Dark Whispers: Volume 1

Not sure what's going on with the extreme negativity here (well actually it's pretty obvious if you read between the lines, or some cases, just read the lines themselves). This is a decent bunch of indie shorts with a good wraparound story that works as well as it has to in holding the segments together.

From the get-go it's clear this is not something like Creepshow, which was made with one holistic vision, or even like the VHS anthologies, which were intended to run together. Most of the segments in this anthology seem to have been made at different times, with different aims, and as such they generally all have a different voice, a different style. So it's less an anthology and more like a presentation of short films that can loosely be lumped together as dark fiction with a twist.

As that, it's very successful at showcasing these disparate film makers, who all show promise in one way or another. They're all names to keep an eye on, for sure.

If you expect this to be polished Hollywood stuff you're looking in the wrong place. This is pretty raw, but it's full of honest, authentic, creatively told stories. Nothing more, nothing less.

Personal highlights: the twists of The Man who Caught a Mermaid, the atmosphere of Storytime, the concepts of Grillz, the tone of Little Sharehouse of Horrors, and the overall vision and uniqueness of White Song.

People need to stop calling things "bad" just because it's not what they want it to be.

Another film from Monsterfest. I don't usually like short films but this one was definitely worth it. High production value which I didn't expect. All made by women apparently. The future looks bright.

This is a collection of stories that instead of showcasing what female directors are capable of in the genre of horror merely showcases the pretentiousness of those female directors that took part in this snore-fest of below mediocre, beige, bland and ultimately meaningless collection of occurences (Calling them stories would be giving them too much credit).

Each occurence is written, directed and acted with all the skill and understanding of adolescent poetry, the sort of poetry that at the age of 13 you thought was so deep and meaningful, the sort of codswallop that as you reach adulthood you realise it was just a load of meaningless shallow twaddle and merely a source of embarrasment that you could ever have been that naive.

It absolutely astounds me that anybody could categorise this as "Horror", even in these days of safe spaces and snowflakes and generally weak and pathetic people it is hard to believe that anybody could find any of these segments the least bit scary let alone deserving of the label horror.

Best that the directors stick to directing rom-coms and leave horror to those that know what horror should be.

When I sat down in 2021 to watch the "Dark Whispers: Volume 1", I had never even heard about the anthology. I liked the cover and found it interesting, thinking that there might be something enjoyable to this movie.

But it was a swing and a miss. "Dark Whispers: Volume 1" is listed as horror / thriller / drama. But there are a scary lack of horror and thriller throughout the course of this anthology. In fact, the anthology segments were of very varied worth, most of which were dubious at best. And yeah, that made for a very abysmal anthology.

There was nothing worthwhile to sit through in "Dark Whispers: Volume 1", so you might want to do yourself a favor and skip on this 2019 anthology, especially if you enjoy properly entertaining anthologies. And if you enjoy horror, like I do, then you most certainly want to skip on "Dark Whispers: Volume 1", because it was quite far away from being horror material actually.

And while each of the segments were worlds apart, there weren't really any red thread throughout the anthology, aside from the narrative story segment that bound the individual stories together. Would have been more interesting if there was a common element to the segments.

"Dark Whispers: Volume 1" was a massive swing and a miss. And it is definitely not something I would recommend you wasting your time, money or effort on. Some of us did, so you don't have to.

My rating of "Dark Whispers: Volume 1" settles on a mere three out of ten stars - and that is being rather generous, believe me. It is the production value of the anthology that ensured a rating of three stars from me.

It's better than Danzig's horror anthology, that's for sure. Would recommend if you're into this sort of thing as about half are good. One was particularly clever.