When I see a theme for a blog forming in my streaming watchlist, I never anticipate being satisfied by all the selections, so I’m happy to say that horror anthologies Afterimages and Blood Clots were quite fun. Here’s a tastes of the tales you’ll get.
AFTERIMAGES (2014)
This is essentially an English language Asian horror anthology, with every story centered around the now classic Asian ghost girl theme. As a sucker for Ringu/Grudge era horror, I was totally satisfied with this one, because the stories are effective and creepy, and each one has a unique setting and plot. I even liked the look and feel of the visual presentation of the tales.
The wraparound alone is engrossing, as a group of college friends does an Asian occult ritual that involves burning cameras. But doing so results in films being left behind—films they load onto a projector and start watching…
1st story – This is my favorite of the bunch. A dude spying on a pretty girl with his telescope in an apartment complex goes down to the pool when he sees her taking a night swim by herself. Eek! This one is a goody.
2nd story – A young woman becomes obsessed with the spot on the ground where a suicide victim landed when jumping out of her apartment building.
3rd story – This is the most cliché of the stories, I’d say. Reminiscent of Devil, it sees a group of people stuck on an elevator with a girl who is behaving very oddly…
4th story – Combine Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” with the Leslie Nielsen story from Creepshow and blend it with an Asian ghost girl tale, and you have this creepy good story.
5 – The final tale concludes the wraparound, with a fun and cheesy teen horror vibe.
BLOOD CLOTS (2018)
Unlike traditional horror anthologies, Blood Clots doesn’t have a wraparound. It’s simply a series of short films gathered together to create a full-length feature. Actually, the film is only about 70 minutes long, which is okay in my book! As a result, most of these tales get right to the point, with a setup and a zinger twist conclusion. They’re also well-produced, so it doesn’t feel like you’re watching a bunch of indie shorts shot on a camcorder.
1st story – During a zombie outbreak, a woman hides out in the basement of a diner. It has a classic zombie vibe and great atmosphere, and the ending is delicious.
2nd story – This is a brief backwoods cannibal family short that’s fun…but I already saw it on the anthology Minutes Past Midnight!
3rd story – No complaints here. This one has nudity and perversion in the woods…and then a hellish monster attacking.
4th story – This is a fiendish little twist on the classic concept of a boy being afraid of the monster under the stairs in the basement.
5th story – Now this is clever. A guy working as one of those human statues at a carnival has to put his talent of being an inanimate object to the test when there’s a zombie outbreak.
6th story – This is a fun giant jellyfish creature feature on the beach…but it’s another one I’ve seen before, because it was included in the anthology Monsterland.
7th story – This is an odd dark humor story I guess, about a dinner party that includes a family’s squid-headed relative. I kind of wish it hadn’t been the final story, because it doesn’t deliver as much of a punch as some of the others.
