Director: Joshua Nelson
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Working in an antiquities shop, a vengeful proprietor sells three unsuspecting customers cursed items from inside that turn their world into a living nightmare.
Review:
The Demon-Gathering together at her family's house, a woman regrets the struggle with trying to placate her parents not upsetting or offending her boyfriend as they meet for the first time. As the meeting goes on, a strange hold over her from an antique mirror she bought as a gift brings the trip to a deadly conclusion. This was a pretty solid effort. It starts off nicely with the family drama at the heart of the storyline where the struggles to placate the parents and their failure to do so fracturing her sanity just with the concurrent setup involving the mirror working its influence. This becomes all the more fun once the influence is more pronounced as the turn to the cheesy finale that unleashes the bloodshed quite nicely even with the indie flavor keeping it scaled back slightly from where it could've gone since it has to rely on those cheesy attributes to get by.
The Woman Scorned-Wanting a girls' night in together, a group of girlfriends arrive at one of their houses and begin contemplating their disastrous love lives to each other. As the night goes on, a strange woman appears informing them that they purchased a vase containing the ashes of her true love and vows to reunite with him through any means necessary. This was a highly enjoyable and fun segment. The fact that the segment goes from the banality of their meeting together into the nighttime festivities featuring the seasonal decorations and the group around the house before the invasion offers a lot of fun times that gets brought to the forefront with the reveal that happens there. This does involve the segment dropping into cliches with the chasing around the house and the motive for everything that goes down not being that surprising despite being treated as a surprise reveal, but they're not that detrimental.
Franklin-Upset over the death of her son, a woman joins her friend on a shopping trip and finds that a strange trunk to store his belongings in has a hold over her. After taking it home and putting his things inside, she discovers the desire to place other objects inside the trunk becoming more prominent. While fun overall, this is a bit of a step-down from the other segments somewhat. The atmosphere here involving the eerie voices and whispers alongside the creepy visuals of the doll coming to life and running around offers a lot to like here. However, there's the issue here with the focus on child abuse and abandonment that feels constrained in such a shorter running time which could've used a bit more time to flesh itself out since this is easily the longest of the three segments and becomes quite obvious about it. There's not a lot of major issues with its inclusion, though, and could easily be a personal preference matter considering the rest of the segments.
Overview: ***/5
A highly enjoyable indie anthology that has more to like than expected, there are some enjoyable times to be had here which keep this one feeling quite more enjoyable than expected. Give this one a shot if you’re a fan of the anthology style or format as well as those that appreciate the indie approach here while most others should heed caution with the film.
Comments
Post a Comment