Movies
Dexter: Complete First Season (Blu-ray) (V)
“The rest of the show is flawless, a compliment that I don’t throw around too often. The writing is top-notch, the story is engrossing and the ensemble cast is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a television show or film..”
After watching DEXTER: THE SECOND SEASON on DVD, I was hoping Paramount/CBS and Showtime would learn from their mistakes and actually put some thought into their special features in the future. It was such a shame to see absolutely nothing worth mentioning included in that box set, with the even bigger travesty being the unfulfilled promise of a third season preview in the set. But, at the end of the day, DEXTER is still one of the best shows on television. When your show is that good, I guess you don’t care whether you include extras for diehard fans or not, since you know they’ll buy it anyway.
Going back to DEXTER: THE FIRST SEASON, after not watching it since it first arrived on DVD, I was stunned at how poor the acting in the premiere episode was when compared to the rest of the series. Jennifer Carpenter’s performance has always left something to be desired, even though she does progressively get better as her character develops. But I really got the sense that the actors didn’t quite have their chemistry down pat from the get-go. Michael C. Hall’s turn as Dexter comes off a bit self-aware in the beginning, in the sense that he’s trying so hard to put up a front, that there’s absolutely no way Doakes would be the only one to catch onto him. After the first half of the episode, though, he puts his co-stars to shame and reminds us why he got all those Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Speaking of Doakes, one of the reasons I was interested in revisiting the first season for was to see if Erik King chewed the scenery as much as I remembered. I was pleasantly surprised to see that his performance was so much better than I recalled and I found it to be almost as good as Hall’s.
The rest of the show is flawless, a compliment that I don’t throw around too often. The writing is top-notch, the story is engrossing and the ensemble cast is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a television show or film. But, above all else, the moral dilemma is what really drives the show forward. Is Dexter doing the right thing by taking the law into his own hands? Dexter is a character that is free from the bonds of emotion and shows little remorse for his anti-social behaviors, yet, we, the audience, are able to completely empathize with and root for him. That’s the power of truly great entertainment: it challenges your concept of a “white and black world,” making you realize that there are shades of grey.
The 1080p transfer on the Blu-Ray release of DEXTER: THE FIRST SEASON is encoded with an AVC MPEG-4, beating out the 1080i presentation during its run on Showtime HD. The picture is crisp and the colors are vibrant for the most part. The season finale, “Born Free,” has a considerable amount of grain during indoor scenes and tends to look soft overall. Several other instances of these complaints occur throughout the season but only for seconds at a time. During these particular scenes, the standard definition release actually has a substantial edge on its Blu-ray counterpart. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless track adds a lot of clarity and depth to the dialogue and memorable score (most notably, the pieces by Daniel Licht and Rolfe Kent).
The biggest disappointment with the set lies in CBS/Paramount’s inability to put some thought into their bonus features for DEXTER and present them in a way that doesn’t make me want chuck my box set out the window. The commentary tracks, featured on “Return to Sender” and “Born Free,” are the only extras carried over from the standard definition release and put on the actual Blu-Ray. “The Academy Of Blood” and “Witnessed In Blood,” the two featurettes from the original box set, can only be accessed using B-D Live. Unfortunately, the page for DEXTER had not been activated at the time of this review, so I can’t comment on the efficiency of the page or whether the bonus materials have been re-edited. Also included on the set’s B-D Live component are a Michael C. Hall podcast (presumably the same one from the second season box set), the first episode of DEXTER: SEASON THREE (maybe it won’t be a tease this time around?) and the first two episodes of UNITED STATES OF TARA. There’s 3 50GB Blu-Rays included in the box set, so it’s absolutely inexcusable that they didn’t include the two featurettes on one of the discs (the bonus episodes of TARA and DEXTER are completely expendable, as is the podcast). DEXTER: THE FIRST SEASON Blu-Ray is something that I would only recommend to rabid fans or those who haven’t had a chance to pick up the original release. The picture and sound upgrade is nice, but for those who were hoping for something meatier in the extras department, or don’t have a Profile 2.0 player, it’s not worth the double-dip.
