NIGHTMARE CINEMA

Anthology films seem to be the rage right now. I did a half-ass search on how many have been released in the last year and it’s a lot. I have no clue why they’ve become so popular. Maybe because of the short attention span of today’s population? Who knows. 

I grew up watching Trilogy of Terror and the Amicus ones (Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Asylum). God knows I love Creepshow (how much, you ask? I’ve got the poster proudly hanging in my office and a few action figures). I really enjoyed Trick ‘R Treat (which has become a Halloween tradition over here). But the rest I’ve seen are pretty anemic.

Unfortunately, that ‘just-meh’ tradition continues with Nightmare Cinema. It’s a damned shame too since it sports some good genre directors behind the camera. I only responded favorably to only one, David Slade’s “This Way to Egress”, which centers on a housewife who finds herself shifting into a nightmarish parallel reality. The segment is pretty stylish, shot in black-and-white, paced with the uneasy dread of a classic Twilight Zone episode, and actually has an interesting concept at its core. High praise to actress Elizabeth Reaser (who I just discovered watching House on Haunted Hill) for finding the right balance of not overselling or under-playing her character’s descent into chaos. 

I was digging Mick Garris’ segment “Death” about a child protege who starts seeing dead people, until the story overstayed its welcome and tripped up with some dodgy special effects (at one point, Annabeth Gish’s head floats in a tunnel of New Age lights — an instant mood killer if there was any). At least the segment introduced me to Faly Rakotohavana, the main character, who has real verisimilitude to him.

I got pissed off right off with Alejandro Brugués “The Thing in the Woods”, which pretty much exemplifies everything I hate about modern horror filmmaking. The cinematography is all crisp high-definition; well-lit with no shadows — making all the corpses look obvious and fake. The story, the characters, even whole sequences and shots rely on what’s been done before. And before you say ‘but, Kody, that’s the whole point of the segment, to subvert expectations on genre cliches!’ I’ll stop you right there. There’s a big difference between subverting expectations with originality (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Scream, Housebound) and subverting expectations with pure laziness(“Hey! You remember Ash fitting himself with weapon-tools in Evil Dead 2? How about we do that whole sequence with our character? Do you like it because it reminds you of Evil Dead 2?! How about a montage of a girl prepping herself with weapon-tools? You liked ALIENS, right? Does that remind you of that? Do you like the film more now?”) Blargh. 

Just skip it.