Triaphilia

You never know what you’ll find in an old steamer trunk.

(2021) Horror (LAS Productions) Kenny Ledee, Chelsea Rose Barreto, Vincent Caprio, Suzanne Johnson, Ashley Laessig, Jenn Nobile, Esra Ozgun, Rink Patel, Katie Raulerson, Saniye Reyhan, Kurt Slter, Julia Wyrzuc, Mary Zaroura, Kurt Slater, Tony Murphy, Daniela Favaloro. Directed by Joshua Nelson

 

The wisdom goes that the easiest kind of movie to make is a horror movie. That is about as far from the truth as it gets. Horror films are relatively inexpensive to make (which is why studios love them so much) but they are damned hard to get right. Making a good scare requires as much forethought and planning as any CGI, and when not done properly, can lead to a horror movie that isn’t scary. A lot of tyro filmmakers go into horror films with that attitude and make tepid films that please nobody. That is not always the case, however.

Triaphilia is a horror anthology film with three short stories linked together by an antiques and curios store called The Anointed Cherub, which might give you a clue as to who the proprietor (Ledee) really is. He caters to the customer, giving them what they need, although not necessarily what they want. All of his wares come with a real dark side to them.

The first story brings Sal (Patel), who is meeting his girlfriend Karen’s (Raulerson) parents for the first time and he hopes to impress them by bringing them a gift, although she is of the opinion that he would be much better served buying something for her instead. The proprietor convinces Sal to purchase an antique mirror. You can probably see where this is going, as mirrors rarely merely show a reflection in horror movies.

The second story has a trio of fun-loving girls – Bonnie (Laessig), Jeanine (Wyrzuc) and Ruby (Zazoura) – buy an urn that purportedly has the ashes of a serial killer in them. That’s all good for grins and giggles until the deceased killer’s wife (Ozgun) wants her hubby’s ashes back – and she’s not about to take no for an answer.

The final story revolves around Susan (Nobile), a grieving mom who was always a little off but her beloved son Franklin’s death has really sent her around the bend. Her friends Zoe (Barreto) and Ronnie (Reyhan) volunteer to help her store Franklin’s things and at the Anointed Cherub they find a big steamer trunk for the purpose. However, as it turns out, the trunk isn’t exactly empty.

None of the stories are groundbreaking, but they don’t have to be. The third story has the most depth to it and the first the most humor. What matters in a movie like this is that the stories are executed properly, and on that matter the jury is unfortunately out. From a technical standpoint, the movie excels in several ways; the cinematography is absolutely first-rate, so kudos to Michael Zayac in that regard. The gore effects are all practical and while fairly low-budget, are at least competently done.

Where the movie is less successful is in the performances; the acting feels flat and lifeless in a lot of places. One reason for that may be the dialogue which often doesn’t sound like real people talking so much as what looks good on a written script. One of the sins often committed by screenwriters (particularly those that are relatively new to it) is that they fail to actually speak the dialogue out loud before committing it to the script. That often helps make the dialogue sound more natural and less like a book on tape. Also, too many of the characters are shallow and none-too-bright. A little more variety could have been useful, particularly in the female characters. The two actors who fare best is Ledee, who seems to be having the most fun with his role, and Nobile who gives her part equal pathos and WTF-ness.

By no means is this a truly bad movie – I’ve seen plenty of those to know what one looks like – but making movies is a learning experience and that’s what’s happening here. There’s enough that is worthwhile to take a look, so long as you don’t set the bar too high for it. I didn’t feel compelled to switch the movie off, so it held my interest as it is likely to hold yours. There are plenty of movies that don’t even make it that far.

The movie is currently unavailable to screen, but is set to be available in the last quarter of the year on Amazon and other streaming services.

