The Descent 4K Steelbook (2005)

"Spectacular 4K Restoration of a British Horror Classic"

Studio Canal have released a gorgeous three disc steelbook edition of writer-director Neil Marshall’s THE DESCENT, which comes with a bunch of new extras, a poster, and a plastic slipcover that complements (and interacts with) the steelbook cover art. So in between some pictures of the new packaging let’s take a look at what we get:

Disc One (UHD) and Two (Blu-ray)

A group of female friends including Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and led by Juno (Natalie Mendoza) head off on a caving expedition, one year after the death by accident of Sarah’s husband and daughter. They all think they’re exploring a known cave system until a rockfall causes Juno to reveal that they are the first people to have ever gone down there. Trapped in the darkness and searching for a way out, they soon have something much worse to contend with.

THE DESCENT is a twenty first century British horror classic, one which relies on great acting, suspenseful direction, and everyone (production design, photography, special effects and music) all pulling their ‘A’ game. Studio Canal’s disc gives us the new 4K restoration from Pathé, scanned in 5K (according to the opening title card) from the original 35mm negative. And it looks spectacular - crisp and vivid, with scenes in near darkness (and there are a lot of them) losing no resolution and the blacks looking deep with no loss of picture quality.

Disc one comes with a mixture of UK and French trailers, the US alternate ending, and two archival commentary tracks, one with Neil Marshall and the cast (minus Natalie Mendoza who was working) and the other with Neil Marshall and the crew. 

Disc Three - The Extras

New extras consist of a new 47 minute documentary ‘What Lies Beneath’ with new interviews with Marshall, DP Sam McCurdy, Designer Simon Bowles, SFX man Paul Hyett and star Shauna Macdonald. There’s a ten minute interview with composer David Julyan about the score which has some fun reveals, and a 44 minute Neil Marshall ‘Masterclass’  - essentially an on stage interview - conducted at the 2026 Gérardmer Film Festival. 

Archival extras include a making of (41 minutes), Marshall interview (7 minutes), Marshall and Macdonald and Mendoza interview (10 minutes), Paul Hyett and the SFX team (12 minutes), Simon Bowles (10 minutes), caving reference footage (9 minutes), deleted and extended scenes (10 minutes), five minutes of outtakes and ten minuets of storyboard & scene comparisons.

The 4K restoration of Neil Marshall’s THE DESCENT is available in a three disc steelbook set from Studio Canal from 29th June 2026

The Cold Prey Trilogy (2006, 2008, 2010)

 

Second Sight are giving their lavish boxset treatment to the Norwegian slasher franchise that launched the international career of director Roar Uthaug (TROLL, TOMB RAIDER) and provided horror fans with a novel setting for murderous mayhem. Second Sight’s limited edition set comes with the three films on Blu-ray (1080p transfers on three separate discs), each with a set of extras, and you also get a 120 page book with new writing, five art cards, and a slipcase. So let’s take a deeper look at what we get:

Disc One: Cold Prey aka Fritt Vilt (2006)

Five friends set off for a snowboarding holiday on the Norwegian slopes. Unfortunately their fun is curtailed almost immediately when one of them, Morten Tobias (Rolf Kristian Larsen) manages to break his leg. Fortunately there’s somewhere to take him in the form of the rotting and long-disused hotel that’s just over the next rise, the one near which all manner of winter sports enthusiasts have disappeared. They settle in to some of the most disgusting hotel rooms committed to celluloid and pretty soon they’re being bumped off. Could it have anything to do with the child from the opening scene who mysteriously disappeared years ago?

In the extras director Rolf Uthaug says he pitched COLD PREY by playing the trailer for Marcus Nispel’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake and said “Now imagine that, but cold.” Which is kind of what COLD PREY is to an extent. But what could have been a generic slasher is kept fresh by good direction, an amazing location and likeable performances, especially from Larsen and final girl Ingrid Bolsø Berdal. It’s a must-see for slasher enthusiasts and was a deserved hit.

