Apparently Terror Tales has some actors from well-known 80's slashers (Sleepaway Camp, My Bloody Valentine, etc.). If that's enough for you then you'll be thrilled with this. If you're looking for a bit more, however, then you might want to give it a pass. What was so frustrating to me was that I could see so many ways that it could have been improved. Even in spite of the generally low acting effort.
The Wrap-Around: I did like the guy playing the Driver. He was a bit over the top but it fit his character. The wrap-around was ok, I guess. It seemed very loosely put together as an excuse for the stories. Which leads us into the stories themselves...
Tale Two: Radical Video: By far the strongest segment it was the only time in the movie that felt like an intentional homage to the eighties era slasher movies. The main couple had some good chemistry and you can tell they put effort into evoking the rental store. It made me miss them very much. Streaming may be more convenient but it doesn't have that feel of the rental stores. It also has a throwback to the eighties cop: Drunk, widower and surrounded by lots of jazz. My biggest problem with this segment is the actions of the people make sense...until the end. Then everyone decides to say "What's survival called again?" The kill scenes were obviously dolls and badly done. This was frustrating as a simple shift in camera angle could have fixed this problem and made it look so much better.
Tale Three: Epidemic: I did not like this segment at all. It was very bland and the acting effort put in was downright abysmal. I will say, however, that there was some pretty neat imagery in it such as the cross pendant dangling from a gun and a crucifix being welded into a woman's neck. Yan Birch would have been great as Satan but is so over-the-top it's hard to take him seriously. When he isn't hamming it up he looks genuinely scary.
The wrap-around finishes up after the last story. I won't spoil it for you, however. I didn't care for the final denouement because it just didn't seem to fit. I could think of a better way for it to have ended that would have been just as good and just as gory and more apropos to the irony factor.
My main issues were with the lighting, generally poor acting quality and bland cinematography. The special effects were ok in some spots but in others they were terrible. The gunshots in particular. What was more frustrating was that in a lot of the scenes just shifting the camera angle or toning down the lighting would have helped immensely. If it's an early movie by all of the crew involved I could be more forgiving. What I do have a harder time being more lenient with is their insistence on framing every evil person as being highly interested in the horror genre. If you know me and have been around Sci-Fi & Scary for awhile you'll know what's coming. If not, buckle up....
It's hard enough for the horror community to be taken seriously as literature. It's consistently ignored by the mainstream, non-genre oriented awards. Same with horror movies. It's rare that a horror author makes it to any kind of bestseller book lists (i.e. the New York Times bestseller list) unless it's an author with a lot of clout (*cough*Stephen King*cough*). Movies don't fare much better when it comes to Oscar noms and whatnot. What I cannot and will not comprehend is why a movie set firmly in that genre, starring people from that genre, would frame every horror aficionado in the movie as mentally ill, psychotic, and murderous. Thanks. Just thank you so much for that. It's at the point where a lot of horror authors/filmmakers won't even identify themselves as 'horror authors' because it's perceived as a negative connotation. From observation it seems like 'speculative fiction' or 'dark fantasy'. No, if that's how they truly see their work, that's fine. It's their prerogative. But it feels as though it's more of a marketing strategy because horror is a dirty word.
