Director: David Bruckner, Mike P. Nelson, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Natasha Kermani, Scott Derrickson
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
A series of short segments featuring the terrors of the early home video rental craze.
Review:
No Wake-After heading out for a weekend camping trip, a group of friends find their activity halted when a stranger starts shooting at them. Realizing they’ve become able to live through the aftermath of everything due to a strange condition in the lake, they set out to exact revenge on the guilty party. Overall, this one is just fine on its own, but the missing context associated with a later segment helps this one considerably. The start to this one, with the group going through the fun of setting up in the woods and going through the camping trip, partying, water skiing, or just having fun on the beach. Once the terror starts at the first sign of the gunshots heard and the bloody impact they have when the group notices what's going on, it becomes quite terrifying with the struggle to get to safety and understand what's going on, as things don't make much sense, which is the overall problem here. The story in isolation makes no sense, especially with the cliffhanger it ends on, and the context given later on to fill out what's happening is a bit of a cheat since the required knowledge to understand this one only comes about later instead of being known in this segment. Otherwise, though, it's fun to start things out with.
God of Death-On the verge of going live, a Mexican morning news program captures the devastating effect of a powerful Earthquake striking the country. As the cameras continue rolling, the devastating and graphic aftermath of everything reveals a more devastating figure than expected as the cause of everything. This was intriguing enough, but ultimately quite a problematic segment. The initial setup is there with the broadcast getting interrupted by the event itself, and the chaos that follows has some likable factors with the race to get to safety amidst the numerous damaged and bloodied bodies left behind who are incapable of rescue, leading to a bloodsoaked encounter with a malevolent deity. None of this strikes as being the type of content worth photographing, though, and it stretches credibility as to why anyone would forsake helping to rescue a beaten and bloodied person by videotaping their exit out of the wreckage. The real-life natural disaster type of psychological horror early on might not work on most, expecting more traditional scares later on, either, making this somewhat challenging to get through, even with the positives.
TKNOGD-Putting on a solo performance art piece, a woman begins recounting the modern-day usage of technological processes at the expense of worshiping traditional Gods. The deeper into the piece she goes, though, the more she finds how dangerous technology can be, which puts her point in jeopardy. This whole segment was just lame and underwhelming on nearly every angle. The concept is inherently underwhelming and not that interesting, with the whole thing amounting to either a person ranting and raving about the downfall of religion in favor of technological excess or watching them perform a video-game version of their desires that's not in the slightest bit interesting or scary. The concept as a whole just doesn't seem feasible to take place as a found-footage effort in the first place due to the performance art piece that's constantly shifting perspectives and viewpoints, so the illusion is never granted and just feels like another story being utilized here instead of its proper context. It's got some decent gore effects, but not enough to save it from anything.
Ambrosia-On the eve of a special ceremony, a woman shows video footage of her killing the group at the lake to secure entrance into her family’s psychotic, gun-crazy inner circle. When the authorities arrive to squash the group, she finds out firsthand how dangerous the effects of the lake can be. Overall, this is a decent idea, but it doesn’t have much time for anything more than that. The action and carnage here is pretty much all that it has to go on with the reveal of what happened at the lake, and the outcomes of everyone there make for a nice way to explain what happened, but it doesn’t come close to explaining what’s going on in this segment. With no idea of who the family is, what their purpose is, or what the entire experience is about, as the brief bits gathered here aren’t enough to make up for that. It’s thankfully short and not too taxing, but as it expands and also leaves questions open about this and the previous segment, this needs more time to explore what’s going on here and ends up leaving this a particularly unsatisfying experience.
Dreamkill-Following up on a gruesome rampage, the police in a small town try to get a handle on a seemingly unnatural act involving a killer sending videotapes of his spree before they occur. Realizing the extent of what’s going on, they set out to stop the killer and his rampage before he can strike again. This was a fantastic segment that has a lot to like. The main setup here, involving the seemingly time-traveling killer who provides the police with videotaped evidence of crimes being committed before they can happen and stumbling upon the scene later on to reveal the tape was real, is a wholly intriguing one that manages to evoke quite an unnatural feeling. This is matched quite well with the wholly gruesome and unnerving videotapes at the forefront of this, as the type of content shown on them is disturbing, and the graphic outcomes on the tapes make for an intriguing aspect to this one. The use of cameras in odd locations does come into play here, with a lot of scenes being captured unnaturally, and the investigation isn’t all that interesting, with the brief time devoted to everything not allowing it to make sense, but there’s a lot more to like here that holds it up.
Total Copy-Through a series of news reports, the full effects of a devastating research program that ended in disaster slowly come to life. When the full context of their discovery is made, the remaining crew races to save themselves from the danger they’ve encountered. Overall, this is an odd and generally bizarre wrap-around feature. The main idea at play here is quite intriguing, involving the reveal of the research team looking into the remains of an alien lifeform that’s able to mimic whatever it touches and how it gets loose, wreaking havoc on the team studying it. It's a fine idea and manages to get quite enjoyable once it’s allowed to move forward. The problem is in breaking this up into segments throughout the film, as the wrap-around sections before finally being given the chance to run free unbothered, which is a bit distracting. That doesn’t serve as a worthwhile means of stringing the rest of the sections together since nothing is connecting them, and the stops to go back to the other segments derail the momentum somewhat, leaving this part enjoyable if somewhat underwhelming.
Overview: ***.5/5
A nice return to form but still not without its issues, this is an overall enjoyable entry in the series, even though it’s on the lower end of the good entries, since the rest weren’t as troubled as this one is. Those who are hardcore anthology fans, enjoy the style presented here with the other entries in the series, or are intrigued by the creative crew, will do well to give it a shot, while those turned off by those factors should heed caution.
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