Fourth Time's the Charm

 

I've gone on record as having significant problems with the 21st century horror anthology. The V/H/S franchise has certainly taken the brunt of my complaints, with The ABCs of Death scooping up what was left.

But EMILY! you might yell, horror anthologies are FUN! They condense plots into bite-sized viewing increments! They give lots of filmmakers the opportunity to tell stories! They almost always include a segment involving a killer doll!

Ah, my sweet summer child, I say with weathered lungs, they SHOULD do all of those things. But here we are heading into the FOURTH V/H/S installment and you know what? STILL NO KILLER DOLL.

Still, I'll happily concede that V/H/S: Viral was slightly less mean-spirited than V/H/S 2, which was certainly an improvement over the first installment, so maybe, just maybe, we're on an upswing. 

Quick Plot: An intriguing (but ultimately disappointing) wraparound written and directed by Jennifer Reeder pairs us with a young SWAT team as they barrel into the warehouse that served as the headquarters for a Heavens Gate-like cult. Room to room, they discover mutilated bodies and more importantly, active VCRs running some grisly home movies that comprise our segments:

1. Storm Drain

Written and directed by Chloe Okuno, this one follows an ambitious local news field reporter named Holly as she investigates the mysterious appearances of the "Rat Man". This being an anthology and every character therefore harboring a fatal flaw, Holly's drive leads her and her cameraman a little too far down a sewer tunnel. There's no turning back from a crazed batch of religious fanatics who worship the aforementioned Rat Man (or more formally, Raatma) but Holly just might have the right stuff to emerge with one helluva story.

And also, one helluva anthology segment! Storm Drain isn't the scariest 20 minutes put to film, but it understood the assignment and completed it cleanly. This is not the same story we've seen over and over again in these kinds of films, making it incredibly refreshing and with its stinger of an ending, even more satisfying.

2. The Empty Wake

You're Next scribe (and less successfully, Seance writer/director) Simon Barrett takes us through a rough day at work for Hailey, a young funeral home attendant charged with hosting her first solo gig on a dark and stormy night. Her bosses have threatened termination if she calls them, giving her plenty of reasons to try to power through an increasingly tense evening of mysterious guests and moving coffins.

I was, to put it mildly, incredibly hard on Seance, so it was a huge relief to find myself enjoying The Empty Wake. It's exactly what the second segment of a horror anthology should be, setting up a crystal clear premise and steadily increasing the volume to a perfectly timed crescendo. Nice work.

3. The Subject

Timo Tjahjanto is back from his (whaddya know?) cult segment in V/H/S 2 to tell the tale of mad scientist Dr. Suhendra, who's on a mission to create and perfect cyborg-like creatures via kidnapped strangers. His newest male and female subjects seem to be working out, so much so that they're able to violently tear through the police force that storms through the door and kills Dr. Suhendra. The female subject tries to protect Jono, the one sympathetic member of the force, eventually escaping after the rest of the team is blasted.

The Subject has some neat, gross Tetsuo-like energy that manages to throw in some unique and disturbing concepts while spraying them all in bullets and rocket launcher shots. It's a bit, how do I say it, loud, but thankfully, the beauty of the anthology format is that it can only last so long. Like his segment in V/H/S 2, The Subject is ambitious in its scope, and memorable for going places you don't normally think of in this type of movie. I have no desire to see an expanded full-length version of The Subject, but in this spot, it works just fine.

4. Terror

Written and directed by Ryan Prows, Terror follows a band of awful men attempting to make America great again before they had a slogan for it. The militia has been planning an attack on a government building with a secret weapon in hand: the very flammable blood of a captured vampire. Naturally, these are not the sharpest tools in the stolen ammunition shed, and before the next sunrise, some very violent purging of a different sort will occur.