Second Sight’s Blu-ray is step up from previous DVD releases, but overall this is a pretty grainy low-res film so don’t expect anything spectacular, for this or the other two in the series. Extras include a new commentary from Uthaug and Berdal (in English in case you were wondering) and new interviews with the director (22 minutes) and star Ingrid Bolsø Berdal 19 minutes). There’s also an ‘alternate ending’ which is actually just the ending we see but fleshed out with storyboards for material they didn’t have the budget for, and featurettes on the visual effects (24 minutes) and behind the scenes (22 minutes), plus nine minutes of bloopers. The disc is rounded off with two short films: Mountain Rose Runs Amok (2 minutes) which is a brief amateur slasher piece and An Evening in the Green which is three minutes of jolly fun with a lawnmower and, as its director (Roar Uthaug) puts it ‘a bucket of pig intestines’. There’s also a music video but it’s not for the catchy end credits song.

Disc Two: Cold Prey II aka Fritt Vilt II (2008)

Unsurprisingly following in the wake of the success of the first film, COLD PREY II is to COLD PREY what Rick Rosenthal’s HALLOWEEN II was to John Carpenter’s original. Taking up where the previous film ended, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal’s Jannicke is taken to hospital. Soon the bodies of her friends are taken there too. And the body of the axe-wielding maniac. You can guess the rest. This one really is a bit too much by the numbers to make it interesting but if you love generic slashers you’ll probably still have a jolly hospital-based time.

Extras include a new commentary track from director Mats Stenberg (again, in English) as well as a 32 minute interview. There are also interviews with Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (11 minutes) and Roar Uthuag (4 minutes), who was associate producer on this one. There are also extended and deleted scenes (5 minutes), bloopers (3 minutes), and a behind the scenes featurette (34 minutes & goodness me the weather looked terrible).

Disc Three: Cold Prey III aka Fritt Vilt III (2010)

It’s prequel time! The little boy who would grow up to be the killer in the first two films kills his parents. Twelve years later a group of friends hiking in the area start to get bumped off by the ‘Mountain Man’. COLD PREY III is the most by the numbers of the lot and feels very much like a Texas Chainsaw ripoff. However we still get some impressive locations (and very little snow this time) making the Norwegian landscape the star of this one.

Extras this time include a new commentary track from Christer Andresen (a Norwegian associate professor of film studies specialising in Norway’s horror films and Phillip Escott of Second Sight, and a behind the scenes featurette (8 minutes).

The COLD PREY trilogy is available in a special limited edition set from Second Sight on Monday 6th July 2026

Wake in Fright 4K (1971)

“May You Dream of the Devil, and…”

Arrow are giving us a welcome 4K restoration on separate UHD and Blu-ray releases, of Ted Kotcheff’s masterful adaptation of Kenneth Cook’s novel.

It’s a pretty faithful adaptation as well, following the novel’s plot of teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) who works in a school in the middle of Nowhere, Australia, finishes up for the holidays and heads off to Sydney to be with his girlfriend. Unfortunately he makes the fatal mistake of stopping off in the mining town of Bundanyabba and the even more fatal mistake of having a few drinks and a bit of a gamble, the result being he loses all his money. 

Where WAKE IN FRIGHT scores all the points, however, is in how it portrays what happens next, with the new ‘friends’ John has made not caring a jot that he has no money and instead happy to involve him in the endless rounds of drinking, fighting and kangaroo hunting that make up their lives. And it’s not long before John finds it incredibly easy to just slip into that lifestyle as well, perhaps permanently.

WAKE IN FRIGHT boasts excellent performances, not just from Bond (a career high) but from the actors playing the inhabitants of ‘The Yabba’, especially Donald Pleasence as a burned-out doctor. The  harsh Australian vistas look even more bleached in 4K and cautious viewers should be warned that the kangaroo-hunting sequence is intact.

Arrow’s release gives us a lot more extras than Eureka’s Blu-ray of ten years ago. The commentary with director Ted Kotcheff and editor Anthony Buckley has been ported over, and we get a brand new second commentary by Peter Galvin, who wrote the book detailing the making of the film. There’s also a look at the film’s Broken Hill locations (an impressive 50 minutes), an interview with sound editors Keith Palmer and Eddy Joseph (15 minutes), and a profile of Donald Pleasence from Kim Newman (15 minutes).

Director Philippe Mora discusses the film with Paul Harris for 20 minutes, there’s a new interview with cinematographer Brian West (21 minutes) and archival interviews with Ted Kotcheff (13 minutes)  and actor Jack Thompson (7 minutes), as well as archival audio interviews with Kotcheff (a whopping 130 minutes) and composer John Scott (16 minutes). We also get Kotcheff’s Q&A from the 2009 Toronto Film Festival (46 minutes), alternate scenes from the UK & US version titled OUTBACK (11 minutes), a 1971 TV segment on the film (6 minutes) and another from 2009 on the film’s rediscovery (7 minutes), an obituary for actor Chips Rafferty (3 minutes), trailers and an image gallery. There’s also a fascinating 38 minute trailer reel of Australian films like THE SUNDOWNERS and WALKABOUT, all made by overseas film-makers. The disc also comes with a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film.

