Twisted Tales (2013– ) User Reviews

Hits, Misses and Other Gray Areas

[TheYesPerhapsNot · 6/10 · 4 November 2013]

I'd like to start off by saying that the short story (or film in this case) is a very difficult medium to pull off properly. Over the past decade and some change, we've had a short supply of anthology based series. Horror has been confined to movie remakes and bland rehashes in theaters, while the long-winded story arcs of American Horror Story and The Walking Dead dominate the genre on television. None of this is really all that bad, just pretty disappointing considering the quality of horror in the decades that have past.

When I learned about this series earlier this year I was ecstatic. The last anthology based series I'm remember watching was NBC's short-lived and often mediocre "Fear Itself", which was a partial spin-off from the also short-lived and often excellent "Master's of Horror" series on Showtime. After binge watching every episode of "Twisted Tales" in one sitting I have to say, I'm slightly disappointed overall... and I don't completely know why.

One of my favorite qualities of the anthology format is the fact that there will always be some not so great episodes in the series. Classics like "The Twilight Zone", "Night Gallery", "Tales From the Darkside" all had their fair share of stinkers. The trick is having a higher percentage of good episodes, while keeping the bad ones to a minimum or at least enjoyable in some way. (TZ's "Mr. Dingle the Strong" for example.)

"Twisted Tales" walks this line very narrowly. I wouldn't say the majority of the series is bad at all. It's just that a large portion of the episodes float in a gray area of not being blatantly bad, but also not really being all that good. Yet, somehow, being too weird and short to be considered boring.

Episodes like, "To Hell With You", "Boom" and "Fred and His GPS" worked perfectly in this format. However, others such as "Mongo's Magic Mirror" and "Cached" felt like enjoyable stories that had their potential crushed out of them by the time constraints of the series. "Shockwave", "The Pizza Guy" and "Bite" began with interesting, quirky and even playful plots, respectively. Sadly, they all quickly became painfully awkward to watch, ultimately stumbling over very bizarre casting, story pacing and acting. Acting being the biggest offense, even in the some of the better episodes.

I'd really like to see a second season of this. Mostly for the unusual stories that Holland crafts, but also to see if they can really take advantage of the short film format and create something truly remarkable. Hits and misses are part of why I enjoy a series like this. I just hope that "Twisted Tales" can decide if it wants to be good or bad, or even boring.

shockingly bad, talky, illogical, predictable, cheap, incompetent

[HEFILM · 1/10 · 24 April 2014]

This show feels like it was made in the late 1980's, rejected only to be unleashed on a world that has come to tolerate less quality. The show is endlessly tirelessly talky, you can turn off the picture and probably imagine a better show than what you'll see. Though it wouldn't be a good radio show as the dialog is dull and the ideas shop worn and don' t vary much from episode to episode.

Holland at times seems unable to shoot a scene so that it will even cut together properly. What physical effects are attempted are poor and the bulk of them are bad CGI. Poorly matched real elements with fake 2 dimensional backgrounds, terrible fake blood spurts and fake explosions. All of them look like state of the art CGI from say 1987. Some genre names pop up to get a paycheck. Ray Wise comes off OK the rest just seem to be slumming.

The show looks cheap and one assumes that Holland and the name cast took most of what was probably too little to produce the show properly anyway. But as pieces of writing the stories are predictable but worse than that the stories fail to hold together for any length of time. The best example of this, and this is not a spoiler, one character demands the combination to a lock from another character, he is given the combination, uses it to lock himself inside a room, then the character who just gave him the combination goes and gets a gun and demands the door be opened or he will shoot. WTF? The key pad for the combination is right there in front of him. In this fashion rules are set up then broken immediately in multiple episodes. Small bits of action or horror are sloppily done but mostly the not very good actors just stand around and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk some more. It feels like padding but the episodes weren't limited or restricted to certain time length or slot--as most TV is, so the assumption has to be that Holland though this was good dialog. The supporting cast members are generally poor and the cheap post production sound just is more cheapness layered on top of the whole waste of time thing.

Hard to imagine that Holland's name was ever attached to anything good if this was all you are to see. This is a hard one to forgive

Tales to make you fall asleep...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 23 July 2014]

I had hoped that "Twisted Tales" would be something similar to the classics such as "Creep Show" or at least in that area. But I was in for a sore surprise.

While "Twisted Tales" does follow in the likeness in terms of short stories, it was just about all that was reminiscent of "Creep Show", "Tales from the Dark Side", and the like.

The stories told in "Twisted Tales" were quite far from being interesting, much less actually being scary or twisted in any real sense. The stories were rather superficial and uninteresting. I managed to sit through about halfway through the movie before I fell asleep, were awakened by a sound from the movie, then got up and turns it off.

From what I managed to sit through, before passing out from sheer boredom, then I will say that "Bite" was the most fun and interesting of tales portrayed and told in "Twisted Tales".

The best part about "Twisted Tales" was that the casting people had managed to get some good enough talents to be part of this. Not award-winning performances, mind you, but there are people that you will recognize from other movies or TV shows.

I wouldn't really recommend "Twisted Tales" unless you have absolutely nothing else to watch or do, because there is really nothing overly appealing to this.

Tom Holland in the online Twilight Zone

[VinnieRattolle · 8/10 · 2 April 2014]

Spoiler-lite. First things first, "Tom Holland's Twisted Tales" was not a TV series, but rather a web series of shorts which were made for FearNet. The budget is virtually non-existent and the acting ranges from really good (genre actors Angela Bettis, Danielle Harris, Ray Wise, James Duvall) to really bad (most everyone else, with a handful of exceptions). They were each shot in a matter of days (the longest, the 34 minute "Pizza Guy," had a 4-day shoot) and they're all really rough around the edges. If you're anticipating glossy made-for-cable production values, you will be sorely disappointed -- think 1988 straight-to-video horror and you've got an idea of what you're in for. That out of the way...

The now-70 year old writer/director Holland is a guy who really knows the horror genre but, like all anthology shows, it's sort of a mixed bag. The obvious standout is "Shockwave," the story of a group of friends who turn against each other to ensure their own survival at the end of the world. Despite the predictable ending, it's got the glossiest look and best acting of the bunch. "Fred and His GPS," "To Hell With You," "Boom" and "Cached" are all well crafted little tales that move at a fairly swift pace and have some nice performances. "Pizza Guy," the story of a girl who summons the devil only to have a mysterious pizza delivery guy arrive at the door, is much more involving than it probably has any right to be. Set in 1988 with a group of green actors who weren't even born until later, it's a taut little psychological thriller where you aren't sure if the (Jeff Spicoli wannabe) pizza dude's really the devil or the girl's insane.

The remaining three episodes are badly hampered by their budget. "Mongo's Magick Mirror" features the always-wonderful Ray Wise as the keeper of a magic portal to another world; it's worthwhile for Wise's performance, but the CGI often verges on painful. "Bite" has an interesting premise (a new drug turns its users into werewolves) but the cheapness of the production equaled poorly simulated carnage which thoroughly taints the entire affair. Finally there's "Vampire's Dance," a blatant homage to Holland's earlier "Fright Night," which takes place at a dance club populated by vampires and is more than a bit inscrutable.

Despite budgetary limitations and some predictable twists, this little horror anthology is a fun ride, though it's certainly nothing groundbreaking. And in an era when anthologies are a thing of the past, I'd love to see the "Untold Tales" leap from the pages of kindle and onto the computer/TV screen. With DVDs now available on Walmart shelves, perhaps they'll inflate the budget and give us a second season.