Movie Review: The Forces of Horror Anthology: Volume I (2017)

The Forces of Horror Anthology: Volume 1 is an anthology film from Force of Nature Films and written/directed by Roger Sampson. It starts off with a scene in which a young girl named Libby (Gracie Whitton) is talking to a therapist named Dr. Peter Svengali (Lance Eakright), and tells him that she doesn’t think her foster parents like her and that she is having “the dreams” again. That is where the first story in the anthology begins, and she says there are four of them.

In the first one, Revelations, Libby is with her mother in the kitchen, and her mother Mary is talking “business” with someone from her office. After having some ice cream, Libby makes her mom read her a harrowing bedtime story involving the freezer and tells her which story she will be reading the following evening. This was a pretty good concept for a short film on its own. Without going into too much detail, we will just say that it isn’t a common plot, and was a nice surprise.

After the first one ends, it focuses on Libby and the Dr. again. She is talking about her second dream, which is the second story called The Jones. The mother and father in this segment are zombies, but function as a normal family. This was a neat idea, and although it has been somewhat done before, this one feels more like the zombies are a normal functioning part of society, which you don’t see too often. Libby is their human, non-zombie daughter, though. Kudos for originality in this segment for sure. Great job in the makeup department here.

In the third dream, in which the story is titled Rawhead, Libby can’t sleep and thinks there is something in her closet. It turns out to be a boogeyman named “Rawhead” and this story is pretty traditional. It had some nice makeup work, though as well.

The story then cuts back to Libby talking with Dr. Svengali, who is trying to explain to Libby about how people feel in certain situations and trying to make analogies based on how she is explaining things, and Libby doesn’t seem to be buying it. She seems much more confident and decides to tell him about the last dream, which is The Origin of Species.

In this story, there is some interesting cinematography in the opening, and the story turns grim pretty fast after “Brooke” (Gracie Whitton) and a man knock on the door of the house that the man would later regret. There is an interesting encounter and plot twist here that was pretty nice. Good makeup and practical effect use in this one as well.

After this dream, Libby is back in Dr. Svengali’s office and he is talking to her about her dreams. The story comes full-circle and really ties the whole anthology together nicely from there.

Overall, The Forces of Horror Anthology: Volume 1 is a nice anthology film that has a lot of classic horror elements. There are some good special effects, and the quality of the film is pretty decent. With anthology films, you really have to make sure that everything fits together well if you are going to make one in which all of the stories come together, and this one did a good job of that. It is like a lower-budget indie version of Trick r Treat or A Christmas Horror Story. We really enjoyed this one, and would recommend it to fans of horror anthologies for sure.

You can find out more about The Forces of Horror Anthology: Volume 1, and the cast and crew here: http://www.forceofnaturefilms.com/the-forces-of-horror-anthology-volume-i.html

You can also find Roger Sampson on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/f_o_n_films