Phobias

I learned some new phobias today.

An anthology movie on Hulu. Five patients who suffered from different phobias were put into the test from a crazed doctor.

So that's the given synopsis of the movie. That's basically a spoiler of the overall arc of movie. What the heck?

Apparently the synopsis said these people suffered from phobias. Um not all of them did. Each time the patients were tested, we were taken back to their past. The first three were pretty mediocre, and the first one had a fire effect that was so horrible and fake. The last two was more sinister and interesting, especially the last one.

The movie maintained suspense mostly by having nonstop and a variety of background suspenseful sounds. Even though they often worked, sometimes they felt excessive and overused.

The overarching story was pretty laughable. It was stupid because it could have ended much earlier. There should be more effort into making the main story more competent.

Overall, not the best or the worst anthology, but it was pretty decent and entertaining. 6/10.

I had no idea this was an anthology and was disappointed when I found out. The reason for that is that the opening Asian-American storyline is pretty decent, but then it suddenly finishes unfinished and we move onto increasingly less elaborate and engaging tales. Most dwell on predictable violence and shock scares, and the wraparound story goes nowhere either.

What a terrible disappointment and utter fiasco. This is one of those movies that you can tell had competent people involved (cinematography, music, editing, and some of the cast) but who somehow were infected by a deranged lunacy that led them to believe they were doing something worthwhile. This nothing of the sort. This is a completely incoherent mess without a shred of a plot, much less a script. Macy Gray is one of these people. I will avoid her in the future.

I was pretty excited when I heard this movie was coming out. I loved Alexis Knapp and Hanna Lee in the Pitch Perfect movies. And Leonardo Nam wasn't bad in the Sisterhood of traveling pants movies. I even sought it out when I saw it was released. However, I have to say they wasted these actors on what feels like an unfinished script. If you have seen the MASH episode Dreams, this basically a movie version of that episode as 5 different characters have their worst fears realized in their dreams. The only real difference is in this film is we find out that the government is making the characters have their bad dreams. And while this has potential, the movie never really engaged me. I won't spoil anything, but I was very underwhelmed by it all. The acting wasn't great, and I have a hard time finding most of the dreams believable. For instance, who is scared of middle school kids?

Additionally, Alexis Knapp is barely in the movie! They did her dirty by making her part so small :(. Also, the writing is terrible, and the ending is so sloppy you would think a middle school kid came up with it. Now I don't want to be too harsh because there is a chance this movie's filming got cut short due to Covid-19 because it was really short, and another 30 minutes would've really helped it tell a complete story. But with that said, I feel like they really needed to do some rewrites before publishing this movie because it feels like only half a movie.

Split into five sections, with a central narrative tying them together, this film feels a tad disjointed. Each section has a separate director... and each is named after a specific phobia. "Robophobia" & "Hoplophobia" are the two best sections. The others leave room for improvement. Camilla Belle, makes her directorial debut with the latter of those two... and she shows assured cinematic control and storytelling. Other than that, this is really worth skipping.