Dark Whispers: Volume 1

Is it just me or are these anthology films getting worse?

I've always been a fan of the formula, Creepshow 1 and 2, Tales from the darkside the movie and the VHS franchise, I love how if there's one story that's not very good, there's always another chance for the film to redeem itself with another. But this last few years nearly every anthology movie I have watched has been awful. This one, like another dire anthology film I watched last year called XX, has the twist that all the segments are directed by women.

This should be a positive thing to give a platform for female directors to show that they can go shoulder to shoulder with the men when it comes to making horror films. But instead, all they've showcased in XX and this monstrosity, is that women shouldn't be allowed near a camera when it comes to making horror. In both of these films all of the stories revolve around relationships, break ups or kids and none of them are scary in the slightest.

XX was absolutely awful in every way possible and this film somehow manages to be even worse.

There's 10 stories in this one, all of them are, judging by the accents, Australian. There's no scares, no special effects to speak of, unless you class sharp teeth and green make up in one of the segments as effects. Most of them have absolutely zero point to them, the first story is just a woman with obvious mental issues getting into a lift and her dead/imaginary daughter gets in with her and asks her a bunch of questions about her past birthdays, That's it. terrifying eh? It's about 5 minutes long, it so boring and pointless and just sets the tone of what to expect from the rest of the film.

1 of the segments is subtitled and another one is stop motion animation (and trust me, it's weird as hell and ugly as sin to look at)

There were 1 or 2 of the 10 tales that had a glimmer of potential but then they just stop and that's it. The one with the Native Australians and the witch in the mangroves could have been really good but just as it gets interesting, it stops. The acting ranges from just about passable to absolutely Godawful, the camera work and lighting are so poor that the whole film looks like some kind of collage project. The music, OMG the music, it really has to be heard to be believed, it's probably the worst movie score I have ever heard in my life. The music plays over everything, like a backing track and is so out of place that it kills any chance there is of building tension or dread. Usually, in an anthology film, there's at least one redeeming story to watch, but here there is absolutely nothing worth watching. It's so bland, boring and just downright stupid.

Not THE worst anthology film I've watched in recent times but it's definitely up there with the worst of them.

Do not waste your time.

Another film from Monsterfest. I don't usually like short films but this one was definitely worth it. High production value which I didn't expect. All made by women apparently. The future looks bright.

There are some great chapters in this dark, occasionally funny horror anthology including one with Anthony LaPaglia and Ed Speleers, a stop-motion animation and one about a man who has caught a mermaid (maybe...). Lovely to see so many short genre tales from talented female creatives.

Not sure what's going on with the extreme negativity here (well actually it's pretty obvious if you read between the lines, or some cases, just read the lines themselves). This is a decent bunch of indie shorts with a good wraparound story that works as well as it has to in holding the segments together.

From the get-go it's clear this is not something like Creepshow, which was made with one holistic vision, or even like the VHS anthologies, which were intended to run together. Most of the segments in this anthology seem to have been made at different times, with different aims, and as such they generally all have a different voice, a different style. So it's less an anthology and more like a presentation of short films that can loosely be lumped together as dark fiction with a twist.

As that, it's very successful at showcasing these disparate film makers, who all show promise in one way or another. They're all names to keep an eye on, for sure.

If you expect this to be polished Hollywood stuff you're looking in the wrong place. This is pretty raw, but it's full of honest, authentic, creatively told stories. Nothing more, nothing less.

Personal highlights: the twists of The Man who Caught a Mermaid, the atmosphere of Storytime, the concepts of Grillz, the tone of Little Sharehouse of Horrors, and the overall vision and uniqueness of White Song.

People need to stop calling things "bad" just because it's not what they want it to be.

This is a collection of stories that instead of showcasing what female directors are capable of in the genre of horror merely showcases the pretentiousness of those female directors that took part in this snore-fest of below mediocre, beige, bland and ultimately meaningless collection of occurences (Calling them stories would be giving them too much credit).

Each occurence is written, directed and acted with all the skill and understanding of adolescent poetry, the sort of poetry that at the age of 13 you thought was so deep and meaningful, the sort of codswallop that as you reach adulthood you realise it was just a load of meaningless shallow twaddle and merely a source of embarrasment that you could ever have been that naive.

It absolutely astounds me that anybody could categorise this as "Horror", even in these days of safe spaces and snowflakes and generally weak and pathetic people it is hard to believe that anybody could find any of these segments the least bit scary let alone deserving of the label horror.

Best that the directors stick to directing rom-coms and leave horror to those that know what horror should be.