In The Dark (2015)

If you found a bag of VHS tapes in your hotel room, that weren’t yours… would you watch them? In October 2015, two ladies found out why you shouldn’t mess with things that aren’t yours.

Directing this 85 minute anthology/horror/thriller is Chris St. Croix and David Buchert.

Some of the cast is:
The Motel – Grace Kelly Mason as Jenna and Natalie Ruffion as Naomi.
The Keeper – Tristan Jackson as Marco, Emily Byrd as Jenny, Clay Brocker as Chucky, Katie Groshong as Lola, Jordan Stephens as The Keeper and Scott Aaker as The Creature.
Dummy – Olivia Bishop as Anne, Matt Rosenbaum as Mike, Jon Lundberg as Travis, Leslie Mills as Ms. Hopkins, Cooper Guy as Charlie Hopkins, Deanna Ramsey as Young Anne, Wiliam Harrison as Young Travis, Chase Brown as Young Mike, Luke Phillips as Dummy and Spencer Barnabee as (voice) Charlie.
To Be Loved – Justin Hand as Marvin, Shellie White as Penelope and Jayne Salters as (voice) The VCR.

Jenna and Naomi were looking to kill some time in their hotel room before making a phone call. What’s a better way to kill some time than watching some movies? So, Jenna and Naomi settle in to watch a few movies that were left behind by… the last person to rent the room? They quickly get sucked into the mysterious bag’s tales of horror. Unfortunately, they realize too late, they’re not the only ones looking to do some killing tonight…

Well, another Indie film that was self financed found it’s way out into the world to find an audience. Best part about this one… it’s an anthology!

This one was written and directed by David Buchert (Dummy & The Motel) and Chris St. Croix (The Keeper & To Be Loved). Putting their heads together, Chris and David give us a mixed tale that has a little something for all horror fans. The way all the stories are brought together with the VHS tapes isn’t very original, but the other stories were cool to watch.

Personally, my favorite story out of all of them was The Keeper. It had a good script and tight playthrough. The others were good but I think the way they used the film’s timing hurt them. Dummy could have used more time to drag things out a bit and not feel so rushed, while To Be Loved suffered from too many repetitive scenes that could have been used elsewhere.

The playthrough was cool because it had an oldschool feel to the stories and it held my attention the entire time. It gives you some hack n’ slash, supernatural and dark comedy bits all rolled up into one bloody mess of a horror flick. Each story gives you something different, be it a creature from hell, an axe wielding psycho or a poor guy just looking for love… and willing to doing A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G to find it. Separately the stories do a good job of holding their own, but also fit into the overall story well.

Now, when it comes to an anthology, you get a lot of different people throwing things together for the special effects of the film. Like Anthony Jastrow (FX), Katrina Coe (FX), Burt Fults (VFX), Rick Prince and Chris St. Croix (creature design/construction), Paul Fly (VCR puppet) and Anthony Jatro (body parts). For the most part, a lot of the effects were practical (awesome!), with some CGI. Now, fair warning, a couple of these stories have some gory moments. So if you can’t handle body parts being spread out… you may want to skip this one.

Even though all of the cast did a good job, I thought Justin Hand (To Be Loved) topped it with his role.

As luck would have it, this one was released on Digital Download, VOD and DVD October 6 (2015) and here’s some places you can find it.
iTunes: http://ow.ly/T5eZU
Amazon: http://ow.ly/T5eKE
Playstation: http://ow.ly/T5faX
Vudu: http://ow.ly/T5fkB
XBox: http://ow.ly/T6orB