Witchcraft Motion Picture Company Presents: Horror Anthology - Volume 1

What a weird movie this is. I only made it half way through simply because the 'stories' last about 5 minutes each and then end. Some of the tales look promising and you truly can't believe it when they finish. There is some build up but it becomes so frustrating that you just end up thinking 'Is there any point?'. It is a very frustrating movie and almost pointless. What is the point in building up the tension and then just finishing the story? I don't know how many I missed but I suspect that I would have felt exactly the same.

So there is some promise but ultimately disappointment. Give it a miss.

TLDR; a charcuterie board of tasty little horror videos that feel like a good two sentence horror story.

This was a refreshing style of horror movie. I've seen many horror anthology movies, and this creeps up high on my favorite horror anthology movies list. It was like an 8 course dinner of movies. Small bite sized dishes that leave you overall satisfied at the end. The stories each gave a fresh twist on some old horror tropes, and introduced some interesting concepts that could be further played with in longer productions. All of the stories are very open ended leaving much of the plot to kind of inferring the situation in each clip. There's no beginning middle end story line, the audience is just thrust into the middle of these situations and are mostly left to finish the stories in their own imaginations. I can understand why some people dislike this format, but I thought it was neat. It was thought provoking and I loved imagining the whole story around the glimpses you get of these narratives.

This is an unorthodox anthology developed and produced by the largely unknown (perhaps only to me) Witchcraft Motion Picture Company.

With an extremely high production value, this fine-tuned and well-polished anthology is less of a film and more of a passion project showcasing some of the finest displays of horror and cinematography that Witchcraft Motion Picture Company has to offer. Inside are 9 incredibly compact and vibrant vignettes, complete with their own credit reels.

The stories involved are more like miniature films acting as teasers for big budget productions. The ideas and their presentations are actually incredibly brilliant and beautiful to watch whilst also offering some genuinely creepy and/or tense moments.

Below are brief Plot Summaries:

While artistically appreciable, "Babygirl," the opening story to this anthology, is somewhat weak, yet is in no way indicative of the quality of the vignettes to come.

Babygirl: A terrible fate befalls anyone found trespassing on this inimical property.

Goodnight Darling: Two sisters become leery of their mom's recent change in behavior.

Beast of Prey: With nowhere left to run, a young woman is confronted by her deepest fears.

Changeling: A young mother suffers the ouroboros, nature's natural cycle of death and rebirth.

Night Swim: It's a great night for a swim, until it isn't.

Polaroid: Using his Polaroid camera, a young man begins taking increasingly disturbing photos of his apartment.

Handcraves:? Gandgraves? Handgraves?: A journalist takes interest in a band with a sanguinary past and some unusual customs.

Every Night I See Them: When he sleeps, it draws closer.

Mommy: Anomalous phenomena convene upon a mother and her child.

This is another collection of very short clips that was hastily thrown together and given an. MA rating and called Horror. Movies like this are why it is so hard for people to give anthology movies a fair chance. "Changeling" was decent enough, but it should have been one of the longer stories. At least that one had something interesting happen. This movie honestly felt like something I could fall asleep to. I don't expect much from movies, especially a collection of shorts, but if they are going to slap a rating of Mature and call it horror I, at least want a decent attempt to be as scary as the 1960s version of the "Twilight Zone". One or two predictable jump scares, and that slightly creepy bit they call "Changeling" are the only things worth anything in this film. If you value your time do yourself a favor and pass on this one.