Sinister Visions

Director(s) - Henric Brandt (The Horror Vault 2), Doug Gehl, Andreas Rylander, and Kim Sonderholm (Supernatural Tales)
Starring - Toke Lars Bjarke (Those Who Kill), David C. Hayes (Death By VHS), and Kim Sonderholm (Escaping the Dead)
Release Date - 2013
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Nerve shattering horror stories that will make your bones freeze"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

      Lately I have noticed that the indie movie world has had quite a few anthologies released the last few years and even more than usual have been released this year.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  I love anthologies.  Who doesn't want to watch a movie with several smaller movies wrapped inside?  Anyway, as much as I enjoy anthologies not all of them are worth watching.  Some are just downright terrible and should be avoided while others are so amazing that they have to be watched.  That brings me to Chemical Burn's Sinister Visions.  When Chemical Burn and Reality Entertainment send me films to review they usually send them in 3.  The batch that contained Sinister Visions had two other films that were not that great and left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  However, this film more than made up for it. 
     The film consists of 5 tales.  The first, Succubus, is about an archeologist who unearths an ancient artifact.  However, the artifact breaks open unleashing an ancient evil that possess her.  She now craves sex and whenever she get it she turns into a winged demon that kills those dumb enough to give her the ol' rod. The next tale, My Undead Girlfriend, follows a young man and his fiancee.  His fiancee was bit the day before by a stranger and dies sometime during the night.  However, their love story does not end there.  The young man, with the help of a friend, puts make-up on her to have a dinner with her family that goes horribly wrong.  The third tale, Mother Knows Best, is about a sheltered man in his thirties.  He has lived his whole life doing as his mother said.  This cost him his chance at love and now the young lady is back in his life and his mother disapproves.  Unfortunately, on one of his dates with her he makes a mistake and she leaves.  This sends him over the edge and he kills his mother and abducts her.  The fourth tale, A Woman Scorned, follows a woman who caught her husband cheating and abducts him and the whore for a little vigilante justice.  Finally, the fifth tale, Genital Genocide, follows a serial killer who is about to be executed.  He decides that his life is over and spills the beans about what all he did to those poor young ladies.
     There is several types of anthologies but you can separate them into two different kinds.  There are those that have segments directed by the same director and then there are those that are directed by different directors. Those that have the same director tend to be more consistent and that really goes a long way with the overall film.  However, those that have different directors can be hit and miss.  Sadly, that is what we have here.  The film as a whole was great but some of the segments did drag the film down.  The acting in this one is hit and miss.  Some segments had a very well rounded cast that was great to watch.  The segments Mother Knows Best and A Woman Scorned did not have that great a cast.  The scenes in these two tales are hard to watch.  The stories in this film is fun to watch but they are nothing original.  In fact, Mother Knows Best is taken straight from Alfred Hithcock's Psycho.  The rest of the stories can easily be compared to other films but that will just take too long to do.  Finally, this film is filled to the max with special effects and on screen kills.  Some shorts do have better practical effects than the others but none are what I would call bad effects.  They do their job and make the kills look great.  Overall, this is a solid anthology that has some great scares and amazing monsters.  However, the film does have some low points that does not render the film unwatchable.  I recommend this one.