REASONS TO SEE: The cinematography is extremely strong.
REASONS TO AVOID: The acting is flat and the characters for the most part not terribly well-written.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of violence (some of it bloody) and profanity, including sexual references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although the film defines triaphilia as the “fear of death coming in threes,” the Latin words actually translate to “love of things that come in threes” and refers more to the belief that things occur in threes rather than a fear of it.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/5/21: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Needful Things
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: The Sleepless Unknown

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Portals

I always thought the end of the world would come with giant floating cell phones.

(2019) Sci-Fi Horror (Screen Media) Neil Hopkins, Ptolemy Slocum, Deanna Russo, Ruby O’Donnell, Phet Mahathongdy, Paul McCarthy-Boyington, Gretchen Lodge, Georgina Blackledge, Keith Hudson, Sergio Martinez, Shellye Broughton, Michele Weaver, Reina Guthrie, Albert A. Vega, Clint Jung, Dare Emmanuel, Natasha Gott, Salvita Decorte. Directed by Gregg Hale, Liam O’Donnell, Eduardo Sanchez and Timo Tjahjanto

How will the world end? Will it be due to an outside agency, a passing meteor perhaps or a solar event? Or will we do it to ourselves, through our own hubris or in some misguided although earnest attempt to make things better? Portals posits that it will be both.

This anthology film has three segments, along with a prologue/epilogue sequence that initially begins as an interview segment with two of the scientists involved in an attempt to create a black hold here on earth, an incredibly dangerous idea that turns out to have unanticipated but bizarre consequences; it creates a worldwide blackout as the power grid is overloaded, followed by the appearance of mysterious monoliths that look like a combination of the rectangular objects from 2001: A Space Odyssey and giant cell phones.

These cell phones (complete with trippy light effects) turn out to be doorways that people can walk through, although not all people and with varying results for those who do. While most are terrified of these buzzing, humming portals, some are able to communicate with them telepathically and insist that their purpose is benign. Of course, that turns out to be not the case.

The three main segments involve a family fleeing during a mandatory evacuation; father Adam (Hopkins) drives his wife (Russo) and daughter (R. O’Donnell) to grandmother’s house, only to literally run into one of these portals on a lonely desert highway. This segment – which is interspersed throughout the film as a kind of linking narrative – then adjourns to a hospital where Adam is constantly told by a pair of doctors that he’s “lucky to be alive” and his repeated attempts to see his family go unheeded. He also has had one of his eyes replaced by a black orb similar to the material in the portals.

The second segment – co-directed by The Blair Witch Project’s Eduardo Sanchez – involves an overwhelmed call center during the height of the blackout. The various 911 operators cope in different ways, some terrified about their inability to reach their own families, others citing some sort of grand global conspiracy theory. When one of the portals appears in the call center, the conspiracy theorist (McCarthy-Boyington) gets it into his head that the people of the call center have to pass through the portal. Since they are reluctant to do it on their own, he pulls a gun (one wonders how he managed to get a gun into a call center that has an electronic locking system that keeps them trapped inside the center during the ordeal) and forces them to do it with, again, varying results.

The third segment begins a few minutes before the blackout begins in an underground parking garage in Djakarta where two sisters (Gott, Decorte) argue about each other’s life choices but once the blackout begins have a lot worse things to worry about – the sudden appearance of a portal and the attack of zombie-like Malaysians who insist on putting one of the sisters through the portal.

What are these portals? Where do they lead to? What is their purpose? Why are they here? What does it really matter anyway?

The film is pretty light on explanation, heavy on exposition and liberally laced with some fairly graphic bloody violence. Unlike most horror anthologies, the individual sequences are part of a larger story and while told out of chronological order, are about as well-linked as any anthology you’re ever likely to see. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that like most anthologies, the quality is fairly uneven. The garage-set sequence is pretty poorly acted and feels like it came from another film entirely; it is so out of step from the other sequences that it is almost jarring. For an anthology like this one to work, the stories have to integrate and that sequence does not. The call center and fleeing family sequences mesh much better together.

