Tell Me a Creepy Story (2023)

 

How can it be that we are about halfway into the month we are and we still haven’t talked about a horror anthology?  It’s a travesty of justice I tells ya!  Let’s fix that error now.  Tell Me a Creepy Story is just that anthology we will be discussing.  This anthology falls into a new category of anthologies that are internet short films that a production company buys the rights to and then jams them all together and presents them as one complete movie.  There is no major difference aside from these new anthologies do not contain the wrap around story that joins them all.  By the way, that’s not a big deal, I know some folks hate that but from experience a bad wrap around story can ruin a good anthology.  A wrap around story serves, at best, to link these short stories that really don’t need to be connected.  But here’s the rub; because these stories don’t have anything in common or no connection whatsoever, more often than not these anthologies have a difficult time in finding a theme.  Creepshow, while being different stories have that connection in that it is being created by the same basic people.   The short stories all look like they belong in the same horror family of shorts.  Here, not so much.

 

 

We have a film from France, one from England, another from Ireland, and one American short.  So, think about a puzzle made of four pieces (there’s four short films in here) that don’t quite fit together perfectly, close to perfect but there’s something that doesn’t mesh.  Either way let’s take a closer look at all four short films.  The first is titled Hungry Joe and it tells the story of a single mother and her child who has an insatiable appetite.  All this kid does is eat!  And not in a neat and orderly way either.  I’m not sure I’ve been more disturbed by someone chewing their food in my life.  Very nasty.  Next story is from France and it is titled Myosotis which is the proper name for a flower called a forget me not.  Myosotis features a man who is a beekeeper and his wife who has a beautiful vegetable garden.  She seems to be a vegetarian, I mean she grows enough of them so it works for her I guess. Her husband is not so much of a vegetarian.  One day the husband just snaps and after a short argument he accidentally kills his wife.  He decides to try and hide the fact and buries her in her own garden. 

 

The third story is a home invasion story that also features ghosts titled Red Water.  Oddly enough Red Water is the American film and for me at least was the one I understood the least.  Go figure!  The final story was called The Good Word about a missionary who goes door to door telling people about God.  Inevitably, as luck would have it, he knocks on the wrong door!  Now for the logistics of the film is like this:  I’ve never heard of any of the directors before, not a bad thing for sure, everybody has to start somewhere.  I haven’t seen any of the stars before either.  OK, that’s not completely true.  It does have Conleith Hill in The Good Word.  Hill played Varys in A Game of Thrones.  Hungry Joe features Robert Portal, who was in The Kings Speech, playing a doctor.  And that’s is for the people who I’ve seen and/or heard of before. 

 

Tell Me a Creepy Story is a little uneven but due to the fact that none of the stories is over twenty five minutes it’s never boring.  Even Red Water is interesting for about ten minutes or so and that’s my least favorite of the four.  The Good Word is a great ending to the anthology and probably my favorite of the group.  Hungry Joe kicks it off well and the French short, which I was worried about because I didn’t want to read subtitles didn’t bother me at all.  There’s no dialogue, so no need to read anything.  All in all I will give this three Jan Svankmajer mutation out of five.  It won’t jump scare you to death but it will creep you out.  Not the scariest I’ve watched recently but certainly not the worst.  Good to have on in the background while you are carving those Halloween pumpkins.