Nightmare Cinema

MOVIE #1,892 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.15.24 Chronologically, this is the most recent Dante effort to date in any medium. At almost two hours long, I’m pretty sure this is also the longest piece of media I'll be watching for this series (not counting the full 19-episode run of Eerie, Indiana, I’ll be subjecting myself to for some reason). Tonally, this anthology is all over the map. The first segment can only be described as “sci-fi torture porn comedy,” which is a first for me. It was directed by Argentinian-Cuban director Alejandro Brugués, best known fo Juan of the Dead, “which has been credited as Cuba's first zombie movie.” OK, sure. There’s a lot going on in this one but it was fairly successful in the end with a good blend of practical gore and corny/lovable CGI.

Dante directed the second movie here and, despite featuring Richard Chamberlain (very randomly, I might add), it is easily one of the worst and cheapest looking parts of the anthology (the closing contribution from Mick Garris, director of Critters 2: The Main Course — which I'll be reviewing in October! — is in the running as well). It made me a little sad that this was all he had to offer, honestly.

The wrap-around story — characters from the shorts wander into an empty, old-school theater and begin seeing themselves on-screen — is more or less an afterthought, with Mickey Rourke popping up as “The Projectionist” at the 45-minute mark. It’s a nonsensical, meaningless gimmick. Rourke welcomes a priest into his “nightmare cinema” and the third short begins. We see a nun attempt to save a rabid schoolboy on a green screen church roof but WHOOPS…


This third segment was directed by Japanese filmmaker Ryuhei Kitamura (Godzilla: Final Wars, and many other movies I haven’t seen yet) and it is completely batshit insane. Look at this priest doing battle with a broadsword against a horde of possessed demon children…


This transitions into another shockingly good short film, a stripped-down psychological horror in black and white by David Slade (Hard Candy, one of the Twilight sequels, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, etc.). Starring Elizabeth Reaser, this was probably the best of the bunch overall. Then we come to the aforementioned Garris entry, which is a snooze. We cut back to Mickey Rourke one final time…


It seemed like Rourke was set to have a resurgence after The Wrestler but almost the complete opposite transpired. I’m kind of fascinated by his career over the last decade or so. Anyway, I came to this because of Dante and, although his segment didn’t deliver, there’s a couple genuinely good shorts in here that make it worth checking out.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,891 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,893 ⫸

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Nightmare Cinema is a 2018 American horror anthology film featuring work by directors Alejandro Brugués, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Ryūhei Kitamura, and David Slade. It was released on July 13, 2018.