Some say this movie is a series of uninteresting, unoriginal stories. I say, some people are wrong. The movie neither contains a series of never-ending scares, nor pours on buckets of blood. What it does offer is a succession of stand-alone tales that each start out simple and slow and build to a slam-bang climax. The payoffs are worth the waits. The stories are kind of like those on the old Alfred Hitchcock Show or the Twilight Zone, or any of their modern day relatives (Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, etc.): the thrill and suspense comes from knowing that something very bad is going to happen very soon. Half the fun is in the waiting. As for unoriginal: check your dates. This movie was released before Urban Legends, so it beat them to the punch, namely the lovers in the car with a psycho on the loose segment and the people can lick segment (Urban Legends did a variation when the roommate was being raped/killed and the friend was none the wiser until she saw writing on the wall the next morning). It was also released prior to The Sixth Sense and The Others, so the ghost twist ending was not a rip-off, either.
I passed over this movie when it came out because, admittedly, I tend to be leery of horror movies with no-name casts. I came across it recently at a video store, and was pleasantly surprised when I read through the cast list again. A lot of the actors who were no-name's then are somebody's now (Amy Smart, who had done Cry Baby prior, wasn't enough to do it for me, and I wasn't into Roseanne during it's original run, so the name Glenn Quinn meant nothing to me; thanks to Nick-at-Nite, I instantly recognized his name this time round). To those seeing this movie for the first time now, it probably would seem like a rip-off of the movies listed above. Just remember: it came first.
I passed over this movie when it came out because, admittedly, I tend to be leery of horror movies with no-name casts. I came across it recently at a video store, and was pleasantly surprised when I read through the cast list again. A lot of the actors who were no-name's then are somebody's now (Amy Smart, who had done Cry Baby prior, wasn't enough to do it for me, and I wasn't into Roseanne during it's original run, so the name Glenn Quinn meant nothing to me; thanks to Nick-at-Nite, I instantly recognized his name this time round). To those seeing this movie for the first time now, it probably would seem like a rip-off of the movies listed above. Just remember: it came first.