Gorehounds will be happy with exploding heads, face melting and eye gouging effects. The portals themselves are nicely done, even if they do look like giant cell phones. They convey an overt sense of menace, although I think the movie might have worked better if the intentions of the portals had been less discernible. The fact that the portals are malevolent works against the movie overall and if there was more of a vagueness as to whether the portals were benign or not (as happened with the call center sequence) it would have heightened the tension of the film, although I suppose that it would have made the zombies of the garage sequence a bit superfluous.

I liked the concept of the film, even if it didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense the way it was described. Also, the idea of forming artificial black holes is nonsensical; black holes are incredibly dangerous and would likely crush the planet the instant one formed. Why would a scientist deliberately try to create one, let alone a team of scientists? With all those people involved who understand physics at least to a certain extent, wouldn’t someone have objected?

Then again, it’s never a wise idea to look too deeply into logic when it comes to genre films. Your best bet is to just go with it and enjoy the film for what it is. While I don’t think this is going to go down as a perennial Halloween classic, it will at least give horror fans a little something different to consider.

REASONS TO SEE: The concept is intriguing.
REASONS TO AVOID: The execution isn’t quite there.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, some gruesome images and some bloody violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was co-produced by the cinematic arm of the Bloody Disgusting website.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/26/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 0% positive reviews: Metacritic: 26/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Devil’s Gate
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: From Shock to Awe

Terror 5

This is NOT Gene Simmons.

(2016) Horror Anthology (Artsploitation)  Lu Grasso, Augusto Alvarez, Airas Alban, Emilio Guzzo, Rocio Lopez, Agustin Rittano, Clarisa Hernández, Juan Barberini, Cecilia Cartasegna, Julián Larquier Tellarini, Marcos Woinsky, Marcela Luznik, Jorge Prado, Rafael Ferro, Gastón Cocchiarale, Walter Cornás, Nai Awada, Giselle Motta.  Directed by Sebastian Rotstein and Federico Rotstein

 

Horror anthologies generally tend to be uneven in terms of quality. Even when the segments are all directed by the same person, tonal shifts can sometimes work against the film, particularly when the directors are trying to work from a variety of styles.

This Argentinian anthology is set in an unnamed Argentine city in which a lurid trial is taking place. Some months earlier, a building collapsed, killing 15 people. The mayor (Ferro) has been charged with corruption, money laundering and essentially depraved indifference along with two of his cronies. He is the very picture of power; arrogant, indifferent to the suffering of others and manipulative.

Most of the participants are awaiting the verdict, either watching on TV or listening on the radio. The first story involves Sonia (Grasso), a student who is helping her boyfriend Juan (Alvarez) prepare for an important test. However, rather than studying with him, she takes him to the school after dark where they participate in a student revenge group that tortures the teachers that mistreated them.

In the second story, a couple – Gaby (Cartasegna) and Hernan (Tellarini) – adjourn to a hotel for a night of passionate sex. However, the attraction between the couple is purely between the sheets and once the sex is over the arguing begins. What they don’t realize is that they’re being watched by an auteur who plans to make them part of his latest work.

The third story involves a group of friends gathered to party torment one of their own number, whom they address as “Cherry” in regards to his virginity. As the abuse grows, he begins to grow more resentful until the point that he reveals his true nature.

The fourth story concerns two men (Rittano, Barberini) who await in separate cars for their girlfriends – having decided to swap partners for the night. As you can guess from the tone of the movie, it doesn’t go according to plan at all.

The final story is the one closest to the linking story. A busload of relatives of the dead from the apartment collapse have gone to the cemetery to mourn their loved ones. As the injustice of their situation grows, the dead are moved to rise and wreak havoc on the town. The bus driver (Prado) manages to keep out of sight of the vengeful dead but he has an agenda of his own.

