Prisoners Of The Ghostland

The extras on this blu-ray and DVD release from Elysian Film Group are a slim selection but are worth a look. Alongside the trailer, the most polished is a Making Of Featurette, which includes interviews with Nic Cage (Hero), Bill Moseley (Governor) and Sofia Boutella (Bernice). It's a standard issue package that sees Cage offer the best value when he talks about bringing a more western 'boxing' style to the Samurai sequences. The interviews are interspersed with behind-the-scenes footage.

Director Sion Sono is curiously absent from the Making Of - leaving the suspicion that the producers don't think that fans can cope with subtitles. That thought, inevitably, carries over to the additional extra - a Zoom Q&A recorded for FrightFest, hosted by Alan Jones, whose questions are translated by one of the film's producers Kô Mori. It would make for a more immediate watch if this had been edited back simply to include Sono's responses with subtitles, but perhaps the distributor didn't want to step on the producer's toes. In any event, unless you speak Japanese, you may want to have the remote in your hand to help speed this extra along. In terms of content, the director talks about working with Cage and his style. The most interesting moment comes when he talks about the connection between the clock in Ghostland and Hiroshima and its only a shame that the rest of the questions don't dig quite as deep.

The disc also includes subtitles for the hearing impaired.