The Field Guide to Evil

Honestly, it starts of great and then just... don't expect it to get any better. I would go as far to say we need more like this just done a bit better.

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.

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.

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.

..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.