The anthology is set up in kind of a weird manner; after the set-up of the linking story, the first story is told in its entirety but the other four are told concurrently, weaving in and out of each. It’s a bit disconcerting and leaves the audience wondering “Did I miss something?” I can sort of understand why they chose to do it that way – the first story is completely different in tone from the other four and it really isn’t connected to either the overall story or to any of the other four. It’s almost as if the directors had an additional short film lying around and decided to insert it.

That said, this is actually a terrific film. The psycho-sexual aspects recall Pier Paolo Pasolini, while the gore recalls the work of Dario Argento. There is an undercurrent of rage here; oppression by authority figures permeates all of the stories. People are either pushed to violence, or are subsumed by the violence of their oppressors. It is rare that a horror film is as politically astute as this one is.

The performances are as you can imagine across the scale; some are outstanding (Cartasegna) while others are merely adequate. The stories also vary in quality; the first story definitely feels out of place while the two men in cars just never generates any suspense or terror until the very final shot of the vignette. The other three are gripping and visceral both from a sexual and violence aspect. It also must be said that the living dead when they show up with their blue glowing eyes are really cool. The overall look of the film is bathed in green, red and blue – primary colors rendered like lurid neon.

The film is in Spanish and subtitled so that may give some American horror fans pause. If you’re willing to put up with reading the titles, you are likely to find this a worthy investment of time. If you like your horror with a healthy dose of kinky sex, you’re definitely going to need to look this one up.

REASONS TO SEE: The zombies with the glowing eyes are tres cool.
REASONS TO AVOID: The dialogue is pretentious in places.
FAMILY VALUES: There is sex, nudity, violence, gore, profanity and drug use – better to ask what’s not in there!
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film was nominated for a Best Argentinian Film at the Mar de Plata Film Festival.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Google Play, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/9/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Eyes Wide Shut
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Tag

The Midnight Matinee

The filmmakers of Midnight Matinee are appealing to a potential audience one viewer at a time.

(2017) Horror Anthology (IP Productions) Maggie Tehan, Justin Doesch, Juan-Pablo Veizaga, Shaun Woodland, Ian Flanders, Melissa Merry, Aggie Binkley, Maggie Binkley, Becky Edwards, Jimmy Edwards, Sophie Edwards, Jennifer McCormick, Santiago Veizaga. Directed by Justin Doesch

 

I’m a bit of a sucker for horror anthologies. I always go into them hoping I’ll get that rare and magical experience – when all the stories within the anthology are terrific. It hasn’t happened yet but I still keep hoping.

Justin Doesch, the man behind the camera for this anthology, is a name you should remember. He’s definitely got a ton of potential and a boatload of vision. He’s delivered five pretty solid stories in an amazing 42 minutes – an average of about eight minutes per segment. I have nothing against short, taut storytelling but my main complaint here is that some of the segments could have used some fleshing out; there was an unfinished feeling to some of them as if key scenes hadn’t made it into the final product.

The opening segment, “Open Sea,” is one of those. It is a bit of a cross between The Blair Witch Project and Open Water. Brian (Doesch) is taking his girlfriend Lauren (Tehan) out on his boat on the ocean for some scuba diving but with a specific purpose; he means to propose to her. Unfortunately, man proposes and sometimes, the ocean disposes. The Blair Witch aspect is that Brian intends to document the big day but he ends up documenting something else. It actually is a pretty decent segment but it felt rushed in terms of pacing and the payoff, one of the better effects shots of the film, could have used a bit more build-up.

“Let Go” is the weakest of the five. It’s modern dating with a twist. Let’s just say that if you think you’ve got problem with the dating scene, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Unfortunately, I found my attention wandering during this one although it does have a pretty decent twist. “Premonition” also utilizes found footage but in a totally unique and different way. A little girl who is prescient tries to warn someone against a life or death situation…but being psychic doesn’t mean you get to save people. Timing, as they say, is everything.

