Director: Chloe Okuno, Simon Barrett, Timo Tjahjanto, Simon Barrett, Jennifer Reader
Year: 2021
Country: USA/Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
After raiding a cult’s hideout, a SWAT team uncovers a vast collection of strange videotapes from members across the world.
Review:
Storm Drain-Hearing reports of a strange creature in town, a reporter and her cameraman, looking into the stories of a beast living in the sewers and drainage systems under the city, investigate one of the hotspots. When they eventually come across the real cause of the disappearances, they realize too late what they’re chasing. This was a pretty strong and chilling opening to everything. The setup is about the strange sightings in the area and the crew going around finding the subjects to give pointless interviews before going into them and finding the strange remnants in the sewers. This leads to the incredibly tense reveal underground, using the camera’s light to stumble upon the bizarre cult and what they’re about, which provides a fun couple of kills and decent monster efforts. While the mini-epilogue has even more gore, this feels tacked on and unrealistic, which is slightly disappointing.
The Empty Wake-Preparing an early-morning wake for the next day, a woman stays behind to put the finishing touches on the services’ details when she begins to believe something is off about the experience. The longer she stays there, though, the more the gnawing belief that something is wrong starts to prove true. This was a decent idea, but it has a somewhat underwhelming execution. There’s a highly effective sense of eeriness and unease about the situation, being alone in a funeral home with a raging thunderstorm in the background, providing the setting for the chills to come once she believes the knocking is coming from inside the casket. The resolution to everything is quite chilling and effective, but it just feels the least found footage setup here, with the switching camera angles and a flimsy meaning to be filming in the first place, which is explained in a highly unreasonable answer, being the slight issues with it.
The Subject-Attempting to finish out his work, a scientist experimenting with the ability to merge humans and robotics together tries to get his latest experiment to be a bit more cooperative when a police raid breaches his lair. While they’re busy dealing with the murderous creations inside it, an officer tries to find a way to escape. This one provides quite a lot to like about it. The subject matter here is exceptionally enjoyable with a fantastically brutal edge, marrying an old-school mad scientist tale with the kind of technological access that would really enhance the terror they can generate. The melding of flesh and robotic components featured here is a chilling concept, given even more credence with the child-like glee he establishes, extolling the virtues of the project and the over-the-top gore, offering the most bloodshed in the short. While the police raid and escape attempt go on much too long to highlight the action and gore present, that’s all that holds back this one.
Terror-Fed up with the state of the country, an extremist militia group follows through on their latest stages of a plan to overthrow those committing sin in the country. Once they’re satisfied it’ll work, they wait for the signal to deploy it, only to find their secret weapon has escaped and hunts them one by one in the compound. Overall, this was a somewhat disappointing way to end this. There’s little actual horror at all in this since the idea of the extremist militia group going around shooting random victims, execution style, or hoarding weapons that are never explained or made them at all likable enough to matter when the turnaround happens. That in itself is a fun enough series of encounters or confrontations that generate some solid gore and tension in the search for what’s happening, but it’s somewhat too late to really matter by the time that happens.
Overview: ****.5/5
Hurt by one rather unappealing segment and a weak wraparound, which doesn't come close to impacting the fun experienced in the rest of the segment, these keep this one of the best in the genre. Those who appreciate found-footage films, the previous entries in the franchise, anthology fans, or even the creative crew will want to check this out, while viewers turned off by any of those factors should heed caution.
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