Two Sentence Horror Stories

The only scary thing about this show is the awful acting.

I tried going into this with allow expectations, the title "two sentence horror stories" was either going to be bad or okay. It erred toward bad. The acting wasn't very good, the storylines were often not well developed, and the sentences didn't always fit the story. While a few of the stories had a definite creep factor, the majority weren't very scary.

The sentences and stories didn't even match up. It was .....a sentence....a story with nothing to do with the subject. I only gave it a 4 because the acting was very good. The special effects were good too. But the stories were bad. This must have been produced by someone with no horror show experience at all.

The idea of short horror stories is intriguing, but the direction, editing and unfortunately also the script feel like a first semester's film school project: they worked with ambition, but without craftsmanship. While the acting is completely ok, the stories don't give you anything. After the first five minutes you regularly think "yes, that might be quite exciting", but then you quickly realize that the rhythm of the stories is just not right, that the editor only has a vague idea of how to create suspense and that the director is simply unable to shape the sloppy script into a coherent whole. There are thousands of horror stories in literature that are only a few pages long, but whose stories leave an impression you will remember years later. That's not the case in any episode here. The whole first season reminded me very much of first film school projects that stood under the motto "learning by failing". Then we sat down and analyzed why everything didn't work out as it was supposed to. We can only hope that this concept will also be applied here and that the second season will be better.

This show isn't very well done. The "twists" are predictable, the acting so so, the scripts lacking and even ridiculous sometimes. "Tutorial" was the last straw. I grew up on shows like "The Alfred Hitchcock Show" and "The Twilight Zone". I realize it's hard to compete with greatness but this show seams like a bunch of kids got together and thought, with their youthful exuberance and inexperience, "Hey! We can do that." Unfortunately, no, you can't. I hate to be negative but, I have to say, a little more artistry and a lot more experience at the craft is required to make this type of storytelling worth watching.

Addendum: The way I rate shows... I don't usually review anything less than a 7 because 6 would be a failing grade and I won't waste my time watching it. I'm old; I don't know how much time I've got left. Since I probably turned it off before getting even halfway through, it wouldn't be fair to rate or review it. 7 is watchable but I may go a while between episodes since, though somewhat entertaining, there are other shows more interesting or compelling. 8 would be a regular in my lineup. 9 is a must see and probably bingeable. 10 is just the epitome of superbity and headed for my all-time favorites list. I'm adding this to my reviews because it seems there are a lot of binary reactions to pretty much everything these days. I am not a like/unlike kind of guy. I see a lot of grays so if I give something a 10 it doesn't mean the only alternative is a 1.