Dreadtime Stories

DREADTIME STORIES is horror anthology of short stories from the Independent Texas Production house of STX Media.

I helped promote this film through various social medias. Once the film hit the film circuit, I thankfully received a SCREENER of this movie to review.

The film itself is a rarity in the day and age of horror, due to the fact that not many filmmakers make anthologies. Not since the 70's AMICUS to the 80's and early 90's Creepshow/Tales from the Darkside era have the horror fans really had a taste. So, it's awesome to see someone bringing it back. The film also is made for the fans, by the fans which is another thing I respect about this project.

The film is set into a series of 9 shorts and a wraparound story. Home Cooking Forgotten Harvest Hollow Useless Wits End Stained Affection Punishment Empty Distension

Each one has a different feel and pulls you into their dark world. There is also quite a bit of humor thrown in. The stories range from cannibalism, scarecrows, murder, killer clowns and werewolves!!

The film is smart, well written, the editing was very well done. Most of all, the stories are original and not a rehash of a lot of the films that are out today. The visual effects are quite impressive as well as the cinematography. The film itself has the scares, the gore, the smarts and the story to appease any horror fan.

Considering the small budget $2,000 which they had, the film comes off like a $10,000 production.

I am personally looking forward being a part of and getting a copy of Vol. 2 in the near future.

You should know that this is an anthology of small horror stories, much akin to "Creepshow" for example, except that "Dreadtime Stories" doesn't have the same forceful impact as the old "Creepshow" series had.

Given the short time that each of these stories have been granted, it is very limited how much storytelling can be fitted into it, and equally limited how much character development there is room for. And the movie is sort of hurting from this. Director Jacob Grim set out to achieve a bit too much in too little time, and the end result was suffering from this.

There is a feel of low production value permeating the movie, in terms of cinematography and acting. I am not saying that this is necessarily bad, but at least you should take that into consideration before you sit down to watch "Dreadtime Stories".

Now, the stories told in "Dreadtime Stories" deal with very different topics, so the movie does get widely around to many different aspects. That was good, I think, although some might think that it proved to have a no real red line throughout the movie.

The title of the movie "Dreadtime Stories" sort of implies that there should be some dread involved in the stories. That was hardly the case, and I wasn't particularly frightened, scared, thrilled or even horrified by what I witnessed. That being said, don't get me wrong. Some of the stories were still entertaining enough for what they turned out to be. Just don't set the expectation bar up high.

"Dreadtime Stories" had me sorely pressed on my focus and attention on the movie. Why? Well, because nothing much of any interest or even remotely frightening happened throughout the course of all the different stories.

There were some nice enough visuals here and there, so it wasn't all bad. But the overall experience wasn't overly impressive.

This was actually a fair enough attempt to delve into the horror anthology genre by writer Sal Hernandez and writer/director Jacob Grim. However, the end result just wasn't outstanding or memorable.

I wasn't particularly entertained, nor can I claim to have seen anything memorable in "Dreadtime Stories".

People at a party read different stories from a book, that we see portrayed on the screen. The problem is that all the stories would, in reality, have been rejected by amateur publishers, and gotten poor grades as a junior high writing assignment.

For example: Woman opens cookbook, we see her preparing her food. She cuts up a human (off screen) for meat, then for some bizarre reason serves an obviously overooked head to her excited guests instead of the meaty dinner we saw her preparing. People working at a site talk about a local legend of a killer scarecrow. The scarecrow shows up for the last 10 seconds and kills them offscreen. And, no, I'm not leaving anything out. That's all you can find in way of plot. It's a movie where there are uniquely no spoilers because there is no plot to spoil.

All the stories lack any suspense, character, motivation, anything. They're just plot points someone might use with the intention of later fleshing out, but plot points with zero creativity behind them. Just mere cliche. And, for those who care, there's not even any gore to make up for the lack of actual story.

I am a fan of short horror fiction, so I see zero blame for running time when it comes to the complete lack of storytelling. In fact, given how threadbare the "plots" are, each "story" runs far much longer than it should, with no redeeming qualities like good acting, visuals or dialogue.