10/31

Good little mindless horror film. Definitely worth a watch.

10/31 is an indie horror anthology partially funded by Indiegogo from the director of The Barn, the composer of the same film, and a few others with stories that are based around Halloween. The film begins with two children watching "Malvolia's Halloween Monster Marathon" where an Elvira type character introduces the audience to four shorts. First up is "The Old Hag" from Justin Seaman. Two guys arrive at an old home to shoot a promo video to help it rent out a few rooms. One guy keeps seeing a creepy looking old woman and learns about how the locals call it the Gingerbread House where apparently an old hag chokes out victims. Is he seeing things or is it all in his head?? Overall it's a fun segment with appealing leads and a decent story (3.5/5)

Up next is "Trespassers" directed by Zane Hershberger. After a disappointing movie a cute purple-haired chick takes her lame first date boyfriend to an abandoned murder house where legend has it a scarecrow appeared and possibly cursed those living there. She wants to find out the truth about what happened. This is another fun entry and features a decent synth score while the story and it's conclusion are great (3.5/5). Director John William Holt takes over for the third story called "Killing the Dance." A teen girl has to babysit her younger brother while she works Halloween night at the roller rink where things turn out horrifically wrong. This segment is a bit too long and repetitive with too many scenes of skating, but is still fun with it's retro feel, another good synth score, and ridiculous ending (3.5/5)

The last entry is easily the weakest and is the directorial debut of Rocky Gray and it's called "The Samhain Slasher". It's a bit of a jumbled mess that is probably a bit overambitious in trying to jam too much into its short run time. It's basically a cult film and slasher jammed into 20 minutes that suffers a bit from some weak CGI as well (2.5/5). Things finish up with the wraparound and while it doesn't do anything particularly memorable it's decent overall (3/5).

The budget limitations of this film definitely show sometimes, but it's all a part of the charm and it's easy to look past most of the wrinkles because of the obvious love and passion put into it all. There are so many bigger budgeted anthology films that may look cleaner and shinier, but tell the same old stale tales that we've all seen too many times. The stories here do a good job with some good old Halloween look and feel and each story feels like it's trying to do something familiar yet original. If you love horror anthologies then 10/31 is definitely worth seeking out. It doesn't and shouldn't look like Trick r Treat, but it's a small budget indie horror that both needs and deserves our support.

Additional notes: I viewed a festival version of this film for this review that is missing one segment directed by Brett DeJager (Bonejangles) titled "The Halloween Blizzard of '91" which is still going through some post-production work, but will appear in the DVD release of the film. There are still some fixes coming to the film itself too with some of the audio. I put some money towards the film during its campaign, but I am in no way associated with the film other than that.

A fellow horror fan recommended this on a forum I frequent and when I saw it was on Prime, I figured "why not?" I'm also a sucker for Halloween themed horror films. I was impressed by "The Old Hag,","Trespassers" and "Killing the Dance" despite their budget limitations. The namesake character in Old Hag was indeed "creepy"! Also the wraparound hottie horror host was serviceable, though some more could've been added to the wrap around "ending".

What hurts this movie from being great are the final 2 stories, "Halloween Blizzard '91" and "Samhain Slasher"...these looked REALLY cheap and the story and direction seemed rushed and unpolished compared to the first 3 stories. April in the 'Blizzard" sequence was easy on the eyes though! Yummy! Sadly no nudity.

I would've given this a 5/10, but since I enjoyed 3 out of 5 of the stories, I figured I'd give it an above average rating. If you're in the mood for a decent Halloween anthology, I recommend 10/31

... in the hopes it would get better, but each story is not good at all. The acting in all of these are complete garbage. I honestly couldn't figure out if the point of these films is to make fun of the horror genre or if they're actually trying to be scary.

Skip this 'collection' and save yourself from losing 1.5hrs.

Now, I've actually watched the 2019 movie "10/31 Part 2" prior to having a chance to watch the 2017 movie "10/31". And while I wasn't overly impressed with part two, I must admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any grand expectations to this predecessor from directors Brett DeJager, Rocky Gray, Zane Hershberger, John William Holt, Hunter Johnson and Justin M. Seaman. But with it being a horror movie, although an anthology nonetheless, I opted to sit down and watch it, as I had the opportunity to do so.

The first segment is titled "The Old Hag" and it is written and directed by Justin M. Seaman. It was a nicely written story, although a bit cliché and generic. But it was actually entertaining enough, despite this. The acting performances in the segment were good. The effects were good as well, adding to the overall creep factor of the storyline. This was actually the best thing about the entire anthology. Though the ending was rather unnecessarily stupid.

Zane Hershberger wrote and directed the second segment, which is titled "Trespassers". The storyline in this segment as fairly weak, and it was a slow paced narrative, and that just didn't help to improve the overall impression of this second segment. The effects, however, were fairly okay. The music was also quite okay in this segment, as there was a distinct 1980s vibe to it.

"Killing The Dance" is the title of the third segment, and it is written by Jason Turner and directed by John William Holt. The storyline in this segment was not particularly good. I love how quickly the blood coagulated on the first woman being cut with a razor at the skating rink, that was just a pretty poorly done effect. The music in this segment was just unfathomably annoying to listen to, and it went on non-stop.

The fourth segment is "Halloween Blizzard of '91", which was written and directed by Brett DeJager. It was the most pointless of the segments, especially since there wasn't really a thoroughly written script to support it. It looked and felt like something that writer and director Brett DeJager just shot on the fly.

The fifth and last segment is "'The Samhain Slasher" from writer and director Rocky Gray. This segment was okay. I mean, it was a pretty straightforward narrative, although somewhat on the weak side in terms of a thoroughly written storyline.

And the tie-in segment that presented the segments and tied them together was "Malvolia's Halloween Monster Marathon", from writers Rocky Gray and Zane Hershberger, and directed by Hunter Johnson. It wasn't a particularly great concept, but luckily we didn't have to endure much of it, as it was just in the beginning and end of the anthology.

Watchable for what it was, but you're not in for anything grand here. It is not like the writers conjured up a Halloween classic here. And I doubt that I will ever return to watch "31/10" a second time, as it was about as entertaining and enjoyable as the "31/10 Part II" sequel was.

My rating of "31/10" lands on a four out of ten stars.