The next sequence was my favorite and happened to be the only non-horror segment of the bunch. “Frances” concerns Nikolai (Flanders), a kind of a low-level criminal screw-up who’s got one job – to pass along a package to Frances (Merry), a blind courier for a criminal boss. Simple enough – but Nikolai is the kind of guy who could mess up boiling an egg. You’re expecting some horrific twist so when the twist comes it comes out of left field. Who said that a horror anthology has to be all horror?

Finally, “Night Night” brings the film to a close about an exhausted father (J-P Veizaga) who is pestered by a son (S. Veizaga) who simply won’t go to bed – he’s certain that there is something terrible after him. This was the scariest sequence of the five and ends the movie on a nice note, or not-so-nice depending how you look at it. For my money, it is one of the better directed segments of the five.

There isn’t a ton of bloodshed and the special effects are minimal. It’s clear that Doesch had a minuscule budget and at times it shows on screen; for example, the “Premonition” set looks like a set rather than a lived-in home. That kind of thing can take the viewer out of the film. Still, if you can get past the low-budget production values, there is some entertainment to be had here, particularly the final two sequences although seeing Tehan in a bikini is certainly worth a look.

Doesch has an excellent eye and despite all the limitations that a micro-budget puts on a filmmaker he shows here that he has the talent and the imagination to really turn some heads. As it is, I think he has enormous promise and even if this almost has a work in progress feel to it, at least the investment of your time isn’t galling. 42 minutes for an early look at a director who has every sign of going places isn’t too much to ask.

REASONS TO GO: Doesch has a fine eye for camera angles and scene composition.
REASONS TO STAY: Some of the shorts could have used some fleshing out. Some of the low budget shows in places. Other than the final segment, I didn’t find any of the shorts excessively scary.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity as well as disturbing images and situations.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Doesch was the 2017 recipient of the Amazon Filmmaker of the Year award.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/10/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: VHS
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: A Double Life

The ABCs of Death

You really don’t want to know what F stands for.

(2012) Horror Anthology (Magnet) Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (voice), Erik Aude, Kyra Zagorsky, Ivan Gonzalez, Dallas Malloy, Sarah Bonrepaux, Lee Hardcastle, Fraser Corbett, Peter Pedrero, Darenzia, Arisa Nakamura, Hiroko Yashiki, Lucy Clements, Match, Yuri Murata, Je$$ica, Harold Torres, Mattias Oviedo, Alejandra Urdlain, Takashi Nishina, Chems Dahmani, Vanja Lazin. Directed by a bunch of people.  

Horror movies are undergoing a quiet renaissance with an underground that is active and imaginative. While many of these movies aren’t getting theatrical releases, with the advent of YouTube, VOD and other means of putting movies out there, we’re seeing some really good stuff not just here in America but from all over the world.

Tim League, founder of Fantastic Fest, America’s premier genre film festival, wants these talents to see the light of day. Along with co-producer Ant Timpson (a Kiwi whose Incredibly Strange Film Festival is one of the world’s most prestigious) he came up with a concept – assign 26 of the world’s most exciting up-and-coming horror film directors a letter of the alphabet and have them make a short film relating a word starting with that letter to death and then with all 26 shown as a single film.

Like all anthologies, the quality varies and with this many shorts (most of which last less than 5 minutes) there is a wide variety of styles and content. Some are more comic than horrific, some taking on a combination of the two. Many are attempts to push the boundaries, not only of gore but of good taste. Some are intriguing, some are innovative, some are repulsive and some are mediocre. Most people will find at least one of the shorts to be outstanding.

There were some that were just plain horrific in an old-fashioned sense –  A is for Apocalypse is, for example, from Nacho Vigolando (of Timecrimes and Extraterrestrial) in which a savage murder is turned into an act of mercy. One of my favorites was T is for Toilet in which an overly skittish young man who has an irrational fear of toilets (a fear which turned out to be justified) done in Claymation – the director, Lee Hardcastle, actually won the 26th spot on the roster in a contest.