Terror is the kind of segment I would have dreaded in an earlier V/H/S film, as hearing the racist vitriol of white men can be pretty unwatchable in the wrong hands (even if we know said awful white men will likely experience a horrific death by nature of being in a horror anthology). Thankfully, Prows doesn't overplay his hand. These men are scum, and Prows is mercifully quick in making them pay. Overall, it's a clever angle into the familiar vampire lore, and it uses its short time frame quite effectively.

So...did I finally, unabashedly, LIKE a V/H/S movie? I DID. 

No one is more surprised than me.

Lessons Learned

Maybe, just maybe, like, and I'm just throwing out a suggestion here: don't get blackout drunk around a vampire?

Rent/Bury/Buy

Yes, I'm actually encouraging you to seek out a V/H/S movie, and no, I can most certainly assure you there is not a gun being held to my head off-blog. This was good! 

Still...might have been better with a killer doll. 

Charlotte's Web

As I've said before, Amazon Prime is a wild minefield when it comes to horror. Its newer indie output is usually less than stellar, but after the joy of Crush the Skull, I've been more and more willing to take a chance on its recommendations. Since nine years of The Shortening has made it harder and harder to find anything featuring killers under 4', to the trenches we go!

Quick Plot: A teenage babysitter has just put her charge to bed and decides to kill the rest of her time on duty watching Night of the Living Dead (shout out to public domain!) and chatting with her horny boyfriend. Unfortunately for her, the creepy doll hanging out in the living room has other plans.

Before you can say "I guess the doll's name is Charlotte because that's what the film's cover art implied even though it's never mentioned in the rest of the movie and Charlotte is the name of a character in one story only", Charlotte (yes, I'm now calling the doll Charlotte for convenience) has the young woman bound and gagged. Her punishment? Being forced to watch a collection of horror shorts.

I realize most of what I've said thus far in this review sounds negative, but to my shock, I kind of enjoyed Charlotte. Like every anthology not named Creepshow, the segments vary wildly in quality, but for what I have to assume was a next-to-nothing budget, the overall product worked far better than expected.

Unfortunately, IMDB lists just about nothing about this film other than the names of the multiple directors (Colin Campbell, John Edward Lee, Calvin Main, Corey Norman, Patrick Rea, and April Wright). Hence, expect little and inaccurate detail as I sum up the stories:

1- My favorite of the bunch, a tale of jealous twin sisters whose rivalry over a doll as children festers into something far more sinister as petty adults. Fun, quick, and clever in its twists.

2- A fairly straightforward, but decently told story about a couple who receive a strange grown woman dressed as a doll as a trick or treater, and the hell that follows.

3- Another babysitter-with-a-boyfriend story. In this case, a young woman teases a little boy with tales of a foot-eating troll, only to meet the monster herself.

4- A strange, rather payoff-less quickie about a man embarking on a demonic sacrifice. Fingers are eaten. That is that.

5- The strongest in the bunch, a light-hearted dark comedy about persistent Girl Scouts--er, "Adventure Girls"-- and their nefarious cookie plans.

6- A wildly different tale in terms of tone, this follows a woman waking up in a basement out of Jigsaw's design guide to find a pedophile murderer tied up at her disposal. It involves a lot of shouting and I kind of hated it.

7- Starring one of the women who didn't win season 1 of VH1's Scream Queens (SIDE NOTE! REMEMBER THAT JAMES GUNN AND SHAWNEE SMITH ONCE HOSTED A REALITY COMPETITION TO PICK SOMEONE TO DIE IN SAW VI???), this story follows a lonely little girl who mysteriously receives a doll who, you might guess, has bad things in mind for the woman who didn't win Scream Queens (Sarah Agor).

8- The final segment centers on a savvy kid who wants to sneak into a horror marathon at a mysterious, meat-filled theater. With a fun and playful twist, it's the right note to end on.

What can you say about eight unrelated short films loosely tied together? That Charlotte works on any level is something of an achievement. None of the segments succeed as actual scary horror tales, but all are quick, and for the most part, offer something mildly new. Considering the dregs of anthology segments I've sat through, that's impressive.

