Chilling Visions: 5 States of Fear (2014) User Reviews

Chilling Visions 2014

[Scarecrow-88 · 6/10 · 24 August 2016]

Five unrelated short films put together dealing with fears such as burial alive, loss of a loved one, losing one's ability to move and function while under the care of someone unkind, elderly disadvantage, mental derangement resulting in cutting yourself, and the inability to bury away infidelity.

I think the best of the bunch is actually the shortest: a narcissist with a hefty wallet loves to dispose of his lovers on the side once they nag him too much by burying them in the desert! Well, when the last one laughs up at him before he shovels dirt on her head, that seems to work as an attachment of guilt he can't overcome. Soon her "phantom" returns to remind him of his evil actions. The silhouetting of the phantom(s), a type of demon of the mind, is well done. Certainly gets what is coming to him.

The short film about an old timer seemingly suffering from increasing dementia and memory loss learns all too well that the death of his dog might not have happened as is told to him by his daughter and son-in-law who have an interest in his home, although they first appear to be sympathetic to his plight. A conversation in the car between them and pops digging up his dog culminate in quite a rad image of fists banging the wood begging release inside a coffin and the above ground recognition that all taking advantage of the elderly has consequences.

The other short films include: (a)a couple visiting a remote Connecticut wilderness near a once-populated town, with fencing saying not to enter, resulting in a type of mental derangement that causes them to use a knife to "cut it out". A mysterious figure, never elaborated but shot at a distance, gets rid of invaders once they butcher themselves. (b)a news reporter has a stroke that debilitates him to the point he can't speak or move, just able to blink his eyes (and eventually discovers telekinesis!) while his pariah of a wife, embittered with his infidelity, plots to get the money saved for their child and send him off into a pool in a wheelchair, staged as an accident! (c)a grieving mother is asked by her daughter's ghost to get revenge against the man that murdered her. But the mother doesn't want to let go of her daughter, despite her spirit desiring rest, and opts to torture the guy instead! Despite being short films with low budgets, there's good photography, with some cleverly staged aesthetic set pieces, familiar stories given fresh coats of paint, and some decent twists (maybe not altogether surprising but some quite satisfying considering the justice meted out towards some rather unsavory folks). Not a bad collection of horror stories.

Utterly banal and worthless Anthology effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 1/10 · 5 August 2014]

Five short films based on the idea of being in different states of fear.

The Good Stor(ies)-Tick Warning: Agreeing to head into the woods for a special ceremony, a woman and her boyfriend stop off at a secluded beach to rest for a while before continuing. Slowly being inundated by strange dreams and hallucinations, they come to realize a deadly force is present on the beach. This is quite an effective entry that works quite well by being the most explicit about facing an outside evil onto it's victims as the supernatural killer forces a slew of hallucinations that are quite chilling. As it leads into the rather brutal and bloody deaths by slicing themselves open quite graphically providing this one with the only real gore, it's done in like a true slasher film which causes this one to get an extra layer of intensity and suspense by showcasing the build-up to those elements quite well. It still makes no mention of the killer hiding there by the lake or what he really is doing there, but these are easily avoidable.

The Bad Stor(ies)-Sandy: Taking his mistress to the desert, a man disposes of her and returns home to his wife. When he suddenly starts seeing her body around the house, he starts to believe she's really not dead. There's barely anything to like about this one. The fact that it's only ten minutes long is the biggest factor as it doesn't really get much of a chance of doing anything really creepy or chilling, not that the utterly cliché plot would've done anything good with extra time. This is so note-for-note expectable that there's not even the twist of doing anything new or unexpected as a twist, it just follows the same route seen numerous times over in a brief running time which makes this question not only why it was included but even filmed in the first place.

The Trouble with Dad: After displaying signs of dementia, a woman and her husband begin to worry about her father staying alone in his old house. After finding clues that his deteriorating mental state might not be what he figured, he sets out to right the wrong in his life. There's a fairly creepy storyline in this one that really could've made this one quite enjoyable but as it stands this entry doesn't utilize that at all. The central idea about how the onset of his condition is affecting his daily life and routine could've been something big here but instead this one tends to dwell more on how bland and uneventful that really is with nothing coming off in any real interesting facet. There's not a lot of excitement generated from seeing him forget to turn the stove off, forget who his wife was or just simply rot around the house not accomplishing anything despite how the final twist plays out, which doesn't really make much sense anyway.

Ghost Daughter: Stuck at home following a brutal rape, a woman pleads with her mother to forgo her planned revenge on her attacker which falls on deaf ears. As he stays locked in their house while they continually argue about their relationship, a desperate escape attempt comes between them and forces a different reality to take shape. Frankly, this is the one in the film that really struggles with what it wants to be. The fact that there's so many nods for the family drama here between the two and how they really feel towards each other is hardly appropriate in a horror film due to the complete and utter lack of scares present in this kind of film. The late switch into the revenge angle doesn't come fast enough or move seamlessly into the rest of the story, as it's really just confined to one lone sequence late in the segment that brings about no gore or any sort of intense thrill here which is really could've had. All told, this is quite boring with too little, too late.

The Caregiver: Learning of his infidelity, a wife's plans to get revenge fall into place when a lucky stroke leaves her husband paralyzed and in her care. Toying and tormenting him as part of the revenge plan, a suddenly-burgeoning display for telekinesis may disrupt her plans. This one really could've been great but manages to make the lone mistake apparent here in really failing to develop where the powers come from since the whole thing is done from her vantage point. Without any sort of internal dialogue on his part to explain what's going on as the horror of what's going on slowly begins to develop, the instances of him playing with this power are just quite lame and come off as mere coincidences that really don't offer much in terms of suspense or chills at what's going on. As well, it's not really all that horrific what happens anyway and none of this is in any way scary or suspenseful, even the final twist which is quite obvious and never really comes off as a shock. Another great idea marred by lame plotting.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Tick warning - by far the best

[Dan-Production · 10/10 · 27 December 2018]

Great that the network enabled these up amd coming filmmakers to take a shot woth small budgets. Would like to see more of this from Hollywood in general. Tick Warning -- by far the stand out in the collection.