It’s especially a shame for titles like The Chaser, arguably one of the greatest serial killers movies of the century. When content is rendered disposable, part of an algorithm for liking Movie B if you watched Movie A, the urgency to preserve it for posterity dissipates. Physical media isn’t just about ownership, but preservation. Such is the ephemerality of media as content and subscription forces. And, in the age of innumerable streaming services, it’s impossible to guarantee it would even be available to stream. Months out, there’s no telling whether the title would be available. While I did snag a bare-bones DVD copy for close to $20, it was one of just five listed as being in stock. The 2010 Blu-ray release is presently listed on eBay for upwards of $100. So, naturally, I sought to hunt down a physical release, chasing The Chaser, some might say. While it’s available to stream, it’s only playing on both AMC+ and IFC Films Unlimited. This past weekend, I was desperate to watch Na Hong-jin’s debut The Chaser, his Blue Dragon Film Award-winning masterpiece. This shift away from physical media has similarly and retroactively rendered past titles nearly impossible to find. Save for a few key titles, the contemporaneous content audiences consume won’t be available to own. Sure, some distributors like RLJ Entertainment have made it a point to make Shudder originals available physically, though writ large, we’re living in an age of legacy releases and boutique blu-rays. If you’re in the UK, the BBC Films and New Regency co-production has been removed. If you want to watch His House, you need to subscribe. Keeping noteworthy titles behind a subscription paywall is one of the few incentives they have for new subs. Their collective business model is predicated on new subscriptions. While key series like Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House has been released, others such as his third (and arguably strongest) series Midnight Mass have not.įlanagan himself has contended that, yes, streamers should release more physical copies. Not all of it lasts-is anyone really itching for a physical release of their live-action Death Note adaptation? Yet, for as much as audiences rag on streamers, they’ve been home to some pretty stellar original horror releases. Streaming services have continued to inundate audiences with more and more new content. It’s a perennial conflict, one that has intensified in recent years. If you don’t own one of their physical releases, you’re not watching them. As of this writing, none of them are presently available to stream. There is a direct link between Amenábar’s masterpiece and several antecedent touchstones of the genre, including Lewis Allen’s The Uninvited and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. Last year, I wrote about Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, one of the scariest gothic ghost stories ever made.
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