Scare Us

 A group of aspiring writers meet up periodically in a small bookstore to share themed stories they've written. The theme for tonight? 'Scare Us', which is pretty apropos, given that there's a serial killer doing the rounds in their hometown.
 After a... very indie horror snippet of the serial killer serial killing some extras at a local cinema, we get to meet the authors of the night's entertainments as they arrive at the bookstore and start talking and snipping at each other.

 Yes, it's yet another low-budget horror anthology film. The premise this time around is a bit on the nose, but it allows for a few cute conceits: We get to meet all the authors and watch them interact, their actors star in their segments, and the idea is that their concerns and personality inform their stories (this is not exactly successful, with the characters unconvincingly stating the way their circumstances are mirrored in the stories).

 I'll introduce them and their stories at the same time:

 Naomi (Michelle Palermo) is a stuffy and standoffish - her story, 'Night Haul', is about a woman who gets trapped in a storage locker facility with a monster. This one is very straightforward - it's got a good, creepy vibe, but what little action there is is very sloppy, it struggles a bit to fill out its runtime, and the monster isn't great.

 Next comes young Daniel (Ethan Drew), who tells 'Untethered' - a very lightly fictionalized tale about a teenager whose home life turns into a nightmare thanks to a bizarre spate of murder/suicides erupting in his town. This one is by far the best out of the bunch, an unnerving, surrealist, nasty bit of weird horror that does wonders with its tiny, tiny budget.

 As if that wasn't enough, this one also has my favorite detail in the whole movie: there's quite a bit of TV news report narration going on in the background, and it's clunky, portentous and riddled with grammar errors - and it feels very much like how a teenager would write it. Best thing is that the film never calls attention to it. You could say it's not intentional, but given the quality of this short and the generally solid writing elsewhere, I don't think that's the case.

 Following that up isn't easy, but Diego (Michael C Alvarez) does a pretty good job; He's one of those self-consciously cool and laid back dudes, and has got some past history with Naomi about which they snipe at each other incessantly. His story is about a drifter who runs into some bizarre beings at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. There's no plot, not really, just a situation that doesn't really go anywhere interesting, but it's well shot and the monsters, which are wisely kept shown only from afar, and even then from the back, are suitably bizarre. It kind of feels like a Tales From the Darkside episode cut down to ten minutes.

 Next is Claire (Charlotte Lilt), a perky busybody, whose story 'The Resting' is a solid but pretty uninspired tale of an unwanted legacy that honestly I've seen way too many slight variations of by now.

 Last - and absolutely least - comes Peter (Tom Sandoval), the host and owner of the bookstore, polite and deferential... but his main character trait is that he wears a fucking bowtie. His tale is a piss poor slasher exercise with no surprises, poor execution and absolutely dreadful writing. Way to send out the film out on a bum note.

 Scare us is very much not perfect, and it shows some very common microbudget, regional indie movie issues: The acting is just passable - very stilted and somewhat exaggerated, some of the writing isn't all that great, and the action is unambitious by necessity. But there's obviously a lot of effort from everyone involved and its heart does seem to be in the right place... which makes me feel like a dick for criticizing it.

 The cinematography (Aiden Chapparone, Rich Robles and Jacen Sieversby) is a strong point; The film looks good, very professional, and there's a clear attempt to differentiate the segments visually. Each short even gets a short title card with fonts that try to evoke the subgenre they're going for, and at least a couple of them made me chuckle. The music, by Room Full of Hammers, is pretty good, too. The film seems to have been put together by Carl Jensen IV, and he co-directs one of the segments. Also directing are Ryan Kjolberg (who does Untethered), Charlotte Lilt, Tom J. McCoy and Jordan Pillar.

 Ultimately, too many of its shorts feel a little too perfunctory, or just fail outright. It's got a few redeeming qualities, though, at least until the final story, and I kind of loved Untethered. Personally, I think that makes it much more worthwhile than whatever ten-episode bit of #content Amazon or Netflix are trying to ram down my throat; Your mileage -as always- will vary.