The Field Guide to Evil

I was very excited to see this at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest after seeing the directors involved, but most segments were overwhelmingly mediocre. The concept is fantastic and most segments are visually compelling but ultimately fall flat.

The Cobbler's Lot, The Palace of Horrors, and Al Karisi were the strongest and best executed, where Melon Heads was the weakest, being laughable at best. The Cobbler's Lot was definitely the stand-out short, with a beautiful muted palette of unique visuals and dark comedy. Inspired by silent era and 70s psychedelic film, this was a charming ending to a disappointing anthology.

Well, for an anthology, then the 2018 "The Field Guide to Evil" wasn't a particular masterpiece. Not even while brandishing eight different stories based on real myths and folklore.

What went wrong here? Well, for starters the fact that most of the stories weren't really all that compelling or interesting. Might be a bit harsh to say, but it is the truth. While the visuals in the various segments definitely are interesting and mostly good, the contents of the stories just mostly fail to capture my interest and it felt mediocre at best. And with such an output, it became somewhat of an ordeal to sit through eight different stories.

Now, don't get me wrong, some of the stories actually are fairly good, but in overall, the anthology just failed to be all that interesting.

I do like the fact that they went around the world to put different folklore and myths from different countries into the anthology, because it definitely added variety.

The acting in the different segments was definitely good enough, just a shame that the actors and actresses didn't have an enticing script to work with in most of the stories, because it made the anthology drag behind and suffer.

If you do make it through this feature length anthology, and I do sincerely applaud you if you can endure that, chances are slim to none that you will ever return to watch "The Field Guide to Evil" a second time.

It felt like you never really got to submerge deep enough into the various tales to fully understand or get into the myth and folklore. The storytelling and narratives just felt way too superficial, given the limitations of time to tell each story.

This anthology definitely had potential, but it just ultimately failed where it mattered the most. As such, my rating for "The Field Guid to Evil" becomes a mere less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

Good movie south by southwest, interesting concenpt bringing shorts together. Worked really well

This movie had an excellent concept and an exceptional introduction sequence.

But the stories... just didn't quite make sense.

Only three out of eight made complete sense - the American story, the Indian story and the Greek story.

The American story was laughable, the Indian story was vaguely creepy (probably the best one) and the Greek one was barely horror....

...much like the other stories, which came complete with bad effects, atrocious acting and incoherent storylines.

The concept was brilliant and I was so excited to see the movie... it's just a shame that I got all hyped up in the intro only to be let down by being downright confused throughout.

I have three stars. Two for the good stories (Greece and India) and one for the good concept.

If I were you, I wouldn't waste your time.

..but it isn't.

While well intentioned the collection missed its target.

We need more folklore in cinema but the tales were undone by some ropey direction, crap make up and some dodgy acting.

The frustrating thing is that some of the stories had some unsettling and disquieting moments, but these were offset by the absurdity of others.