Director: Nicholas Michael Jacobs
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
A series of short interconnecting slasher stories detailing horrors suburban locales.
Review:
Sundown-Warned by his father not to stay out late, a teen desperate for a hookup decides to break into a friends’ house looking for his score. When he finds more than he originally wanted, he finds himself stalked by a maniacal killer through the streets. Overall, this was a decent enough entry. While the low-budget guerilla-style filmaking makes this look quite cheap, there’s a nice energy to be had with the series of raids on the various houses before finally confronting the main killer. This is the highlight of the segment as the creepy design and stalking through the suburban streets leading to the final battle are rather enjoyable. However, the guerilla filmaking is quite hard to overcome.
Inanimate-Staying at a friends’ house, a woman is given instructions not to enter a room in the basement but has to do so in order to finish the laundry. After she goes back to her housesitting job, she comes to believe the neighborhood stories about a killer doll running loose in the apartment. This was the clear highlight of the whole effort. Graced with a fantastic setup playing off the urban legend rather nicely and introduced to this in a fine matter, there’s a lot to like with the general setup before getting to a fantastic blend of psychological and genuine scares with the genuinely unnerving doll running loose in the apartment as well as the fine stalking by the killer when he shows up. There’s too many cutaways to what the doll’s doing which lowers some of the tension, but that’s not too big of an issue.
Chain Mail Massacre-Trying to win his girlfriend, a man waiting for her to leave her housesitting job sees a creepy chain letter on his social media. Deciding not to play into it, he soon finds himself stalked by the very legend that he was ignoring. This here wasn’t too bad but is a letdown after the other stories. The central premise of a killer stalking a victim through a more modern form of a chain letter offers a decent enough start here, which is compounded by the chilling video that helps to sell everything. The creepy singing and child-like voices which offers up some genuinely creepy moments as well as the slow realization that something’s in the house also work nicely, however the confrontations with the ghost girl are stilted, clumsy and not very threatening. When coupled with an underwhelming finale that drags on a little too long, it leaves this one somewhat flawed overall.
Overview: **/5
A bit more flawed than expected here, this is a much more enjoyable anthology that manages to feature some fine segments that engage in more thrilling moments and make this a solid watch. Give it a look if you’re a fan of extreme low-budget indie anthologies or that style of film in general, while those not interested in this style should heed caution.
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