Show (reflected as official score): 5/5
Blu-Ray: 3/5
This week kicked off with the release of hippo horror movie Hungry at home, and four more horror movies have arrived for at-home viewing as we head into the final weekend of June.
Here are the new horror movies that released on Friday, June 26, 2026!
The Halloween season can no longer be contained to the months of September and October, with “Summerween” becoming a thing in recent years. Essentially, it allows for Halloween to bleed into the warmer Summer months, and the first ever Summerween movie has arrived.
The Asylum released Summerween onto Digital outlets today.
In the film from writer/director Ryan Ebert, “On Summerween, a former circus clown escapes a mental institution to return to his abandoned mansion and hunt the teens partying there.”
Cole Chapleski, Chase Breithoff, Logan Roe, Sophia Sabol, and Clint Morrison star.
Director Ryan Ebert is the man behind a string of recent indie horrors we’ve covered, including Shark Side of the Moon, The Jolly Monkey, Jurassic Reborn, and Predator: Wastelands.
A witchy coming-of-age story from Dark Sky Films, Camp is now playing in select theaters.
Check your local listings to find a theater near you.
Camp is from writer-director Avalon Fast (Honeycomb, The Serpent’s Skin).
“Emily is the root cause of two devastating tragedies very early in her life, and she feels the weight of these accidents as though cursed. At her father’s suggestion, she takes a position at a summer camp for troubled youth to ease her guilt. When Emily arrives, she is welcomed by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and surround her with peace and forgiveness.
“As Emily begins to believe in a new kind of life, she starts to hear a voice whispering from deep in the woods — one that urges her to go home, and one that may be impossible to ignore.”
The film stars Zola Grimmer in her screen debut alongside Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis (Castration Movie Part 1 & 2, In A Violent Nature), Ella Reece, Austyn Van de Kamp (This Too Shall Pass), Sophie Bawks-Smith (Honeycomb), Izza Jarvis, and Aiden Laudersmith.
Producers Tyler Perry and Jason Blum have joined forces for Peacock Original Strung.
The film is now streaming only on Peacock.
“A talented violinist takes a prestigious job as a music tutor for the gifted daughter of an influential and enigmatic family. As she becomes entangled in their opulent world, unsettling secrets begin to surface, forcing her to question her safety, her dreams, and even her sanity.”
Malcolm D. Lee (Scary Movie 5, Space Jam: A New Legacy) directs from a script written by Alan B. McElroy (Wrong Turn, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers).
Chloe Bailey (“Swarm“), Lynn Whitfield (Jaws: The Revenge), Lucien Laviscount (“Scream Queens”), Anna Diop (Us), Coco Jones (Vampires vs. the Bronx), Langley Kirkwood (“Banshee”), and Romy Woods star in Peacock’s Strung.
Produced by Diablo Cody, director Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits brought a new coven of witches to the big screen earlier this year, and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Victoria Pedretti (“The Haunting of Hill House”), Alexandra Shipp (Tragedy Girls), Gabrielle Union (Breaking In), and Emma Chamberlain star in Forbidden Fruits, released by IFC and Shudder.
Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges the group’s ‘girl boss’ ways, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate.
“Forbidden Fruits grabbed me by the neck the very first time I read it,” Diablo Cody said. “It’s one of the craziest, most creative, beautifully bonkers projects I’ve ever worked on.”
Meagan Navarro writes in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “Forbidden Fruits may not necessarily forge new terrain in the teen satire space, but Alloway brings so much style and energy to her well-cast single-location stage play adaptation for the Gen Z crowd.”
The film is an adaptation of playwright Lily Houghton’s stage play Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die. Alloway and Houghton co-adapted.
This week’s new release roundups are presented by HUNGRY.
All aboard the swamp tour from hell – this hippo isn’t playing games…
HUNGRY is now available on Digital. Watch it now!
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