Shriekshow (2022)
8/10
Some really enjoyable segments and not too many flaws
22 October 2022
Heading out with her friends, a group of friends spends Halloween investigating an abandoned carnival in the woods which leads to a series of tales told to the visitors.

The Good Stor(ies): Story 1-After a series of disappearances, a pair of detectives set out to find the culprits leading to a secret group of killers in the woods harboring a supernatural secret. This was a generally fine segment to start this. The setup involving the missing persons in the community and the exploits of the police to bring everything to a head is a fine start offering the detective work to find the group of bloodthirsty killers in the shack in the woods. This leads into the fun finale with some bloodthirsty brawling and a series of great revelations that end this rather well, although it does come off somewhat sluggish with too many energy-draining conversations that could've been trimmed down or removed holding this down.

Story 2-Embarking on a camping trip in the woods, a group of fishermen decides to take up a suggestion to visit a remote spot which brings them into contact with a crazed killer. There was a lot to like about this one. Among the better features here is the nice bait-and-switch involving killing off the camping girls and turning its attention to the other fishermen who come across the same killer haunting the area that manages some fine gory kills along the way. It's all sorts of cheesy fun here with the low-budget means of shooting everything and the general appearance of everything holding this one up rather well alongside the lack of information about the killer and that inherent low-budget cheesiness.

The Bad Stor(ies); Story 3-Having a life-long fear of clowns, a young man trying to get over the traumatic incident that started it is suddenly confronted by it once again, or is he going crazy? This one turned out to be a slightly underwhelming finale. The premise could've been fine had it been given more time in the past flashback to give more of an understanding before seeing how he's handling everything currently. The therapy session feels empty and padding out the running time without any kind of context and somewhat undermining the shock visual of the incident in question which, indeed, feels like an appropriate traumatizing incident. The psychological torture and imagery are fine enough, leading to a cliched but still fun ending.

Wrap-Around-Heading out with her friends, a group of friends spends Halloween investigating an abandoned carnival in the woods which leads to a series of tales told to the visitors. This was a generally fine idea but ends up really letting this down. The main idea of the items being left around the abandoned campground and being used as a basis to start the stories is okay enough and the interludes featuring the clowns knocking off the group have some fun gore to it, but the finale featuring them chasing the others around the woods is comical more than scary with the way the clowns keep appearing making its limitations far more obvious than anything which leaves this the weakest part of the anthology.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, and Nudity.
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