Review of Tales of Halloween (2015) by Thequietgamer — 01 Nov 2017

A horror anthology of 10 short films, all of which are connected by the fact that they are taking place on the same night in the same town. A few near the end of the collection were nice enough to include some scenes with characters or moments from the previous ones to really show off how they are all set in the same place. It's remarkable how tonally consistent the overall package is. Even when playing around with different concepts, each short contains the same tongue-in-cheek style. Tales of Halloween is all about having fun with the holiday, and not so much on scaring your brains out. Still, it has one or two effective scary moments.

Most of the stories here are pretty predictable in terms of how they'll play out. A character will be told a folklore story about some ghost, and of course that spirit will show up to haunt them. The fact that each still manages to be interesting despite this just goes to show the credibility of the talent of the director's that were selected to participate in this. There are still plenty of surprises along the way. Quite a few of these stories take the familiar and twist them in exciting ways to make them feel fresh and fun again. All it took was a willingness to poke fun at these longstanding horror staples.

Not everything is quite so perfect though. A few of the films feel a bit underdeveloped. They're still perfectly capable of giving viewers a few quick thrills, but ones like "The Weak and the Wicked" end just as they start to get interesting. Yet, with high-production values, humor, inventiveness, and a lot of blood make it easy to overlook a few minor issues. It's focus is definitely more on delivering thrills over chills. If you can find yourself willing to put up with that, then Tales of Halloween should prove to be one enticing package and possibly an annual October rewatch.