Xavier Gens, the French director who helmed The Divide has one of the more straightforward shorts in the bunch.  In X is for XXL, a tormented overweight French woman decides to take matters into her own hands and reinvent herself to be more in line with the aesthetic of beauty that French models ascribe to. Take from that what you will.

There is also much humor. J is for Jidai-Geki (Samurai Film) from Japanese director Yudai Yamaguchi has a samurai about to deliver the coup de grace for a samurai committing hara-kiri unable to keep a straight face because of the faces his charge is making. Q is for Quack has Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die) and Simon Barrett commiserating over the disrespect afforded them by being assigned the letter Q and at their billing  in the credits. They concoct a brilliant way to make their segment stand out – then screw it up about as badly as it can be.

There are some surreal segments such as O is for Orgasm and W is for WTF. There is the animated K is for Klutz and the Russ Meyers tribute S is for Speed. I could go on and on but I don’t think it necessary to go over all 26 entries. You get the drift.

There’s enough good stuff to outweigh the bad by a pretty decent margin, so I can recommend this for most horror fans and even those mainstream moviegoers who don’t mind having their boundaries pushed a bit. This isn’t for the faint of heart, the squeamish or the easily offended. Who it is for are those who are looking for something a bit out of the norm and have an open mind about movies. I recommend bringing along someone with a big booming belly laugh. There was a guy like that at my screening of the film and it helps immensely.

REASONS TO GO: Some big laughs and some big scares. Pushes some boundaries and offers examples of what’s going on in the horror underground around the world.

REASONS TO STAY: Uneven – some of the segments are less successful than others. Too much toilet humor.

FAMILY VALUES:  Crude humor, graphic nudity and gore, foul language, violence, disturbing images and themes, drug use and a partridge in a pear tree.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Ant Timpson and Tim Teague, producers of the film, are best known for running the Incredibly Strange Film Festival and Fantastic Fest respectively; Teague is also CEO of the Alamo Drafthouse chain of theaters.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/21/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 39% positive reviews. Metacritic: 44/100; critics really didn’t get on board for this one.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: V/H/S

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: I Declare War

VHS

All in all, you might have been better off using Match.com

(2012) Horror (Magnet) Calvin Reeder, Adam Wingard, Lane Hughes, Hannah Fierman, Mike Donlan, Joe Sykes, Drew Sawyer, Joe Swanberg, Sophia Takal, Norma C. Quinones, Drew Moerlein, Chad Villella, Matt Bertinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Paul Natonek. Directed by David Bruckner, Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Radio Silence, Glenn McQuaid and Adam Wingard

 

While technology improves, some things stay the same. We can upgrade our recording systems but the images don’t change much. One vacation video is pretty much the same as another, whether it was taken in 1982 or 2012.

But these are anything but vacation videos unless you have a peculiar idea of relaxation, but let’s start from the beginning. An unknown party hires four small-time criminals who are known for making videos of women that they catch in parking garages and brutally show off their naked breasts. These make tons of money on the Internet, but their mysterious employer isn’t interested in boobs. He wants the gang of four to enter a house that’s more or less deserted (and it turns out to be less), and steal a videotape.

Break in they do and they enter the house to find a dead body and a pile of videotapes. As one of the group checks out the tapes to figure out which one is the right one, the rest of the group goes to investigate a series of mysterious noises – and you know that is going to end badly.

The first tape concerns a trio of frat boy-sorts who attach a spy-cam to one of the lad’s glasses and they go out hoping to get him laid. After some trial and error and enough alcohol to prove that these boys (save the one with the camera) are pretty much assholes when drunk, they manage to pick up a couple of girls. One of them passes out quickly but the other, named Lily, takes a shine to the cameraman (“I like you” she says repeatedly) but apparently one of the frat boys likes her a lot and decides to horn in on the action. Lily doesn’t seem to mind at first but, well, she’s a very special girl.