Lessons Learned
Contrary to popular cultural portrayals, trolls actually resemble burn victims with tiny Trump hands

Suburban walls are incredibly soundproof

Evil dolls are terrible influences on young girls, especially in how they make them worry about gluten

Every babysitter will try to have sex while on duty

Rent/Bury/Buy
There are better horror anthologies out there, but as we've seen time and time again, there are a whole lot worse too. Charlotte is a wild mixed bag, but the worst segments go by quickly and the best have some neat fun. It's worth a casual watch, especially compared to some of its Amazon Prime competition.

Nerd Alert! Ghoulish Stories Vol. 1

Is there any art form more underrated than the short story horror compilation? Much like film anthologies, there's just something vastly entertaining about a good collection of 20-50 page tales, almost as if it was a medium specifically designed to create and complete a nightmare.

Hence it makes some pretty good sense that Greg Ansin and Michael Neel, creators of 2009's Drive-In Horror Show, would transfer their film skills to the page in that compact format. Ghoulish Stories (Volume 1) includes eight original horror stories ranging vastly in style from a modern tech-inspired tale to a delightfully demented romance. With a title like "Trampoline Chainsaw Lovers," the latter is easily the happiest piece, filled with some vivid characters and a genuinely sweet relationship at its core.

"iThink the App" starts things off with a quick-moving saga of technology run amuck as a hot new social app encourages users to do whatever it suggests. It doesn't take long before mass murder becomes one of those activities. While the subject matter feels a little common, the pacing is key, particularly for the anthology's introductory story.

In "The Crawlspace," a brother and sister discover some unsettling secrets lurking in their basement. Much like The Closet, Drive-In Horror Show's best segment, "The Crawlspace"'s strengths lie in its young characters. The same can be said of "The Freak", the story that's probably easiest to see filmed. A likable kid ends up with the worst possible summer when his pals decide to prank the town's legendary hermit. Naturally, this doesn't end with a Sandlot-esque resolution involving happy baseball mementos. 

Two of the more grounded stories, "Blackout" and "Two Drop Donuts," have a ready-made Tales From the Crypt tone in building sympathetic protagonists only to mix in some deep hues of moral shadiness. "Blackout" has some excellent atmosphere buildup, while "Two Drop Donuts" treads a somewhat predictable path. Still, if you don't finish the book craving a specially infused pastry, then I long for your willpower.

The most epic story is "Plastic Island." A trio of military divers takes their submarine deep below chartered territory only to discover the future is literally built on garbage. It's the longest piece in Ghoulish Stories, and suffers a little in its early pages with character buildup that feels like too much exposition. Once our team reaches the titular locale however, the action picks up quickly with some truly horrific post-apocalyptic tribal terror. Ultimately, it's a fresh take on a popular storytelling subject, going places that you don't quite expect.

My personal favorite is easily "Nightmare Cards", a high concept tale that feels like a passionate quickie marriage between Freddy Krueger and Pokeman. Ansin and Neel's imagination gets to go to extremes as a variety of monsters (ranging from a sack-wearing axeman to a well-coiffed gentleman) orchestrate creatively violent dreams for children. The visual possibilities leap off the page, making me as a reader long to see a comic book or animated adaptation.

Ghoulish Stories is available in hard copy or digital form, and includes a few illustrations in its appendix to match each story. While some stories are stronger than others, they're all well worth a read, creating gleefully horrible worlds where some considerably awful things can happen. As horror fans, is there anything we want more?

Storytime With Claude Akins

Like the majority of horror fans, I generally look forward to watching anthology films with very particular expectations. If extremely consistent history has taught me anything, it's that most multi-story horror movies tend to be inconsistent, with some parts hitting and others failing miserably.

Then I queue one up and immediately see the Troma logo and edit my expectations to consistently terrible. 

