Director: Matt Barrett, Craig D. Foster, Aaron McJames, Simon O'Neill, Gregory Shultz, Barry Wilkinson
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
A series of stories presented from the pages of the magazine.
Review:
Overtime-Stuck at the office, a man tries to get home away from his coworkers continually piling up more assignments for him, before his true form is released. This was a decent enough way to start this one overall. The central setup allows this to go through several different rounds of continuing workplace annoyances as everyone in the office keeps coming up to him and giving him more assignments to the condescending tone they continually address him, it makes the sympathy of how badly he wants to get home to feel much more earned as it leads to the final reveal of what he wants to get home comes around rather nicely. It all makes for a fun time, so long as the cheesy and immensely goofy-looking effects aren’t too distracting. As this is the main flaw, though, it’s a great start to the film.
Badger!-After a series of violent animal attacks, a wildlife control expert finds her latest charge to be curtailing the rabid badger on the loose in the area. This was a massively enjoyable way to get this going overall. The cheesiness of the situation, trying to stop a vicious, rabid badger stalking the community and devouring anything it comes across, from pets to kids and other people, is shown in absolutely charming and cheesy sequences, with it leaping out of the darkness to attack others in a string of laughably silly setups that produce a lot of solid gore from the funny gags. The whole thing gets serious in the finale when it deals with the agent stalking the creature in her house for no real reason when everything else was cheesy, but otherwise, this was a great time.
Dispensary of Death-Tending to her duties, a pharmacist is forced to deal with a hesitant victim of a zombie attack and his growing concerns about the fatalistic treatment. This was a fine enough segment, but it tends to wear out its welcome rather quickly. The central idea here isn't bad, as the residents of a small town are being beset by zombie attacks that no one else is familiar with, and one of the victims goes to see a pharmacist for treatment, but gets continually put off by the fact that every potential action from her is to either kill him or dismember the infected part of him. The whole thing wears out its welcome, though, when the joke starts to be quite obvious about where it's leading and how they're going to wrap it up, causing this to be a fun enough story overall.
Croak-Tired of how his life has turned out, a man sets his sights on dealing with the annoying frogs living near the home that he blames for how his life has become. This was a somewhat decent revenge angle, but little else about it makes sense. The irrational hatred of frogs is not all that convincing, with the way he barely brings up how much he hates them until after his job, spends the majority of the time concocting basic science-level experiments to deal with the creatures, and never really develops into anything all that interesting until after he sets his plan in motion, all manage to keep this one from being all that interesting. The final rampage against him and the tense stalking that comes about are decent enough, but it still has a few too many issues.
Hell Hole-Heading deep into an underground mine, a maintenance worker finds his carelessness has accidentally freed a vicious monster from a secured part of the facility and must get out alive. This was a solid enough segment, but it has some issues with it. The central setup works incredibly well, forcing the guy to go deeper into the facility as his job requires him to look into the various sections and parts regardless of how dangerous they actually are, and it provides the perfect placement for the desperate escape out of the tunnel when the real source of what had been trapped inside is revealed. This serves to garner a lot of impressive sequences involving the escape and the close calls that emerge as a result, but with the grandiose scale of what's been attempted, it tends to offer up some rather awkward and underwhelming effects to try to pull it off, which is a bit of a problem trying to buy into the premise. Otherwise, there's not much else wrong here.
Mephistopheles Mall-Desperate to improve his lot in life, a down-on-his-luck salesman tries to sell his soul to the Devil, who doesn't want to take on such a loser. As a whole, this is a bit of a mixed bag. The situation is growing increasingly more absurd over time as we keep coming back to the loser salesman trying to reason with a cockatoo as the form of the Devil appearing before him to try tempting him into selling his soul, or at the very least toughening up to become a more stand-up person, with him standing up to others. However, it's just an immensely lame and lackluster wraparound segment, as nothing ever leads properly into the next segment, as we just keep interrupting the flow of everything to carry out these stories and come back without any logical coherence, leading this to be a decent idea without being a great introduction.
Overview: ***.5/5
A really strong indie anthology effort, there’s enough to like here with these segments that it’s a lot more fun than expected and holds itself up rather nicely against the few underwhelming segments. Those with an appreciation for this style of genre fare, who are big anthology fanatics, or who enjoyed the original one, will have a lot to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
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