Little Deaths

A trilogy of tales in the old anthology mode, the first offering, "House and Home" has an affluent couple bored by mundane lives, and looking for a little fun. The husband brings home a homeless woman for a sex game. The woman provides some entertainment and this segment has a small twist of an ending; very average, overall a 5/10' Story number 2 involves a woman, a hooker and former junkie who is recovering with the help of a boyfriend, her previous pimp, now involved in bizarre medical experimentation's with a doctor using a new drug for detox. It gets a bit sadistic and I would give it a 6/10.

Number 3 is "Bitch" a couple behaving badly, including the boyfriend wearing a dog mask. This one is a complete waste of time and pointless. The last five minutes is wickedly clever but the lead up is tedious and silly. A 3/10.

While most horror anthologies have a central unifying theme, or at least, a concluding wrap-up, the three short episodes in this film are totally unrelated and unconnected. This is the novelty or perhaps the weakness of this film.

The first episode rocks, and Holly Lucas hit me like a tornado in this one. She was too pretty and sophisticated anyhow, to be playing the part of a homeless vagrant. With hardly any lines, she looked so vulnerable initially, when bound and raped.. so stunningly seductive when topless, with her ample, swinging assets, she herself mounted her captor, and so frightening, when she reverted to her true feral form at the end. Its her film all the way.

The second episode is dull, confusing, morbid and OTP. Useless to discuss it.

The third was a wicked tale of revenge by a mild guy on his overly aggressive and perverted girlfriend. Quite novel. LOL. But wholly unrealistic.

I would vote 9/10 for Holly alone, but overall, the other episodes drag down the entire film, and it gets an average 4/10 from me.

I thought and thought for entire seconds just how I might make this sound even vaguely interesting. Then I gave up.

Little Deaths finds three directors taking turns to depress the audience with tales that range all the way from drab and morose to dull and dark.

The first story tells the tale of a well to do couple who dabble in living on the edge, only to find the edge has moved.

It isn't that interesting.

The second story introduces a wonder drug from a frankly gross source with incredible qualities.

It also wasn't interesting, but at least it had one mildly original concept.

The third story was about the very definition of the odd couple.

It was terrible, and the ending was even worse than terrible. It was dumb.

The first story was sorta horror I guess.

The second a Nine Inch Nails film clip concept.

The third was just dumb.

Final Rating – 4.5 / 10. Look there were moments in the 90 minutes where I wish I understood just what the hell was supposed to be entertaining or subversive about all this, in the end I decided I am happier not knowing. To me this is a waste of time. Lap it up emo-kids.

So first off, we are dealing with a VHS type movie. (VHS the Horro franchise). Pretty much, 3 different short movies forced into one. I can tell you, minus the second story, everything else kinda sucked. Even the second story wasn't good, but at least was bizzarely unique in it's own twisted sense.

The acting is a mixed bag some are overacting, some are underacting. The writing. Honestly i think all three of these short films would of been way better off as full lenght films. I feel like having them shortened like this pulls out the magic that these movies could of had. Let me start with first story.

First story. A weird couple torture a homeless chick, Guinea Pig style kind of, and then she turns out to be a zombie, and other homeless people are zombies. That's the whole plot. I can say that the gore is weak but okay, and everything else sucked. None characters have any depth or any reason to be there. It was shock for the sake of being shocking and it was just kinda pointless and dull. I can say the acting was fine. The camera work was fine. The plot needed a lot of work and depth into these characters, why were the homeless "zombies"? Why did the couple decide to torture the homeless chick?? I was about to say it felt like a remake of VHS 1 first story, but then i saw VHS was released in 2012. But still it felt empty.

Second story. The only story i kinda enjoyed. Not because of the plot, just because how weird it is. Pretty much we got a chick with her boyfriend. She gets into pills to stop taking drugs. However, these pills are made out of a human being that has a Nazi huge shaft attached to him-her-it and this connects her to having hallucionations to the creature. I dont want to spoiler more. I can say that the plot makes not a lot of sense but hey it was unique and interesting to say the least. It's bizzare and not something you'd often see in horror movies. The acting was kind of wooden, the camera work was fine. I just wish we had a bit more informations on how exactly the pills stuff began? A bit more depth in that sector but over all this could have it's own movie with more depth and logic put into it.

Third story. This feels like totally out of left field. Both first and second stories have elements of horror in them. This, has none of that. Instead this is a drama about a couple that has a weird relationship. The girlfriend treats her boyfriend like a dog. Literally. And she always is toxic towards him, and she is treating him like he is her toy in a way. This crosses the line of her boyfriend, so he tied her up, and put meat on her naked body, and forced like 5-6 dogs onto her, and she has a huge fear of dogs, what is happening to her is unclear and i am kinda glad i did not had to see that bs. Over all this story is just ridiculous and i hated every second of it. It feels like a completely different idea then the two other tiny films. Also! Camera work in this is terrible. Everything is muffled in a blue weird gradient and it makes the scenes look way uglier.

Ultimately No i can not recommend this. I would just stay and watch the V/H/S films to be honest with you, or Tales of Halloween, both of those films are short films merged together, but they are way more interesting then what we had here. All of this felt like a forced shocker that kinda fails at being shocking at least to me, but then again it takes a lot to get me to that stage.

This is a collection of 3 short films that loosely touch on their subjects of rather twisted stories about sex and death. I guess "Little Deaths" is a good title for the movie considering that the French use these words as a metaphor for orgasm. So the title fits each short in this collection.

It starts off with the shortest of the three movies entitled "House and home" which could fit into any horror anthology. The plot is paper-thin and revolves around a twisted rich and religious couple that lures homeless girls in for their sick pleasure but obviously messed with the wrong girl here. Honestly, this short is not too special... at first the couples dysfunctionality and the hints on their elitist self-conception seemed interesting (with the twist ending it could serve as a kind of class war metaphor) but it just leads nowhere. What still keeps this interesting is the great visuals and the performance of the actress playing the homeless girl. The shots of her on the bed are unmatched throughout the rest of the movie.

Second is a pretty strange short about Nazi Doctor experiments, a drug made from the semen harvested from a poor human lab rat fed with human kidneys and a junkie prostitute trying a rehab on the new drug and regretting it. This one is rather on the gritty side visually, throws in some esoteric elements and hints on the connection of all characters involved and how the drug makes the users see the truth when being touched. Its driven by the rather sick central idea and the images of the human lab rat but ultimately falls apart with a "twist" ending that make no sense at all and ruined the whole thing for me because there's unconnected dots all over the place. The sexual element in this story feels squeezed into the plot for the sake of it, so the whole story feels forced and fake and definitely is the weakest link in this 3-part-chain.

Third off is Simon Rumleys bit entitled "Bitch". This one is a rather bleak drama about sexual perversion, power play and dependency. Dogs play a dominant role in the plot, so the title has some irony to it. The look of this part is also on the gritty side, playing a lot with tints which are overused but work well in some key scenes. Like "Red, white and blue" this is rather a character study culminating in a revenge that ends with no winners at all. Definitely the best of all three with a great and high impact finale that benefits from the perfect choice of music.

Usually these anthology movies fall apart but despite some flaws I can sure recommend it for Rumleys bit as well as for the great cinematography and acting of the first "House and Home" part. So check it out if you are into the twisted stuff where drama meets horror.