Directors: Simon Phillips* & Various
Release date: 2021
Contains spoilers
This is another anthology made up as shorts and *noting that Simon Phillips is listed as a creative director).
For the most part the shorts are filmed in a consistently professional manner and I was impressed that, for the most part, they were not already seen (until towards the end of the film when a couple of already known shorts snuck in – one of those being the vampire short Elysia, which I won’t examine again but it was the best of the vampire/genre orientated segments on offer. Unfortunately, a lot of the shorts failed to capture a succinct storyline and were more just a moment in time, a concept rather than narrative if you like.
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| Brianna McKee as Joy |
After opening narration by Doug Bradley (Hellraiser, Hellraiser II: Hellbound, Umbrage & The Reverend).The opening film is entitled Dark Lights and was directed by Deborah Richards. The film has a very stylistic opening, the camera panning through a penthouse that is filled with signs of violence and decadence before resting on Joy (Brianna McKee) who lies in bed and whose dreams are filled with blood.
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| the drug den |
We see her out and about in Las Vegas, at one point as she stands on a street, about to smoke, a man, Roy (Mark Rebstock), approaches and offers her a light – she comments on the zippo and he says it is his lucky lighter. He suggests she looks like she likes to party and is explaining where he lives when he realises that she has walked away from him. He calls her a c*nt. The film then sees her walking into a drugs den.
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| vamp face |
Inside a woman is lolling with a needle in her arm, whilst a man gets ready to inject himself. He sees her as the drug takes hold and she approaches him, and whispers an apology. She starts to change, her skin greying, her eyes flooding blood red and fangs appearing. The female junky comes round enough to scream as she bites him and feeds – continuing to push the drug left in the syringe into his bloodstream. As the short ends we see her light a cigarette with Roy’s lighter, making it clear that off screen she killed him. However, as stylish as this is (and it is), as you will be able to tell there is little in the way of story – just vampire goes out and feeds on junky. It is a shame and, as a result, this feels like an opening for a larger thing.
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| the succubus |
Then next short to mention was The Succubus, which as mentioned was directed by JD Allen, and this was incredibly simple. A couple (Lacie James and Chris Bonnett) get it on in a hotel room. Afterwards he is led asleep and then awakens unable to move and sees a demonic form come to him. She straddles him as he begs for his life (they communicate through thought), he is married with a kid and another on the way – through her we also discover he is a detective. She rips the flesh from his mouth – for fun it seems – before drawing his soul (we see it as very thin whisps of smoke). And that’s it – again there is style here (though the dark lighting possibly masks all sorts) but no real story – just a feed.
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| the witch |
I will mention Dirigo, directed by Noah Bessey – a trip to the woods takes a deadly turn when a woman (Melinda Nanovsky) stumbles out of the trees. She is taken to the cabin but is soon killing the group of friends (and this pretty much crams a slasher type film, with a supernatural element, into 7 minutes). The woman turns her eyes misty, is able to make others see her as someone else (their eyes go misty too) and we see her biting (a neck at one point, a crotch at another). She is credited as a witch but, at the very least, the biting makes it feel like a familiar trope being used.
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| from Elysia |
So, as I mentioned earlier, Elysia is the best of the vampire bits on offer – with a fully realised story in its short run. The other definite vampire offerings have style but are lacking story and push the score down (simply because they are style over substance) – remembering I only score the vampire parts and this anthology, whilst using pre-existing shorts, is well worth a watch. 6.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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