Quick Plot: A prospective buyer comes to take a look at an LA mansion that just so happens to have a rich haunted history. Caretaker Claude Akins is happy to tell it, leading us all into a trio of tales involving ghosts, vampires, witchcraft, and a whole lot of ADR.

Directed by Stephen A. Maier, the first tells the saga of Hubert Whitehead, a hotheaded college student who goes on a murder spree when his fellow classmates don't appreciate his new wheels. Twenty years later, he's released from prison and promptly returns to his killing grounds only to be confronted by the zombified ghosts of his victims. 

Sadly, it's probably the best story of the bunch. 

It is not very good.

The second tale (by one-time director Kevin G. Nunan) follows a typical family whose life is upended when the eldest teenage son succumbs to a vampire seduction. For whatever reason, the segment is told in narration by the youngest (now grown) daughter and comes off like an earnest teenager's attempt to write a romance novel if said earnest teenager had never read one.

Finally, our third and longest (although by this point in Where Evil Lives, time seems to be freezing in an especially cruel way) segment follows the police investigation of a serial rapist/murderer with the help of a sassy, incredibly late '80s-dressed witch. It goes on forever to the point where I started to wonder if I had indeed become a vampire while watching the second story because surely, this part was at least two hundred years long. It's made by Richard L. Fox, a prominent Hollywood second unit director who owes me my soul.

Perhaps the one saving grace of Where Evil Lives (aside from Akins, who's pleasant, even if I started to wonder if in his old age, he had just wandered onto the set when a savvy producer somehow managed to convince him that he had actually signed on to do this film) is that it doesn't bear too many of the obnoxious Troma-isms you come to expect with that studio. The quality is terrible, but I guess I was grateful that it wasn't also loaded with the kind of ickiness so fitting of the brand.

Small favors indeed. 

High Points

This was Claude Akins' last film, and while it's in no way something that should represent his career, it's certainly nice to see him having some goofy fun so close to the end of his life

Low Points

The movie. Seriously, this movie

Lessons Learned

Remember to push "end" when you're finished with your call on a car phone

The best way to rebound from being stood up is to give in quickly to the sexy vampire next door

Witches of the early '90s were not afraid to play with color in their wardrobe

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can't think of a single reason why anyone would choose to watch Where Evil Lives. I suppose anthology completists might feel compelled, but for anyone else with a modicum of taste (I don't put myself in that camp, hence the reason why I can actually report back from finishing the movie) it's best you move on. 

Mark Your Calendar

How has nobody ever thought of this before? A horror anthology composed of shorts set on the calendar’s major holidays. It’s a no-brainer.

And, much like Southbound, a pretty pleasant surprise.

Valentine’s Day

Written and directed by the team behind Starry Eyes, the first segment follows a teenage outcast named Maxine (unfortunately nicknamed Maxi Pad) as she nurses an intense crush on her gym teacher while her classmates brutally tease her. There's nothing overly revolutionary about the story or execution, but it's a well-told tale that's perfectly satisfying in its brief running time.

St Patrick's Day

Set in Ireland, this one follows a pleasant schoolteacher who tries to welcome a mysteriously moody new student into her class, only to have, well, a very unpleasant but somewhat welcomed surprise pregnancy via a Danny Zuko-esque snake worshipper. Directed by Gary Hore (Dracula Untold), this is a grotesquely funny and weirdly sweet horror comedy of sorts. Lead Ruth Bradley (wonderful in Grabbers) plays it perfectly, and the final reveal is one of the most adorably weird things I’ve seen in a while.

Easter

Easily my favorite, Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) spins a bizarre little yarn about how a curious young girl (the delightful Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Ava Acres)’s questions about the specifics the Easter Bunny and Jesus’s resurrection leads to meeting a truly inspired and gross monster creation. The writing is on point here, as the little girl’s conversation with her exasperated mother is funny, smart, and wonderfully disturbing. That’s not even mentioning the odd background decision to decorate the home with an impressive collection of creepy clown art.

