5 Senses of Fear

Saw this at The Art of Brooklyn Film Fest's Dark Side program. A great, original anthology.

It's refreshing it see a horror movie that focuses on characters and story and not just blood and guts (although there are some great squirm-inducing moments in this that made a few audience members quite queasy).

Also, the stories are all loosely tied together, but it's not easy to pick up all the connections on the first viewing. I'm excited to go back and watch this again to look for more details.

I'm hoping this gets a DVD/BluRay release, because it definitely deserves multiple viewings.

My only complaint is that I would have liked a bit more of a wrap-up at the end. It seems to finish pretty abruptly. But, maybe we'll get more in a sequel!

The title predicts what you will get, 5 short movies about our senses. But all with a twist so that explains the fear. All of them contain horror and I must say that the quality of each flick looks superb.

Smell, the first one doesn't has an original script but you have to watch and go through the first minutes to see what is going on. It all looks messy after a while for the main lead and it's just on the edge of gore. With the use of a perfume given by a stranger a man do attracts beautiful girls but there's a price to pay. The body slowly decays. The effects used are really well done. A nice short with excellent shooting and editing.

Sight, again not an original script. There are so many full features about eye removal and replacing them from killers and here we do have a bit of the same. The instruments used to control the eyesight do capture what's going on in the brain and so we are suddenly into a story about a killer taking revenge on a eye surgeon. It also has a few of nice effects but isn't that scary at all, nice editing again.

Touch, for me that was the weakest of stories involved on this disc. It never really got my attention.

Taste, a lot of blah blah and you're waiting what is going to happen, Beautiful girls running the business and the only thing you want to know is, what kind of work is offered...but once refused things go wrong. A bit sad about the shaky camera's used but original story, nothing is explained and again on the edge of gore. Some will be remember the bear trap from Saw.

Hearing, the only short made like a documentary. To make it more creepy they are after a Russian tape about some kind of song which do affect people playing that song. Didn't like it at all because it's a lot of blah blah even as they tried to involve us by removing the sound sometimes to think we would go mad too. Sadly, you really have to wait until the end before the horror comes in on the found footage. And from there it's uploaded to youtube, so be aware if you are watching youtube....

Overall, not bad due the quality of all shorts but Hearing and Touch weren't the thing I was waiting for...

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

It was a completely unassuming film that had nothing to do with the senses at all, but merely a sign of the author's and director's ailing mind. I do not recommend watching this movie at all

The first 4 senses that they covered had really cool concepts. What I liked the most is that they were all interconnected one way or the other. The "hearing" story lacked a lot and it wasn't my favorite. It felt rushed and disjointed but but the actors were pretty good.

After watching this a few years back, I didn't think too much of it. I remember liking the last section, Listen, with the music that makes people go crazy. On the strength of that segment, I decided to pick up a Blu-ray on sale.

After rewatching the movie - out of order - I realized it's actually better than I gave it credit for.

There are five segments. There's actually a thread connecting all of them. I checked the other reviews here, and it doesn't seem like any of them noticed this.

The corporation that is centered on in the fourth segment has tentacles in all of the other stories. It also sets up the fifth segment.

All of the stories have something to offer. They aren't especially scary, but at the least, they are interesting. The only one that suffers is the Sight segment, which seems like an interesting idea, but the execution is a bit confusing.