![]() The Good Stor(ies): Birthday Girl-Meeting a strange girl in an elevator, a woman begins talking with her inside but the incessant questions the girl keeps asking to begin to fracture her already fragile mind. Recommended for fans of omnibus horror films.Ī woman arrives at her mother's house and finds a strange book inside, causing her to read stories from its pages. The wraparound segment ends on a pleasing positive note. "The Intruder" - Sharp and tense little thriller. "Little Share House of Horrors" - Another quite funny comic outing about killer vegetation. "Grillz" - Funny vignette about a fetching female vampire who uses a dating website to find victims. "White Song" - Incredibly grim and depressing stuff. "The Ride" - Very amusing and engaging affair with a great performance from Anthony LaPaglia as a blithely unhinged motorist. "Storytime" - This one benefits substantially from a flavorsome Aussie outback setting and a gnarly and original monster. "Watch Me" - Middling tale of a vain actress who thrives on attention. "Gloomy Valentine" - Cool animated pip with lots of strikingly grotesque imagery. ![]() "The Man Who Caught a Mermaid" - Excellent, with a strikingly hideous mermaid and a disturbing twist. "Birthday Girl" - A strong and poignant tale of a mother talking to the sweet ghost of her deceased little girl in an elevator. Clara's life depends on reading each and every last story in said book. Young lass Clara (well played by Andrea Demetriades) inherits a strange book of macabre stories called the Book of Dark Secrets. People need to stop calling things "bad" just because it's not what they want it to be. Personal highlights: the twists of The Man who Caught a Mermaid, the atmosphere of Storytime, the concepts of Grillz, the tone of Little Sharehouse of Horrors, and the overall vision and uniqueness of White Song. This is pretty raw, but it's full of honest, authentic, creatively told stories. If you expect this to be polished Hollywood stuff you're looking in the wrong place. They're all names to keep an eye on, for sure. As that, it's very successful at showcasing these disparate film makers, who all show promise in one way or another. So it's less an anthology and more like a presentation of short films that can loosely be lumped together as dark fiction with a twist. Most of the segments in this anthology seem to have been made at different times, with different aims, and as such they generally all have a different voice, a different style. ![]() From the get-go it's clear this is not something like Creepshow, which was made with one holistic vision, or even like the VHS anthologies, which were intended to run together. This is a decent bunch of indie shorts with a good wraparound story that works as well as it has to in holding the segments together. Not sure what's going on with the extreme negativity here (well actually it's pretty obvious if you read between the lines, or some cases, just read the lines themselves).
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