Ted Kotcheff’s WAKE IN FRIGHT is out in 4K in separate UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 29th June 2026

Mortal Kombat 4K (1995) and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation 4K (1997)

“Mortal Kombat!”

With the latest in the franchise only just out of cinemas, Arrow Films are releasing the first two films to bear the name MORTAL KOMBAT in 4K on UHD and Blu-ray with a bunch of extras. Based on a bestselling video game and featuring plenty of martial arts, the question I am best posed to answer here is: can these films be enjoyed by someone who has never played the game and has only a very passing interest in martial arts?

Let’s find out.

Disc One: Mortal Kombat (1995)

In which a group of fighters including Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), Liu Kang (Robin Shou) and Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson from Bill Malone’s superior HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake) are recruited to fight for humanity in a series of tournaments. If they lose some enormously evil Emperor will get to rule our realm. In order to do this the Emperor has to win ten tournaments of which he has won nine so far. Who makes these rules? And what’s to stop him from cheating?

The opening half of MORTAL KOMBAT is actually quite engrossing, with excellent Thailand locations and some impressive sets. The actual main villain seems to be Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) but there’s also a chap with four arms who’s much bigger and taller than anyone but still delights when he wins a fight against someone much smaller than him. 

Our heroes enter the tournament. I think. Because that’s when it all starts to get a bit unclear. However if you’ve paid your money to see lots and lots of fighting then you’ll likely be happy with what you get here. Presiding over everything on the side of good is Raiden (Christopher Lambert) who looks as if he has just stepped out of a shampoo commercial into a gig that probably paid about the same amount of money. It’s all bouncy, energetic stuff with likeable leads and hissable villains - a bit like an Empire Picture but made with a lot more money and in its favour it has to be said that it’s never dull, even if the ending is of the ‘is that it?’ variety.

Extras on Arrow’s disc include two new commentaries from director Paul WS Anderson (who starts by explaining the WS in his name) and podcaster Dave Baxter. There are new interviews with star Ashby (16 minutes), DP John R Leonetti on his career and on becoming a director (16 minutes), producer Lawrence Kasanoff (18 minutes) and special effects artist Tom Woodruff on bringing Goro to life (16 minutes).

Archival extras include a 1995 promotional featurette with most of the main cast and crew (15 minutes), who also feature in a collection of tiny minute-long soundbites. There’s also 13 minutes of behind the scenes footage, a trailer and image gallery.

Disc Two: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

The budget goes up while the quality goes down in this infamously poorly-rated sequel that looks a lot more like an Empire production than its predecessor. We pick up where the previous film left off except Christopher Lambert has been replaced by James Remar and some of the others have been brazenly recast as well, with the film showing us the previous Sonja and then the new Sonja (Sandra Hess) and not caring two hoots that audiences would likely be scratching their heads two minutes in before staring open-mouthed as a major cast member gets killed right away.

If that suggests that MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION isn’t fun then far from it. In fact in its own way it’s even more of a blast than the first film. Brian Thompson is the baddie this time around and he embraces his role with all the gusto of Jack Palance in HAWK THE SLAYER and just like that film, this one also deserves a cult all to itself. The plot is bonkers, some of the location shooting is amazing (the city of Petra in Jordan) and the CGI is just one step up from 1990s-era Doom, but the film isn’t dull for a single one of its 95 minutes and some of the scenes are instant ‘show this to your friends the next time they’re round’. I had no idea what was going on much of the time and I still had a blast with it.

Extras this time include a new commentary from director John R Leonetti, prompted by Gillian Wallace Horvat, and another from a returning Dave Baxter. There are new interviews with star Musetta Vander (18 minutes), composer George S Clinton (16 minutes) and stunt man J J Perry (20 minutes), with archival behind the scenes footage (15 minutes) and on-set soundbites (around 10 minutes in all). Plus of course trailers, TV spots and image galleries. Arrow’s limited edition set also comes with a booklet, two double-sided posters and a reversible sleeve.

The Mortal Kombat Kollection is out in limited edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray sets from Arrow Films on Monday 29th June 2026