Director: Michael A. Hoffman
Year: 2001
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Warped Realities
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Following a job-recruitmant post, an unemployed man heads to a special center for a new job and learns the possibilities that await each of the potential positions.
Review:
I Ain't Got No Body-Working at a used bookstore, a chance at potential romance with a frequent customer spurns a lonely clerk into looking at ways to win her over with a book on astral projection. As she keeps holding back his advances, he attempts to master the format which soon leads to deadly consequences for them both. This one isn't all that great and doesn't really have much going for it. The majority of this is undone with the idea of not really making the dream girl all that desirable as she's pretty rude, ungrateful and sarcastic which renders a lot of his pining after her problematic as he can't tell that she's not all that great. This does ruin a large part of the segment with a pretty lousy non-horror feel and really only serves to make the final twist to feature any kind of horror-based activity which is quite intriguing. That is really the most worthwhile part about the segment.
Hit and Run-Heading out for a delivery, the driver of a fast-food company inadvertently kills a young girl out in the middle of the street when he fails to spot her playing alone. Overcome with guilt about the incident, he soon starts believing he's going crazy when he continually spots the dead girls' doll everywhere he goes. This was a fairly fun and enjoyable segment. It's a cliched setup, but it's that way for a reason as these stories usually work which is what happens here. The idea of spotting the doll and being forced to relive the incident continually makes for a few creepy moments especially in conjunction with the doll's eerie whispering that accompanies them. The later half where the dolls start doing more is a bit of fun, and with the final comeuppance delivered it satisfies, really only letting the cliched and predictable nature of it all bring this down.
The Death Of...-Trying to work on a screenplay, an unsuccessful writer who finds his work continually rejected and declined to the point that it begins eating away at the rest of his life. Attempting to find inspiration wherever he can find it, the drive for success eventually drives him into dangerous territory. This was a rather bland and banal offering that doesn't really have much going for it. The setup for this one is quite familiar and cliched and does doom this one quite easily as there's very little to it that's terrifying based on the setup. The visual tricks used to accomplish this are quite a bit of fun and are the main aspects holding it up since the twist here is accomplished nicely, but again it's far too cliched and easy to guess where it's going to really matter much. This is watchable but not that surprising.
Overview: ** 1/2/5
Frankly, this was a solid and enjoyable low-budget anthology effort that has some enjoyable moments in all the segments which is what helps this one along. It's really worthwhile especially to fans of this type of effort or those that enjoy the creative side of the film, while those that can't handle that will likely heed caution.
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