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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Review: Tales From the Dead

Tales From the Dead (2007)
Genre: Horror
Format: Netflix Stream
Director: Jason Cuadrado

So what do I do when I am home alone in the evening and it is windy and raining outside? I watch a horror movie of course. To be honest, it has been a while since I have done just that actually. The last time I did so was probably about 10 years ago because these days, I couldn't stand watching horror movies alone, thanks to all those horrific horror video games that were able to completely made me very sensitive to fear-induced stimuli: I am looking at you Fatal Frame series! Thankfully, Tales from the Dead only contains only a couple of creepy moments so I think I am going to be able to sleep well tonight.

The movie is a Japanese horror anthology. You are introduced to an angry wife who later found herself hitch-hiking in the middle of nowhere until she got picked up by another woman. The driver just happened to be a spirit medium who claimed to have spoken with the dead on many occasions and after successfully convincing her passenger to allow her to share that rather morbid experience. we are presented with four distinct horror tales. The first is a story of a haunting in a house with a history of a double murder. The second, which is pretty boring, follows a police investigator who is working on the scene of a murder. The third is a very unique time travel story about a man who has given up on life. The final story is about a despicable little club with a really sinister membership qualification. As I mentioned earlier, none of these are really scary but they are well-written and contain some pretty cool twists at the end of the each tale... Well except for the second story that should just have been omitted out.

Perhaps more interesting than the actual movie itself is its production. This movie, with its full Japanese cast, was actually shot in its entirety in Los Angeles. I couldn't really tell while watching the movie to be honest but the end credit really made me curious because there were a lot of Western names involved in the project. Supposedly the writer/director Jason Cuadrado doesn't even speak any Japanese but he took all the writing credits for the film. Weird. Still, Tales from the Dead ends up being rather entertaining and it does feel very Japanese thanks to the cast and the focus on atmosphere and storytelling.

RATING: 3 out of 5

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