A two and half hour anthology horror film? Come on, no one has such interesting stories that it needs a two and a half hour run time. The question is would you rather have a few excellent horror stories, or a lot of sub-par ones? If you answered the latter, “Tom Holland’s Twisted Tales” is the movie for you. Seemingly comprised of separate episodes of a series called “Twisted Tales,” they’re pasted together to form an awkward, often boring anthology horror film with no budget and no creativity.
Ever wondered how horrifying a haunted GPS would be? What about a haunted Ipad? Want to see what havoc ensues when a bomb maker gets revenge on his cheating girlfriend? Okay, the last one sounds cool, but trust me it’s a pretty lame segment in a long line of them. Many of the hosting segments are awkward to boot, without any such attempt to add consistency. One even shows Tom Holland in front of his car shivering from the cold introducing a tale. Could you at least have waited until he got into his house to film the introduction? That said, the segments garner some pretty great cast members. There’s William Forsythe, Danielle Harris, AJ Bowen, Angela Bettis, and Ray Wise to name a few.
It’s just a shame that the production qualities are never up to par with the star power. One of the goofier segments involves Danielle Harris as a jilted lover who finds herself angry at her ex boyfriend. Enter Forsythe as an enigmatic man in a dark coat and fedora, offering to help her wreak revenge on her ex. I wonder who he could be. Tax collector, perhaps? Taking a blood signature from her, he makes a deal for her soul, but she decides to bargain a different deal which allows her to meet his boss, the king daddy of all evil, blah blah. The final scene ends on a yawn, like pretty much every short. The segment “Shockwave” is just a play on the Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter” where a group of friends confronted with the end of the world, battle to the death for their shelter.
People murder each other, there’s twists and turns aplenty, and the final scene is another snoozer I saw coming a mile away. “The Pizza Guy” ponders the question on what would happen if an average pizza man was possessed by the devil himself (come on, you’ve asked that before), and there’s “Vampire’s Dance.” The only segment with an actual monster in it. About a nightclub filled with vampires. Because that’s an untapped concept we’ve never seen in horror. Truth be told, though I jest, I am a fan of Tom Holland’s and I love the cast that’s thrown in to these abysmal segments. If you’re interested in seeing kind of format conducted perfectly, check out “5 Senses of Fear.” This one just doesn’t cut it. With better writing, a higher budget this could have been quite incredible. On its own it’s just a very rock bottom, tedious, and absolutely terrible series of shorts tacked on to one another to offer fans an overlong anthology horror film.