Director: Mikey McMurran
Year: 2021
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Heading out for a night on duty, the customers of a ride-share drivers’ routes tend to encounter strange situations and terrifying scenarios.
Review:
Story 1-Finally moving into their new house, a married couple discover a series of tapes in the house including those belonging to a fitness guru from the 1980s. After watching one, he begins to act differently which alerts them to the possibility of the spirit of the fitness guru possessing him and try to free her husband from his influence. Overall, this is a pretty fun and goofy start to things, where the whole idea of his being possessed by the spirit of a 1980s fitness guru comes off incredibly silly and outright unlikely. It also doesn’t help that very little of the possession instigates fear or thrills beyond unreasonable snapping or uncharacteristic rudeness, which are more clues that something isn’t right but not the main points of possession. The goofy feel and premise are given quite a lot to like in the finale where the possession takes hold and plenty of stellar comedic action focusing on the struggle to free him gives this a lot to like, making for a fun and enjoyable start.
Story 2-Following some heavy drinking, a pair of friends decide to follow through on their long-suppressed whims and get a tattoo from a sketchy neighborhood. After awaking from the experience to discover the tattoo is growing and spreading along his arm and body, he tries to uncover the source of the incident before something dangerous happens. For the most part, this was a somewhat lifeless though intriguing segment. The only interesting aspect here is the visual of the spreading tattoos on his body growing more and more on his body over time which adds nicely to his growing hysteria as the hallucinations before trying to control and influence him. Beyond that, the whole concept is rather routine and familiar leaving this one with no real surprises or shocks beyond what the tattoo will look like next. An utterly underwhelming final reveal also makes no sense and only furthers the confusion of everything, leaving this segment disappointing.
Story 3-Taking home passengers for her rideshare service, a driver decides to take on a clients’ request to drive out of her normal routine somewhat reluctantly. As the trip goes on and she begins to be quite unnerved by his actions, she soon realizes the passenger is the least of her worries. This is an exceptionally enjoyable and fun segment with a lot to like about it. The fact that the unease of the drive involving the cryptic discussions that never points to the potential identity switch that occurs later on signaling the desperate fight to survive against the impending killer on her trail is all handled well with the killers’ attempts to carry out his usual assortment of tricks on victims. To see this getting upended by her on every turns has a lot of action involved yet undoes the suspense somewhat by having her be so far and away more adept than he is that there’s never a doubt she’ll survive the encounter. However, that’s all that this has going against it.
Overview: ***/5
For the most part, there’s enough to like in nearly everything here despite several segments falling short like most anthology efforts which make this one fine enough for what it is. Give this one a look if you’re a fan of these kinds of indie efforts or an anthology completist although most others who are turned off by those aspects should heed caution.
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