Thursday, November 6, 2014

Quick Reviews: All Hallows Eve (2013)

This is a special treat for those of you going through Halloween withdrawal.  Enjoy...
This is another one of those Horror Anthology Tales that is all the rage these days.  These things come in Waves, so ride this out if you don't like them.

There is, however, one major aspect of this Film that confuses me: VHS.

You see, the Framing Device is that someone puts a VHS Tape in a kid's bag of candy on Halloween, so they just pop it into their...VCR?  This is a 2013 Film right?  It's not set in the 1980s either?  Okay.
In the first tale, an un-scary Clown kidnaps some lady because...reasons.
She ends up in a Cellar (or something) and somehow ends up with a bunch of witches (and the guy from Legend).  

Alright.  Moving on...
In Story #2, we get a tense, but cliche tale of a lady alone in a new house and scared by noises.  

She does an okay job, but the problem is that the menace is...
 …a stupid-looking alien.  

This isn't played for laughs either, so someone really thought that this was good.  Moving on...
In Story #3, a lady stops at a Gas Station, only to find that an actually-kind-of-scary-looking Clown is there and he's a killer.
The lady drives away, but is constantly in pursuit by the Clown.  

How?  They don't say.  It can apparently teleport, except when it can't get past a door.

After that silly Tale, we get the main Story wrap-up...which just raises many more questions.  

I won't SPOIL this though.  The End.
Damn, this one was just kind of weird.  The overall Story has promise, but demands some sort of explanation.  That is the problem with a silent Killer like the Clown(s) in this Film.  We get nobody to explain what is going on- not even a little!  

On top of that, you have to accept a bunch of technical bits that make no sense.  The Babysitter has a cell phone (with a touch screen!), but the House she's watching has a VCR hooked up to the main TV in the house?  A VHS plays Films at higher-than-240p...except for the last Section with the digitally-aided Film Grain and Tint?  

What Film exists on VHS where two different people have Cell Phones (new ones at that)?  
Why is there no bumper between segments in the 'Film within a Film?'  
Why is there awkward static between each one?  
Can you even do that on a VHS Tape?  

Aside from that, the three Segments are of an odd and mixed quality.  The first one is just all over the place, while the second is hampered by, well, the choice of villain.  What a random and nonsensical way to work the Clown in, by the way.  I won't SPOIL any more than that.  As for the final one, it has good moments, but makes so little sense that it is hard to recommend it.  

If you like this kind of thing, it can be fun...but goofy.  If you don't like the spurts of extreme gore, however, I don't recommend this.  Let me end by mentioning that this Film completes Indy Horror Film Bingo by working in Night of the Living Dead footage...
A decent attempt at an Anthology tale, but the Stories were too uneven for my taste.  The whole thing just raised way too many questions for me.

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