The Field Guide to Evil

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

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.

Even though it has an interesting concept of entering other countries' folklore, this movie was badly written and weakly executed, to a point where we can't even understand the storyline of some segments. They completely wasted this movie's potential.

I'm no expert when it comes to myths and folklore, but the subject matter does interest me. I had never heard of any of these stories. That doesn't mean they aren't, but in eight tries I figured at least one would ring home.

Now whether or not these are familiar tales doesn't have any bearing on the quality of the movie representing them. However, all of the elements in movie making certainly have something to say about the movie's quality.

Some of these shorts were very lean on dialogue. That's not always a deal breaker though. There are a lot of great movies out there that use very little dialogue. The difference is that the good ones still manage to tell a clear story and captivate their audience. The silent shorts in this anthology were just confusing and distant. One segment traded dialogue for a baby crying sound effect on a loop. Hey movie maker, we get it. The baby is crying. Make the point and get off it. A constant baby crying is as distracting as when they have a phone ringing or a car horn going off for way too long. It just becomes an annoying noise.

I didn't realize how bad the acting was in this until the American segment played out. Wow, was that bad. That one played like a student film. The parents were just the worst. No chemistry with each other or their son. The boy was everything wrong with child actors all wrapped up in one.

And lets not leave out the gore. Why do inexperienced filmmakers and viewers, for that matter, think that gore and horror go hand in hand? Why? Being frightened, startled, psychologically tormented, or just creeped out are all valid aspects of horror. I don't know where or why gore seems to think it has a place here. If its done right and done with purpose, it can be very effective (Bone Tomahawk comes to mind). This entire anthology never once used gore to an advantage, but it used it in every segment. Just trying to gross someone out isn't horror.

..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.