The 100 Candles Game

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.

A classic horror anthology, where people tell each other ghost stories.

The ghost stories themselves are pretty great, the cinematography is excellent & the performances are good, there's even a few surprising twists.

Where it falls down badly is the 100 Candles part itself, 4 people in a candle circle, telling the stories. This part makes no sense, the actors can't act & it's all just horribly wrong.

If you can ignore this part, the anthologies are worth the watch; if I'd made one of the ghost stories, I'd be pretty p*ssed to see what was supposedly holding it all together.

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.

Sitting in a circle surrounded by candles, a group of friends is forced to tell scary stories in front of a mirror in order to escape a witch's curse.

On the whole, this is a serviceable if unremarkable anthology. The initial setup here, involving the friends sitting in the darkened room surrounded by the candles and forced to tell scary stories is highly enjoyable and serves this well as an excuse to launch into this type of film. The atmosphere is effective and there's some tension with the involvement of the mirror calling the rules of the game into play, making for an overall workable format to get going. When it comes to the stories, it's hit-or-miss but generally above average. The first one involving the girl in the woods is pretty solid and has a fun final twist to capitalize on, while the second story has some atmospheric images and ideas undone by the lack of action or context about the setup involving the two living together or weird twist ending which leaves the segment fun but wholly mismatched and out-of-place in this type of film. The middle parts of the film, namely the segments involving the mischievous children tormenting the woman in her house or the mother confronting the demonic entity threatening her children, are where this one shines. Bringing forth some fun, fast-paced efforts with plenty of atmosphere and graphic kills mixed alongside the chilling action, while the period pieces involve a rather enjoyable condensed take on the demonically-possessed to be a great segment. This does have its fair share of misses as well. The buried alive segment is an unoriginal tale with a lame finale undermined by tons of stupidity packed into a brief running time, the lone woman in the apartment has some creepy imagery and it's hard to tell what's going on or why we should care because of that, and the wraparound in the room feels repetitive with the same type of scares we're constantly told mean nothing anyway, making for some pointless segments here.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

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 ...