A S. W. A. T. team on a drugs raid discover the headquarters of a strange video cult whose followers thrive on extreme material. As the squad investigates the building, viewers are treated to several of the found-footage stories being played on the cult's many TV screens.
First off is Storm Drain by writer/director Chloe Okuno, in which Channel 6 newswoman Holly Marciano (Anna Hopkins) and her cameraman Jeff (Christian Potenza) investigate the story of the Ratman, a strange creature, half-man-half-rat, that is reported to live in the sewers (where else?). While not the strongest story to kick off proceedings, Storm Drain does deliver a couple of reasonable scares and some decent suspense, although the final scene is what people will remember most: having been rescued from the sewers, Holly returns to Ch 6 to present her news show, but vomits a corrosive substance onto her co-host, whose face disintegrates into a bloody mess. It's a terrific payoff and sets the tone for the rest of the film. It's going to get messy...
The second story is The Empty Wake, written and directed by Simon Barrett; it sees a young woman, Hayley (Kyal Legend), left alone for the night in a funeral parlour to conduct a wake. While passing the time, waiting for visitors that never arrive, she hears noises from inside the casket, and so phones her colleague Tim for advice: he tells her to stay calm... the man is definitely dead (his head was a mess, hence the closed casket), and it's just gasses in the body making the sounds. Of course, Tim's got it all wrong - when the lights go out during a storm, the casket falls open, and the mangled corpse staggers after Hayley. With half its head missing, a severed hand that crawls by itself, and guts that won't stay put, the 'zombie' provides the gore, but it's the atmosphere that really sells this story: after all, is there anywhere creepier to spend the night than a funeral home?
Tale number three, The Subject, is by Timo Tjahjanto, a director who rarely fails to impress me, and sure enough this is easily my favourite of the bunch. Tjahanto, an expert in the action genre, combines cyberpunk/body horror with plenty of fire-power, following a crack police unit that breaks into the lab of crazy scientist Dr. James Suhendra, who has been abducting people and turning them into cyborgs. The splatter starts as Suhendra operates on a male and female, removing brains and limbs, but kick ups quite a few gears once the police arrive, only to find themselves trapped in the building with the mad doctor's creations. The male subject is programmed to kill, and, equipped with a giant blade, slices up anyone within arm's reach. The female subject just wants to live, so attacks anyone who threatens her, and she just so happens to have a machine gun/grenade attachment!
The final story, Terror, written and directed by Ryan Prows, centres on the activities of a group of armed extremists called the First Patriots Movement Militia, who are plotting to blow up a federal building using the creature they have locked up in a barn, the nature of which remains unexplained until the end of the tale. Sadly, the wait isn't really worth it, this being the weakest of the four stories; it really should have been the first up, so that the film didn't end on such a damp squib. Perhaps if the wraparound story had been stronger, it mightn't have mattered so much, but one can't help but be left feeling a little disappointed as the credits roll.
Still, three out of four main stories are winners, which equates to a rating of 7.5/10, which I'll round up to 8/10 for the bit where the girl-borg's machine gun reduces a man's head to a pulp.
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