Movie Review: Terror Tales (2016)
Terror Tales is an anthology film written and directed by Jimmy Lee Combs. Combs also took on the roles of cinematographer, and film editor. Upon looking at some of the actors’ resumes in this, we thought that this would be something pretty decent, but unfortunately, this one falls short in the horror category.
The film starts off with a wraparound story about a family that gets kidnapped by a man with a gun, and the husband doesn’t seem shocked at all by the situation. He’s riding shotgun with the abductor while the man tells him these anthology stories during the ride. Having watched them, we can only imagine how much worse it would be to be stuck in a car with a kidnapper who is forcing you to listen to the audio versions. We think he should have just bailed right out the door on the highway, but he seemed to just instantly accept his fate as soon as it happened, so why not just also let this guy tell you a bunch of stories as well?
The three stories aren’t that compelling. The first story is about a lady who writes novels and has second thoughts about having a child after not being able to focus on writing anymore because the baby is constantly screaming through the baby monitor while she’s trying to write. Seems like she didn’t think that through very well. The second story is about an 80’s VHS rental store called “Radical Video” and some mysterious killings happening around it. The third story is about an epidemic of demonic possession. This was the best of the three stories, as it felt more like horror than the other two. The first two stories felt a lot more like a thriller you would see on Lifetime TV. There wasn’t a lot of actual “horror” to be found at all there.
The production value looks akin to a sexual harassment training video. This could be partially due to Combs spreading himself too thin on this project, which happens a lot when one person has that much control in a film, and we have seen several other projects suffer for this same reason. And, as mentioned before, this isn’t due to a lack of actors. Most of the actors in this film had a decent amount of experience. They even somehow managed to get some notable faces from some classics. Ari Lehman (Friday the 13th), Helene Udy (My Bloody Valentine), and Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) are among them. Ultimately, though, it takes more than just having these notable faces to make a quality horror film. You can have the best acting in the world, but if the writing is bad, and the overall production quality is bad, the film will still suffer. And this was the reality of the situation here.
Overall, we think Combs and team could have focused more on the horror aspect here. Two out of the three sections of the anthology didn’t really involve much horror at all. The wraparound story with the kidnapper also wasn’t written well. While we do appreciate and encourage new horror filmmakers, we can’t say that we would recommend this film.
