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As a hardcore lifelong horror fan, I was thrilled to catch this little gem on my DVR.

Forget that it's an anthology. It's a bit disjointed and free-form, but the stories are easy to follow, there's no crappy filler scenes or banal dialog, and the surprises keep piling up. It reinvents the made-on-video genre, blowing away Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity by being more experimental, sexier, scarier, more disturbing, with a greater range of special efx and ingenious use of video efx.

It starts off with a deceptively simple interstitial story (as pitched in the log-line) which sets the expectations low. We get a hint that something more is about to happen with a slightly subtle reveal that foreshadows the hellish carnage to come.

The cast is wonderful. The acting is blessedly naturalistic (meaning extremely realistic for those of you who never took an art class) but not flat. While the mostly young actors have the look of folks you'd usually find in university films, they perform brilliantly. And unlike well-known movie stars, their fresh faces help preserve the suspension of disbelief that makes horror films more effective.

Hannah Fierman deserves a nod as a stand-out in a stand-out cast, but she's also aided by delightful make-up efx and mechanical efx work.

Unlike most low budget films these days, the stories vary widely in tone and include some stunning location work. The screenplay is intelligent and the vignettes are original.

The film was made by a collective, so I'm not even going to attempt to mention everyone by name. Suffice it to say, they are bona fide filmmakers who have mastered the medium and don't get overwhelmed by the cutting edge techniques they use.

If you're a horror fan and haven't yet seen it, check it out. But be advised that this one is much more full-blooded (no pun intended) than the typical made-for-a-middle-road-audience flicks, with liberal injections of sex and nudity and realistic gore. Softcore horror fans might find it too disturbing.

There is a theory of film study which asserts that an important factor in how a film is experienced is the time and setting in which one sees it. It's especially true for horror films. Teens who see films like the original Texas Chainsaw and The Howling for the first time decades after they were made will compare them to films like Saw and other films they've seen earlier. People who saw them when they first came out got the full impact of the new ground they were breaking at the time.

The Howling: Reborn breaks no new ground. It does however break one of the cardinal rules of screen writing: avoid voice-over as much as possible. This film is plastered wall-to-wall with the pretentious observations of a "teenaged mind." The main characters are like rejects from an MTV dramedy, slinging pseudo-pithy ruminations of teen angst that only a pre-adolescent could find intriguing.

It's not all bad though. There is Lindsey Shaw to look at. And the lighting is top notch. Unfortunately the cinematography is lost in a flashy mess of music video after effects and choppy editing, apparently used to cover up the less-than-state-of-the-art CG work.

The original Howling was a notable entry in the horror genre. Aside from the fact that it was genuinely scary and atmospheric, it featured the first truly impressive "real time" full body on screen transformation of a man into a werewolf. (Yes American Werewolf had good efx too, if you found it impressive to see one hand transform at a time.) And this was before CG, when make-up artists had to figure out complex robotics combined with masterful sculpted skins.

And while the original Howling drew you in with realistic situations and characters, Reborn starts off with a few unreal clunkers. One is a security guard in charge of a school lockdown system that would be the envy of any maximum security prison. The second is when a high school student is pushed against a locker and has a three inch blood-gushing gash sliced across his jugular, and shrugs it off as if the school bully just rubbed a booger in his hair.

Not long after that we find ourselves immersed in a wannabe feature length MTV video with standard rock video efx like color desaturation, flash cuts, and worst of all, a string of songs with sappy vocals that make the mickey mouse orchestral score even more mickey mouse.

In the end, the bombastic direction and flashy editing fail to make up for what this film lacks: substance.

Kids will probably like it though. Fans of the original hoping for a state-of-the-art update will be sorely disappointed.