The Field Guide to Evil

Overall I think this was a great idea but was not executed to its full potential. Each story in this folk horror anthology had positives and negatives, but I don't think not one of them had the whole package, which I would expect from at least a few of them (if any I would say 5 and 8)

1. Beautiful with seemingly good acting. Monster looked silly and story over all unfulfilling and confusing

2. Not bad, decent story and a bit spookier but the girls whimpering became irksome.

3. Loved the look of this one and the story was intriguing but once again the ending was confusing and unfulfilling.

4. This is the first one that was just bad. I was beginning to become tired of the lack of dialogue, but once I got to this one I ate my words. The dialogue was awful, story was silly and the performances were stilted.

5. This one was probably the best. Makeup and special effects were super cool and the story was spooky and intriguing.

6. The acting and execution on this one were not really up to par but it was one of the more interesting stories.

7. This one looked beautiful and was weird and spooky but the ending left me at meh.

8. Quite liked the style of this one. Added nice variety and felt quite original with a Tim Burton flare.

I feel like for most this would probably land at a 4 but because I love the concept, am partial to folk horror, appreciated the positives and also have a love for and am forgiving with indi cinema I feel a 5 is appropriate. This is certainly not going to be for everyone. Many people will watch this and slowly become more and more annoyed with the underdeveloped stories. However if you take into account budget, time/length, and the giant scale this project took on across the world... it's pretty cool. I would recommend, but to someone who loves folk tales and has patience lol.

..but it isn't.

While well intentioned the collection missed its target.

We need more folklore in cinema but the tales were undone by some ropey direction, crap make up and some dodgy acting.

The frustrating thing is that some of the stories had some unsettling and disquieting moments, but these were offset by the absurdity of others.

I was very excited to see this at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest after seeing the directors involved, but most segments were overwhelmingly mediocre. The concept is fantastic and most segments are visually compelling but ultimately fall flat.

The Cobbler's Lot, The Palace of Horrors, and Al Karisi were the strongest and best executed, where Melon Heads was the weakest, being laughable at best. The Cobbler's Lot was definitely the stand-out short, with a beautiful muted palette of unique visuals and dark comedy. Inspired by silent era and 70s psychedelic film, this was a charming ending to a disappointing anthology.

Honestly, it starts of great and then just... don't expect it to get any better. I would go as far to say we need more like this just done a bit better.

It was a cool idea to have a collection of folklore/horror stories from different countries made by and in those countries, but dear god, the execution on the majority of these short films is awful. For about 2/3s of these stories, the plot and acting is so poorly done that they're almost hard to watch. I wouldn't call it a complete waste of time, but don't go into it with any higher expectations than an extremely low-budget student film.