The 100 Candles Game

Wow, even for a horror anthology "The 100 Candles Game" was dubious.

But I am getting ahead of myself here. First of all, as I sat down to watch the 2020 movie "The 100 Candles Game" I didn't know it was an anthology. Sure, I hadn't read the movie's synopsis, so I didn't know what I was in for here, aside from it being a horror movie of sorts that I hadn't already seen. And it being in the horror genre, of course caught my interest. And it was the movie's cover that caught my interest to begin with. Who knew that the cover turned out to be the best part about the movie experience?

Now, what doesn't work in "The 100 Candles Game" is the total lack of a coherent red thread throughout the course of the stories. Everything seems random, chaotic and just tossed into the fray to take up space and time. And it didn't help much that most of the story segments were questionable, boring or just laughable. And without a proper narrative or red thread to tie the individual segments together, this just turned annoying real quick.

The narratives in a fair amount of the segments were just not properly constructed, which made it feel like it was just a rushed project, and that the individual directors weren't collaborating on a unified anthology. Whereas one segment might actually be interesting and good, you would delve right off of the deep end and into something cringeworthy in the next segment.

The quality of the segments were just too varied to be enjoyable, and with the majority of the segments being either boring or pointless, it was weighing down the overall feel to the anthology.

It should be said, though, that some of the segments actually had fair and interesting special effects, which to some extend made it bearable to sit through those segments. But of course special effects can only do so much in the larger picture.

As for the acting performances in "The 100 Candles Game", well they were as varied as the qualities of the segments. Some performances were good and structured, while others were clumsy and staggering.

If you enjoy the horror genre and have an interest in horror anthologies, trust me when I say that there are far better anthologies out there. "The 100 Candles Game" is not really worth the time, money or effort.

My rating of "The 100 Candles Game" lands on a generous two out of ten stars. This was boxed bored wrapped up and presented as a horror anthology.

The whole anthology is fine, many of the short stories are great but the red string that ties them together is weak and ridiculously bad, from the effects to the acting cast. Thumbs up for the cat, the best actor of them.

I thought the film was very weak. The plot is unconvincing. Those stories they tell just aren't scary. By the third story about the child who can't leave home, I was already disappointed. The following story of the woman in an oxygen mask is just boring. And the ending is so abrupt that I literally gasped - not from horror but from exasperation.

No pun intended - and quite a few interesting actors in this. Been a while since I last saw Amy Smart. Was it the Crank movie(s)? Probably - anyway, she is one of the segments and the stories themselves are overall quite well told (again no pun intended of course).

That all being said, the movie is quite predictable. The jump scares to be expected. Still the effects are good or rather decent enough. If you like horror movies and specifically this format of more than one story being told ... well you have a winner for yourself here. At least not a loser, am I right? Now you may wonder why people even play those games - but think about it: in real life you might play them too, because you expect nothing to happen ... also we need these decisions, otherwise you wouldn't have a movie at all ...

That's what this is. What dissapoints me, is that one of the stories, 'The Visitant (2014)', was also a short movie among others in 'Patient Seven (2016)'. If you make a movie like this, at least put original, newly made, shorts in your movie. Don't use existing ones. That's so cheap. Watch this for the shorts. The rest is just luggage.