- Directed by Flying Lotus, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre
- Written by Zoe Cooper, Flying Lotus, Chris Lee Hill
- Stars Verona Blue, Dashiell Derrickson, Tybee Diskin
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjOYlq71kvk
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a little hit at miss for The Horror Guys, with some of the tales resonating with us and some of them not so much. There are ghosts and vengeance and demons and some unexpected things. We liked it more than disliked it, and the wrap-around was very cool.
Synopsis
As with the previous installments of the series, this is an anthology of short tales. We start out with a goofy animation with little green toy soldiers. We watch a bunch of clips from things that have been recorded over, probably multiple times.
1. Shredding
An annoying group of teens decide to break into “The Colony,” a former arts collective. Back in 1996, a fire broke out there, which claimed four lives. The four members of the band “Bitch Cat” all died in the fire. We get an old video of Bitch Cat being interviewed, and they are very 80s. Their music was pretty good.
Ankur isn’t really into going to the place where the four girls died, but he goes with the others. They soon find signs that someone may have been living down there. They find a little shrine, and three of the friends mock it, but Ankur tells them to stop it. They all grab musical instruments and play some music in the old, burnt-out club. Ankur gets angry and leaves. The other three then proceed to stomp on blow-up dolls full of jello to simulate the crushing death of the four musicians. Things take a turn very quickly when the actual undead musicians show up.
2. Suicide Bid
Lily records a video after going to a sorority earlier in the day. Helen comes in and says that restricting herself to one sorority application is a “suicide bid.”
Next thing, the sorority drags Lily to a big mortuary. They’re obviously snobby bad-girl types. They mention Giltine, a girl who wanted to join a sorority like theirs. She was told that she had to spend the night buried in the coffin; when they finally dug her up, there was no one in it. These girls want Lily to do the same thing, spend the night in a coffin. They give her a box to open when she’s the most scared. They bury her.
Lily, buried alive, talks to the camera, and she refuses to be scared until she hears scratching outside the coffin. She gets scared, opens the box, and finds it’s full of spiders. Outside, it starts to rain, the police show up, so the sorority sisters run away. The rainwater floods the coffin, and it couldn’t get any worse for Lily… until Giltine shows up.
When the girls come back in the morning, the coffin is empty. But it doesn’t end that simply…
3. Ozzy’s Dungeon
“Ozzy’s Dnugeon” is a TV show where teams do stupid stunts with lots of slime and nonsense. The first kid gets hurt and dragged out, which is what makes the show “Dungeon-y.” He described the obstacle course as “Ozzy’s Orifices.” If a finalist wins, they get any wish that they want. The game begins, and one kid gets a serious leg injury. The audience family members want Ozzy to stop the game, but he doesn’t.
We zoom out and find that a group of people have been watching a tape of the show. They have Ozzy locked up in a small cage without his clothes or toupee. The injured contestant’s mother is behind the kidnapping, and she doesn’t look healthy. Her daughter’s leg is nasty-looking and rotten. She’s got an obstacle course for him to try.
Before they torture him to death, Ozzy pleads that the set for his old show still exists; there are prizes there and they can have them. They all load up the car and go there. Under the studio is literally a cave, and they go down with torches. Turns out, “Ozzy’s Dungeon” is a real dungeon, complete with a monster.
4. The Gawkers
A couple of kids record prank videos. Then they record pervy videos of women around the neighborhood. Hired for tech work, one of the guys installs a webcam on the woman across the street’s computer. Without her realizing they have unlimited access to the view by way of the Internet. That night, the woman takes off all her clothes, but then keeps on taking things off. Including her hair, which was covering up the snakes coming out of her head. Then she notices the camera and gets angry…
5. To Hell and Back
A group of people record themselves explaining why they have volunteered to be the vessel for Lord Ukoban. They plan on calling Ukoban at midnight when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. The ritual commences, and a demon appears, but it’s the wrong one. In the process of banishing it, the cameraman and some of the others vanish too and find themselves in a demonic hellscape. They think they can piggyback into the real world again if they find Ukoban, but it’s almost midnight.
They meet a dead woman named Mabel who leads them to the cave where Ukoban lives. Maybe everything will be alright.
Commentary
The little green soldiers need a full-length feature film.
“Shredding” was long and too predictable. “Suicide Bid” was really good. “Ozzy’s Dungeon” is spectacularly weird. The gawkers ended well, but took way too long to get there. “To Hell and Back” was pretty cool, since we don’t actually get to explore Hell very often.
It was very hit and miss, as most anthologies go. I’ll go thumbs-up on “Suicide Bid,” “Ozzy’s Dungeon,” and “To Hell and Back.” I’d skip over the other two.