I've seen some awful, awful horror movies made on low budgets, but this one wouldn't even qualify as a halfway decent student film. I laughed throughout the movie--not with it, but at it. Every, and I mean every, element of "Scary Tales" spells out A-M-A-T-E-U-R. On an obvious level, there's the terrible acting. It's one thing for an actor not knowing how to emote well, but these actors literally can't do anything right. There's a couple of scenes where characters are rustling through papers, and they don't even do that convincingly! You can attack this movie from any and every level. There's the pervasive use of cheesy sound effects, uninspired computer-generated editing techniques that even the most elementary film student can figure out--Hell, even the font they used for the titles is horrible! I'm a film student myself and I can honestly say I've made better films than this. The director really put no effort into suspending an audience's disbelief and concealing the micro budget. In a couple scenes, the main character is working in a bookstore and he stacks the books vertically, rather than horizontally. Now, even the lousiest, around-the-corner bookstores don't stack their books that way. Did the director have any brains whatsoever? Even amongst cheesy horror movies, this ranks as one of the cheesiest. Skip it at all costs!
