The 100 Candles Game

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.

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 ...

I'm down with a collection of horror stories - but this one is a wee bit boring. The mini tales were predictable for the most part, as was the ending of the short stories.

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.