In the second, a newly married couple visit a southwestern tourist attraction – a wild west ghost town and do some hiking in the mountains. They are followed by a young woman who seems a little creepy, particularly to the husband. He really doesn’t know the half of it as some of the minor annoyances on their trip are her doing. But what are her intentions and why is she doing this?

In the third, a quartet of friends visit the home town of one of them who once they enter the woods around the town begins to act strangely. It turns out that there were some inexplicable murders there a few years earlier and that their friend knows more about the subject than she’s let on. As her creepy pronouncement that they’re all going to die there looks more and more likely, they’ll discover that the killer is still around and a creature like him they’ve never seen – say hello to Glitch Man.

The fourth is mainly the Skype conversation between a doctor and his girlfriend, who is convinced that the house she is in is haunted. He, being a rational sort is skeptical but he begins to see things too. Soon he’s more concerned about her situation than she is – she’s convinced that she can reason with the spirits and send them on their merry merry. But she may have miscalculated their intentions, particularly in relation to the mysterious bump on her arm.

The final tape shows a group of four friends who are invited to a Halloween party at an isolated house on the edge of town. Sounds like fun so the high-spirited boys and off they went to a very nice house in the middle of nowhere. When they get there, nobody’s there even though the house is unlocked and all the lights are on. While they speculate that this might be a Halloween attraction of some sort, however, it’s not the sort of attraction you’d want to spend money on and when the boys make it into the attic, all hell is going to break loose.

Anthologies are a horror film mainstay. It’s an effort to tell shorter stories that might deserve a telling without devoting an entire movie  In this case, each vignette is directed by a young up-and-coming filmmaker in the underground and mainstream horror genres. West is the best known, having directed the sequel to Cabin Fever which actually wasn’t all that bad for a direct-to-video effort and a really fine horror movie from last year called The Innkeepers. The rest are not as familiar to me so I didn’t really know what to expect. And pretty much as you might expect, the efforts here run from really good (the first tape) to not so much (the fourth).

The acting is as you also would expect rather uneven as well, although there are some finds. Hannah Fierman as Lily in the first movie is genuinely creepy. Her transformation from meek party girl to…well, I don’t want to spoil it but trust me it’s pretty spectacular and Hannah has a lot to do with it. If you see her in a bar near you walk on my friend, walk on.

The glitch man in the third vignette is also pretty nifty although the constant noise and jumpiness in the film gets really old really fast. In fact, one of the conceits of the movie is that they are all from videotapes so the quality of the images is pretty weak but that doesn’t mean the cinematography is bad, if that makes sense.

There is a gratuitous amount of gore and bare breasts, so if those things offend you my guess is you wouldn’t be interested in seeing a movie like this anyway. Everyone else, this is a solid and spectacular in places horror anthology that won’t completely win you over (the weak portions can be pretty boring and the movie at a little over two hours is about 20 minutes too long for my taste – a whole vignette could have been eliminated and they would have been much better off. Short of that, it’s available on VOD right now so if it isn’t playing near you, you can still check it out.

REASONS TO GO: Lots of gore and lots of boobs – mainstays for an excellent horror film.

REASONS TO STAY: Some of the vignettes are more successful than others.

FAMILY VALUES:  A load of strong and often gruesome violence, lots of nudity, a fair amount of bad language, some horrific images and a bit of drug use. Oh, and some sex

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Ti West grew up in Delaware and went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/27/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 52% positive reviews. Metacritic: 54/100. The reviews are as mixed as you can get.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Videodrome

HORROR FILM ANTHOLOGY LOVERS: This comes from a tradition of horror film anthologies, several tales (often with different directors) linked together by a single story; among the more recognized anthologies include Twilight Zone: The Movie, Creepshow, Tales of Terror, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Trilogy of Terror, Cat’s Eye and The House That Dripped Blood.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Day 3 in the Six Days of Darkness 2012