Mother’s Day

Kate has a problem: every time she has sex, no matter how many preventative measures she takes, she ends up pregnant. After two dozen abortions, she agrees to visit her gynecologist’s off-the-beaten-path spiritual retreat where a batch of infertile baby-hungry women see Kate as something very, very important. Directed by The Midnight Swim’s Sarah Adina Smith, this is probably the story that most felt like it should have been a full feature. There’s plenty of potential in exploring what it means for a woman to have or not want to have a baby, and while the ending has a nice kick, the story feels almost trapped in the short format. 

Father’s Day

A young woman named Carol (House of the Devil’s Jocelin Donahue) receives a cassette tape with a recording made by her presumed dead father with instructions on how she can see him again. Carol smacks on her headphones and follows his lead, walking through a beach as she listens to her dad’s intensifying guide recorded on the last day she ever saw him. Newcomer Anthony Scott Burns builds tension with incredible skill, making this, for me, the scariest of all the stories. It doesn’t quite make good on its promise, but it still manages to be a unique spin on the typical anthology tale.

Halloween

Kevin Smith--yes, that Kevin Smith--tells this revenge tale of a trio of webcam performers who finally take control over their gross and abusive boss. This will probably be the most polarizing of the bunch (as Kevin Smith fare tends to do to an audience) but I enjoyed it well enough. There’s a nice girl power vibe and a satisfying comeuppance, and perhaps most importantly, a short running time that doesn’t let anything out live its entertainment value. 

Christmas

Legion’s Scott Stewart directs Seth Green as Pete, a nice, but unexceptional dad trying to get the latest new technology toy for his son on Christmas Eve. When the customer who snagged the last one has a heart attack on an otherwise unoccupied street, Pete grabs the gadget and guiltily leaves the man to die alone. Naturally, this decision haunts him, especially when the gift in question (a pair of virtual reality goggles designed to show each wearer his or her own personal fantasies) keeps reminding him of his crime. This is a fun segment, aided a lot by Green’s take on a schlubby dad and some genuine surprises along the way. The ending is a bit abrupt, but again: this is an anthology. We don’t need codas.

New Year’s Eve

An awkward and dentally challenged killer meets women online, kidnaps them, and murders them when he loses patience with their inability to love him. On New Year’s Eve, he scores a date with an attractive younger lady with her own crappy dating history and, well, twists ensue. Made by Adam Egypt Mortimer, this is a fun tale and appropriate way to end the film, as the tone is somehow both lighthearted and appropriately violent. Mortimer also deserves credit for staging a wonderfully realistic, painfully uncomfortable first date.

Lessons Learned

Vets don't get things wrong

Jesus and ET do indeed have a lot in common

If a man doesn’t think you’re worth brand name candy, that is not a man for you

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had heard mixed reactions to Holidays, so my expectations were fairly low going in, but man...I kind of loved this movie. Some stories were certainly stronger than others, but none wore out their welcome (the kiss of death for many a short film). The fairly organic mix of offbeat comedy and genuine horror made for a refreshingly diverse mix of tone that kept me invested throughout. Like any good multi-filmmaker anthology, all the stories have their own identity but never seem to clash. Not to always bring up my favorite punching bag, but I’d take the weakest installment here (probably Halloween) over all of the first V/H/S, and most of the other segments in the more decent sequels. The film is streaming on Netflix and can make a satisfying watch for any season.

Tales From the Southbound

The renaissance of the horror anthology has been wonderful in spirit and mostly terrible in execution. Following the fan love for Michael Daughery's Trick or Treat, it seemed as though every genre filmmaker under 40 was contributing to one collection or another, from the grainy V/H/S series to the often insufferable output of The ABCs of Death.

