Why not tackle two Shudder titles at once? I think two for the price of one is a solid game plan. I do enjoy staying on top of AMC Plus and Shudder for maintaining a streaming service for as long as they have without making a meaningful commitment to running audio description for their titles. And it honestly is so easy for them. Several library TV shows have audio description tracks out in existence, including Mad Men,Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and all of the Walking Dead spinoffs. IFC makes audio description for theatrical releases, which includes the more upscale Shudder titles, and they license a ton of films that have audio description tracks. They could overnight just have over a thousand hours of programming just by tracking existing audio description and making it available. From there, once they see the metric and realize there is a chunk of blind and low vision horror fans, they’ll be motivated to keep pushing further. In the streaming wars every little thing counts and leads to more subscribers.
the first film, Shadow Of God, is a low budget horror about a Priest that returns home to perform an exorcism on his father, while also having to deal with a surrounding doomsday cult. it seems like a fine low budget horror. For some, it will be enough for a watch, and others who believe the exorcism genre died with The Exorcist, won’t find anything terribly new here.
the other film is about a letter that gets flagged by the post office for inspection, because it doesn’t have the appropriate stuff that the needy postal workers have to have to mail a letter. So, an inspector is given the letter, and told to figure it out. Unfortunately, this is not a dialog heavy film, and I also was told to figure it out, and I can’t of the two, this one is far more unwatchable without audio description.
Although, people watch the horror genre most of the time for the horror elements. Be it gore, monsters, scares, or general spooky themes, the genre itself likely has visual elements being missed. having been able to see before, I’m aware of how crazy exorcism movies can get, and i assume Dead Mail has some of the same things. So, once again, on my little check in with AMC Plus, they fail to provide me with titles I could easily get without audio description. The assumption, when my accessibility needs aren’t met is either that you are ignorant, incompetent, apathetic, intentionally discriminatory in nature, or you somehow believe the product you carry is inherently so accessible it needs no description.
So which is it?
Final Grades: Both Are Unwatchable Due to Lack Of Audio Description
