Another VHS

The easy to create horror anthology series came back for another attempt! Ignoring the framing device... two good segments out of four.

Tape 49 is the framing device, and as the point of it is to get to the horror segments quickly, it's pretty basic. It has a build of horror itself, but the final payoff just makes it stupid. It could have worked... but not really.

Phase I Clinical Trials is like a very short version of The Eye. Dude gets a bionic eye (so we get lots of first person footage without needing to hold up a camera) and sees ghosts. It's not bad, although the obligatory sex scene (for some reason, four of these shorts feel the need to include sex scenes) is really unnecessary. It's not bad, and more could be done with it, but it is well done with what they do.

A Ride In the Park is another zombie inspired short. Sigh. Although we get a slight variant of a zombie POV, so there's that... but we still get people with bad entrails props being dragged and lots of blood make up, and I just don't give a damn.

Safe Haven was very nice, and brought in some non-English flavour. (Why do we get to get away from America to get some decent horror?). I really want to turn this into a horror mod for some rpg, but you'd need to balance out the probability of making it lethal enough that most of the players would be dead before the end vs the need to keep them engaged (and keeping within the plot line).

Slumber Party Alien Abduction is... exactly what it says. A short were aliens abduct kids at a slumber party. And... yeah, that's about it. Not at all interesting.

As ever with anthologies, some good, some bad. Worth checking out for the good bits, and skim over the rest.

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