Swamp Thing: The Complete Series [Blu-Ray]

Cast: Crystal Reed, Virginia Madsen, Andy Bean

Release Date: February 11, 2020

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 6.5/10

Synopsis:

Swamp Thing follows Dr. Abby Arcane as she investigates a deadly swamp-born virus in the small town of Marais, Louisiana. When a mysterious creature emerges from the murky marsh, she finds herself facing the nightmares of a supernatural world where no one is safe. With nature wildly out of balance and coming for the people of Marais, in the end, it may take some Thing from the swamp to save it.

Please Note: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

The DC Universe original series ‘Swamp Thing’ tells the story of Dr. Abby Arcane who finds herself drawn back to the hometown she never intended to see again when a deadly and unknown virus seemingly bred from the swamp sends the small, well-orchestrated town into panic. But when another exploring the questionable occurrences in the area is attacked and resurrected as part of the swamp itself, Abby must decide whether she can trust this mysterious creature whose key purpose seems to be protecting the swamp and its life, albeit often with violent and bloody actions. Although in a town with so many uncertain and violent individuals residing within and willing to do anything necessary to protect their secrets and comfortable existence, this dangerous creature may just be the answer the town needs.

The third series in the slate of original, live-action shows created for DC Universe, ‘Swamp Thing’ introduces viewers to a fittingly dark and horror-like take on the character that works even better than expected. Never hesitating to take things to bleak places and to send some noteworthy gore splattering across your screen, while still keeping a dedicated focus on the personal issues and overall growth of these intriguing characters who each find themselves in the midst of this chaos for drastically different reasons. It’s a smart, fun and beautifully crafted series that hits all the right marks and should thrill fans of the source material along with anyone just somewhat intrigued by the series itself. Unfortunately, the series also found itself plagued by various issues (even if the facts surrounding them may not be entirely clear) and after first having its debut season order cut down from 13 to 10 episodes, the series was subsequently cancelled after only a single episode, therefore resulting in the ten episode debut season now comprising the entire series. While it’s definitely disappointing that we won’t be able to see where this remarkable and undeniably promising series would have gone, fans of the material and anyone already curious about it will still probably want to make a point of checking it out. It surprisingly wraps up more threads than you would expect prior to ending, albeit also offering some potentially awesome tidbits and teases that we’ll sadly never see come to fruition.

Overall, DC’s latest incarnation of ‘Swamp Thing’ in this live-action series delivers a dedicated and well suited dark atmosphere and horror vibe combined with some unique characters and plenty of twists, turns and even some truly bloody moments that should even impress many horror fans. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s 2-disc Blu-ray release of ‘Swamp Thing: The Complete Series’ is recommended for fans of the short lived series. While it may not feature anything in the way of bonus content, the solid high definition video and audio presentations provided on all ten episodes should still make it worth picking up for those who plan to revisit it in the future and want to own the series physically. As long as you don’t go in expecting more than top notch video and audio on the entire series, you should be more than satisfied with this capable Blu-ray release.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Swamp Thing: The Complete Series’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation technically utilizing a 2.35:1 Cinemascope Aspect Ratio on all of show’s episodes (although the opening DC and WB logos are in a 1.78:1 ratio). The video presentations looks pretty nice altogether and offer a sharp, smooth and nicely detailed presentation on every episode. They hold up impressively even  during the numerous notably dark and fast moving sequences throughout, never allowing anything onscreen to become negatively affected or rendered indiscernible at any point. Overall, these are pretty great high definition video presentation from Warner Bros. that shouldn’t have any trouble satisfying the majority of fans excited to finally have the chance to own the show physically.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on all 10 episodes of the series. These multichannel soundtracks make wonderful compliments to the onscreen excitement and action, providing crisp, clean and consistently aggressive audio presentations on each included episode. They repeatedly take full advantage of all five available channels in order to send action effects, rain and other nature content, along with music, bits of dialogue and more throughout the various speakers quite regularly, and never causing any dialogue or other audio content that might be occurring simultaneously to become distorted or rendered inaudible along the way. Overall, these are fantastic 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtracks that more than deliver in every necessary way and should thoroughly please the fans.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Swamp Thing: The Complete Series’ does not include any bonus content whatsoever.

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally 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.

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Disc Rating: 6.5/10

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‘Swamp Thing: The Complete Series’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from DC Entertainment & Warner Bros Home Entertainment

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