Southbound

 Southbound is a loopy horror anthology partly shepherded into being by Brad Miska, the patron saint of modern anthology films (and co-founder of Bloody Disgusting). It's a good one, thanks to cryptic storytelling, a great atmosphere, and an incredible sense of place cobbled together from road-bound, southern-fried landmarks: A dusty, unmarked highway, hell, dingy dives, motels, empty towns and hell and hell and hell again.

 There's a sort of framing story, but beyond that each segment trails some detail that's left dangling off the edge of the ending to be picked up by the start of the next one, like an exquisite corpse. Sometimes it's just a location where both stories intersect, one memorable time it's a whole character that becomes a prop for the next tale. Most feature people traveling down lonely roads, and all of them do indeed go south. Or South, if you get my drift, as a radio DJ (Larry Fessenden!) intones platitudes that loosely reflect the situations his listeners are about to go through.
 The other thing all of these stories have in common is that these stories never explain themselves too much, withholding important information and keeping many of their mysteries; It's a risky gamble that pays off richly.

 The Radio silence production team (who have since made the excellent Ready or Not, as well as a couple of latter-day Scream sequels) track the progress of two men (Chad Villella and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin) who are trying to run away from an unspeakable act... and a series of creepy reaper-like figures who look like they've stepped off the cover of a Tales from the Crypt.

 Roxanne Benjamin tells the tale of three young ladies who accept the hospitality of a couple who seem like they come from the sixties, and who may not be on the up-and-up.

 David Bruckner writes and directs the clear stand-out episode in the anthology: a man (Mather Zickel) driving alone at night is left trying to save the life of the person he ran over against increasingly ridiculous odds. It's a slightly surrealistic panic attack of a story that's at once hilarious, bracing, and ridiculously cruel. Worth the price of admission alone.

 Jailbreak is a bit simpler: another man (David Yow) comes into town trying to save his sister, only to discover that there's a bit more to the town and its inhabitants than he expected. Patrick Horvath's the only director here who didn't cut his teeth on the V/H/S series, but his segment has a some fun weirdness and a great feel.

 Finally the Radio Silence team steps up again, this time with a violent home invasion that eventually loops back to the two men from the beginning.

 All the stories are good, creepy, bizarre fun. Bruckner's The Accident is far and away the best of the segments, but they all have something to recommend them, not the least a willingness to go further out into the fantastic than many similarly low budget productions end up getting. The acting is excellent across the board, the effects are cheap but cheerful (and feature some really nasty gore), and the direction is assured across the board. It's also cohesive in a way many of these anthologies (including all V/H/S installments) aren't; I really liked it.