The Field Guide to Evil

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.

It was a cool idea to have a collection of folklore/horror stories from different countries made by and in those countries, but dear god, the execution on the majority of these short films is awful. For about 2/3s of these stories, the plot and acting is so poorly done that they're almost hard to watch. I wouldn't call it a complete waste of time, but don't go into it with any higher expectations than an extremely low-budget student film.

Although the stories are somewhat interesting, they do become tedious to watch after a while.

The visuals are good but each of the stories really didn't engage me, or leave me feeling as though I had watched anything of any significance.

The concept was good but unfortunately it delivers little.

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.

Overall I think this was a great idea but was not executed to its full potential. Each story in this folk horror anthology had positives and negatives, but I don't think not one of them had the whole package, which I would expect from at least a few of them (if any I would say 5 and 8)

1. Beautiful with seemingly good acting. Monster looked silly and story over all unfulfilling and confusing

2. Not bad, decent story and a bit spookier but the girls whimpering became irksome.

3. Loved the look of this one and the story was intriguing but once again the ending was confusing and unfulfilling.

4. This is the first one that was just bad. I was beginning to become tired of the lack of dialogue, but once I got to this one I ate my words. The dialogue was awful, story was silly and the performances were stilted.

5. This one was probably the best. Makeup and special effects were super cool and the story was spooky and intriguing.

6. The acting and execution on this one were not really up to par but it was one of the more interesting stories.

7. This one looked beautiful and was weird and spooky but the ending left me at meh.

8. Quite liked the style of this one. Added nice variety and felt quite original with a Tim Burton flare.

I feel like for most this would probably land at a 4 but because I love the concept, am partial to folk horror, appreciated the positives and also have a love for and am forgiving with indi cinema I feel a 5 is appropriate. This is certainly not going to be for everyone. Many people will watch this and slowly become more and more annoyed with the underdeveloped stories. However if you take into account budget, time/length, and the giant scale this project took on across the world... it's pretty cool. I would recommend, but to someone who loves folk tales and has patience lol.