Manual de un asesinato

The idea: Let's string the worst, incomprehensible horror shorts together and use a known face to sell the film. Quick, easy money. Verdict: Avoid... you will never get the 92 minutes of your life back. Emilia.... why???

It's a horrible thing when a nice looking work makes no sense at all. Sure this is an anthology, but put some clarity into it directors! This film is chock full of episodes (8 or 9 in total), but almost all of them make no sense. Including the bookend storyline - which may be the biggest let down of all the stories. And those that make some sense, have problems keeping a clarity about it. This is - after some research - a film made up mostly shorts which have previously been shown on Youtube - so their lack of consistancy and coherency is not surprising. If the story synopses sounds too good to be true - they are. Without them, you would never "get" this anthology. This is one "manual" that needs to be re-edited.

I watch these because of her. I cant even understand this movie.

It is quite amusing how persons behind this so-called anthology managed to take two decent short films (Sam N. Powell's "Uzi" starring Anthony Goss and, of course, Nour Wazzi's "Shackled" starring Emilia Clarke) and blend them with six other wretched short films (even Finnish "The Silent" with pleasing cinematography and non-existing plot). There is indeed nothing connecting them on any level without taking into account the fact that they are trying to be spooky.

In fact, this Frankenstein's monster shouldn't exist in the first place. The only reason it does exist is because someone bought the rights for these shorts (did they?) and slatternly stitched them into a feature film that could be sold on VOD. The whole "murder manual" is based on a poor CGI brief cards between the shorts with the instruction list about how to murder your potential victim. Did you know that in order to kill anyone you're supposed to stalk them? Wow! Astonish and bold, am I right? And this list, truth be told, has absolutely nothing to do with actions in the short films.

An interesting fact: "Murder Manual" producers should be prepared for the lawsuit from Emilia Clarke and her representatives for trying to fraudulently capitalize on her fame by using her name and face to promote a movie in which she was largely absent. And she wouldn't even be the first celebrity to do so: Jesse Eisenberg did the exact thing back in 2010 when he found out that the indie horror flick "Camp Hell" he shot three years ago has his face on the whole official DVD cover even though he did a cameo and the film isn't about his character. Eisenberg asked "at least US$3 million". Clarke might even ask more. Was this all worth it? I don't think so.

You will feel like you wasted your time and money if you rent this.