FOR WE ARE MANY is a partial quote from the Bible, the context being a story in Matthew according which Jesus Christ during his travels encounters a man who is possessed by some kind of "unclean spirit" which begs Jesus not to cast him out of the man's body; When Jesus asks for the spirit's name, it responds by saying:"My name is Legion, for we are many".
Notwithstanding the biblically inspired title, this movie has nothing to do with Christian Fundamentalism. Rather, it is an anthology of 13 short horror films which all have in common that their stories are inspired by demons.
Most anthologies have a wide variance in the quality of the individual short films, but this one is surprisingly uniform when every aspect of each segment is considered. A positive quality most of them have in common is that they are very good at evoking atmosphere. This is even more impressive given that they do not have much time to do so, since 13 short films plus a wraparound story are crammed into about 80 minutes. However, invariably each segment falls short on some other aspect, which differs for each: for one it is might be wooden acting, for another too much theatricality, yet for another logical gaps in the story, yet for another some element that ruins an otherwise good story, and so on. With 13 films it would be more effort than it is worth to point out the flaws in each individual segment, but surprisingly, they all even out to about the same, and that is why my rating is not just a mean but also a mode.
One easy oversight is that the individual segments are introduced without a title (and, preferably, the director's name). A title not only helps anchor a segment in our minds, so that we can more easily differentiate it from other segments using, but, if it is well-chosen, it can also help prepare the audience for the segment and thereby elevate the viewing experience.
The segments I liked the most were the one involving the devious butler, whose actor made an indelible impression as a deranged maniac in HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (2011), and the one involving the demonic tree. The first featured a familiar plot, but the execution was carried out really well; the second, a short found footage movie, featured outstanding cinematography; I believe a full-length found footage feature with that kind of cinematography (and assuming at a high level in all other aspects) would truly stand out in the genre.
The large number of segments reminded me a bit of THE ABC'S OF DEATH (2012) franchise, which contains in each film 26 segments, one for each letter of the alphabet, but, frankly, I liked the movies in that franchise better.
