Risen 4K UltraHD

Risen is the biblical story of the resurrection of Jesus told through the eyes of a Roman Tribune tasked with finding the body of Jesus within the days and weeks following the crucifixion. (Doug Blackburn)

Special features include commentary with Patrick and Paul Aiello; five deleted scenes (HD 04:24); four featurettes: The Battle Of The Zealots Deconstructed (HD 05:03), The Mystery Of The Resurrection: Making Risen (HD 11:14), Creating A.D. Jerusalem (HD 09:29), and Script To Screen (HD 03:57); upfront previews; and an UltraViolet digital copy.

No information is available for this title regarding the type of source material or digital intermediate resolution. The images have great detail, though, they tend to be stark and lacking warmth unless lit by torchlight or reflections from warm-colored surfaces. The “desert-y” character of the images paints a somewhat grim, colorless picture of the relatively featureless surroundings of desert landscapes. Resolution appears better than HD, but not quite as good as the best detail seen from the best UHD movies. HDR makes desert sunlight especially harsh and realistic, with very sharply delineated shadows and highlights that don’t lose detail, thanks to the miracle of HDR. I came close to giving this title a “4” rating for image quality instead of “3.5” but the starkness and perceived muted color palette caused the loss of half a point in spite of the good image resolution. (Doug Blackburn)

The ear-level sound is fairly good, though, not state of the art. Dialogue and more complex mixes are handled well but do not have quite the pristine sound quality and attention to detail you often hear from bigger-budget features. The Immersive Sound experience is a let-down, with very little ambience in the height channels, and long periods—up to five minutes or even more—can go by with no sound at all in the height channels. Music is the most common sound in the height channels by far. Directional effects in the height channels are minimal. Ambient sounds in the height channels are rare, and when there is some ambience in the height channels, it lasts for mere seconds before disappearing. There were plenty of opportunities to put echoes of voices in the height channels that would replicate the real-world, where sound bounces off stone walls, hillsides, and even inside rooms, but that just doesn’t happen in this soundtrack. (Doug Blackburn)