Needless to say, I've found modern anthologies disappointing (and occasionally, infuriating). But that doesn't mean I've given up on them just yet. 

Story 1: The Way Out
Directed by the trio Radio Silence (they of the disappointing Devil's Due and the 10/31/98 segment of the first V/H/S), The Way Out follows a pair of men on the run from what appears to be an unidentified crime. As they speed their rickety pickup truck down a deserted highway, they are pursued by strange floating skeletal creatures that follow them right inside an ominous gas station.

We'll get back to this.

Story 2: Siren
A trio of young women break down on that same lonely highway, accepting a ride from an oddly sunny 1950s-esque couple who take them back to an ominous meatloaf dinner. Something is clearly amiss, but there seems to be an added weight in how their presumed leader played by Starry Eyes' passive aggressive rival, Fabianne Therese) is seen as being responsible for the untimely death of one of their members. Directed by first timer Roxanne Benjamin, Siren has some fun with its almost Parents-ish vibe. It also feels the most incomplete, as it offers up a lot of unanswered questions. While I generally believe one of the the keys to anthology segments (much like short stories) to be telling a complete tale in under 30 minutes, this was definitely the one story I wanted to see more of.

Story 3: The Accident
The Signal's David Bruckner directs this tight little tale about an ill-fated and too easily distracted man named Lucas whose cell phone chat with his wife leads to him smashing into a young lady in the middle of nowhere (well, Southbound's hell-ish highway). After some internal debating, Lucas calls emergency services and spends the rest of his evening trying to save his victim in an abandoned hospital with only the mysterious, not-quite-right dispatcher voices to guide him.

While it doesn't necessarily do much, The Accident was my personal favorite segment of the bunch. Mather Zickel's Lucas toes an interesting line between being a guilty manslaughterer and a poor unlucky bastard, while the ambiguity of the dispatch voices are just odd enough to keep you on edge. Anthologies are almost always morality tales, and this one serves as a different spin on that idea.

Also, death gurgles are intense.

Story 4: Jailbreak
Patrick Horvath (The Pact 2) directs this one. A raging man storms into a worn-down bar demanding to see his long-lost sister Jesse. The bartender (Orange Is the New Black's Matt Peters) agrees to drive him down that familiar highway to where Jesse is working as a sort of satanic tattoo artist (or something?). It's hard to say too much more without giving away some of the bigger happenings, but let's just say that when your little sister disappears down a highway to hell lorded over by floating skeleton people and bar werewolves, maybe it's best to leave her put.

Story 5: The Way In (aka Story 1: Part 2)A seemingly normal couple is spending a family weekend in a rented home with their teenage daughter before she goes to college. Before they can sit down to their last supper, three masked men show up for some violent payback. The story plays like a fairly standard home invasion, but much like Siren, it also drops some mysterious clues without revealing all of their details.

Overall, Southbound offers a fresh and easily watchable take on the anthology format. Each story leads into the other in an organic way and while there's not a specific wraparound tool used to tie everything together, the themes and basic idea of this purgatory-like road to hell work extremely well when all put together. The styles and tones are more complimentary than consistent, which helps the full picture add up to something fresh.

High Points
As grouches continue to whine about the lack of good horror in the modern era, one can point to the credits of the cast and crew of Southbound to show connections to a slew of good-to-great genre films of late: actors from Starry Eyes, YellowBrickRoad, The Signal, and a few more (not to mention the film's wraparound DJ voice is done by none other than Larry Fessenden)

Low Points
We can't hit all of our CGI out of the park, but sometimes it hurts when almost all of it fouls

Lessons Learned
You know, don't kill innocent people and you won't go to hell or be forced to relieve a horrible monster chase for eternity

Rent/Bury/BuyAfter my increasing embitterment over the new age of jerky bro-tastic anthologies, Southbound is an extremely pleasant little renewal of faith in the genre. The film isn't perfect, but it's a good ride. You can find it on Amazon Prime.