Woah — I’d never heard of this movie before Arrow Video sent it my way.

Darkly Noon (Brendan Fraser) is the sole survivor of a military-style attack on an isolated religious community — think Waco. As he wanders the forest in a daze, he is taken in by Callie (Ashley Judd). Darkly finds himself feeling strange new feelings that his religious upbringing has ill-prepared him for. Once Callie’s mute man Clay (Viggo Mortensen), he becomes more lost than ever before.

Director Philip Ridley has been all over the map artistically, acting as a storyteller in a variety of media. Here, he’s telling Darkly’s tale as he wanders through Appalachia, an orphan via government military attack, lost in his own dark night of the soul.

This film has never been released on blu ray before, which is pretty amazing in this day and age. It’s certainly unlike any other Brendan Fraser movie I’ve seen. And I’ve seen Monkeybone.

Let me sum up the strangeness of this film: it’s supposedly set in the American South and yet it was shot in the German woods. There’s also a scene with a gigantic glittery clown shoe that is on fire in the middle of a lake as a Viking burial for a dog, which causes Fraser’s character to cover himself with barbed wire and set a house ablaze at the behest of his zombified parents while throbbing beats blare on the soundtrack.

Seriously, nothing prepared me for this development.

Imagine Brendan Fraser in the role that Nick Cage never played, completely unready to play said role. A must-see? You know it.

The Arrow release of this movie features a new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, approved by Philip Ridley as well as new audio commentary. It also features interviews with the editor and composer, demos of the music score and an archive feature that has interviews with Ridley, composer Nick Bicat and Mortensen.

You can order it here.

DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by Arrow Video.