really found the right formula and footing for the show and has managed to develop and tweak itself into an offbeat sitcom with some fun gore and horror elements. I’m pretty sure the choice to alter the show to a standard 22 minute sitcom formula was one very wise move in this direction. The second season brings back all of the characters including Adam Green and Joe Lynch playing loose versions of themselves, Laura Ortiz, Corri English and we of course can’t exclude the amazing Dee Snider and the unfortunately recently deceased Dave Brockie. We are also treated to all kinds of fantastic guest stars including Kane Hodder, Danielle Harris, Derek Mears, James Gunn and a whole lot more familiar faces than I can name here. Even if you weren’t a fan of the first season, I would definitely recommend giving the second season a shot, it really is far superior to the first and I found myself laughing and enjoying it a great deal more than I would have ever expected.
VIDEO:
The video on the Blu-Ray release of ‘Holliston: The Complete Second Season’ is a full 1080p High Definition presentation utilizing the show’s original 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio on all 11 episodes. The video presentation on all of the episodes looks pretty impressive and certainly far better than they ever did when initially broadcast in High Definition. There may be a few slight moments of pixilation in excessively fast moving sequences, though they are both brief and minimal enough to hardly be noticed and overall this is a pretty great looking high definition video presentation that I believe should leave most folks more than content.
AUDIO:
The Blu-Ray release features an uncompressed English 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on all 11 Season Two episodes. The soundtrack on every episode is clear, loud at times and tame at others, while always remaining discrete and never detracting from the audibility of the dialogue, no matter how much other random insanity may be occurring at the moment in the other four channels. As a whole this lossless multichannel soundtrack sounds pretty great and certainly left me satisfied.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
The Blu-Ray release of ‘Holliston: The Second Season’ includes a pretty impressive collection of bonus content and far more than I would have ever imagined seeing included on this release. Included are a 15 minute Behind The Scenes Featurette in addition to a Gag Reel, The Christmas Special Episode, three fun music videos relating to episodes in the season, and on top of all that, we are also treated to audio commentaries with the cast and crew (including Adam Green and Joe Lynch) on all but one episode and deleted scenes on a number of episodes as well.
*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They additionally will suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.
Disc Rating: 9.5/10
‘Holliston: The Complete Second Season is now available on Blu-Ray from Image/RLJ Entertainment.