ALL HALLOWS EVE: INFERNO (2024)

New streaming on Screambox and Tubi!
Directed by Evan Tramel, Kays Al-Atrakchi, Patrick Kennelly, Sumire Takamatsu, Jorge Lucas, Chrisianne Cruz, John Ferrer.
Written by Evan Tramel, Effie Lavore, Kays Al-Atrakchi, Bethany Orr, Sumire Takamatsu, Jorge Lucas, Chrisianne Cruz, John Ferrer, Harry Metcalfe.
Check out the trailer here!!

The ALL HALLOWS EVE anthology series has the esteemed honor of birthing horror sensation Art the Clown, telling stories featuring the iconic monster in its first and second movies. A fourth collection of stories has been released which gives other filmmakers a chance to show their storytelling skills and possibly sow the seeds of their own franchises. While that doesn’t seem to be the main intention of this anthology, I was on the lookout for the spark within the stories featured that may be able to bloom into a full sized, feature film.

The wraparound offers up a story of a woman who gets into a car accident and ends up in a “JACOB LADDER-style” hospital where the further she goes down the long halls, the darker and more sinister it becomes. The bulk of the wraparound is animated or CG generated or maybe AI. Not sure, but this segment felt off in that uncanny way most of the time, instilling a feeling of uncanny-ness in the way the figures move and look. While I feel these segments were way too dark to see what was going on at times, the sequences that tied these stories together were, in fact, filled with all sorts of creative monsters and unnerving bits of medical body torture, making it all feel pretty creepy. This segment is by Effie Lavore and Evan Tramel.

“In Lucidity” from filmmaker Kays Al-Atrakchi starts out in a car which felt a bit off since the wraparound began in the same way. Turns out, this segment is about night terrors and a process a pair of scientists have developed that heightens lucidity in dreams, so one can control them. It’s a fun concept to play with, though I feel the CG used really wasn’t up to par to bring these terrors to life. Nevertheless, this one is actually decently acted and plays with fun, nightmare ideas.

A deaf woman kidnaps someone who she believes to be her abusive father and contacts an online translator to translate to her captive a message as to why she is doing all of this in “Hammurrabi” by Bethany Orro and Patrick Kennelly. This segment just feels too convoluted and crowded. It’s about child abuse. It’s about giving voice to the deaf. It’s about revenge. It’s about providing a tool to help the deaf communicating to the hearing. It just feels like this short was trying to work with too many concepts in too little time. In the end, after you get all of the concepts and lessons this one is trying to teach you, the story is over with very little violence and gore. I don’t mind a story with a message, but narrow that message down and this one tries to address them all and it feels like reading a laundry list of grievances more than an entertaining story.

A Japanese modern family encounters an ancient ghosts in “Bakemono” by Sumire Takamatsu and Jorge Lucas. The story is about modern values versus traditional ones as a little girl scoffs at her mother’s warnings to eat her food and take part in a Japanese traditions to ward away evil spirits, with drastic results. There are some fun practical effects and a few nice scenes of mood and tension to enjoy in this segment.

If you’re a fan of the TV show THE BEAR or those Gordon Ramsay cooking shows, I’m sure you’ll…eat up…get it?…eat up…this short about a line cook with an eye for the supernatural is tormented by her overbearing chef at a fancy restaurant. Though she is trying to do the best she can, hungry ghosts linger in the periphery in the highly negative atmosphere going on in the kitchen. Having worked in the restaurant industry, I steer clear of dramas and reality shows centering on this subject as it just hits too close to home. This segment is good at recreating the atmosphere of your typical frantic kitchen, with your typical egotistical chef, on a particularly hectic night. I think more could have been done with the horror, but the setup feels genuine.

“Trial 22” by John Ferror and Harry Metcalfe opens mid-story as a group of contestants are on the 22nd level of some kind of game of life and death. The scene revolves mainly around a dark room set to a timer where a monster rests in the middle with the key to the door to the next level around its throat. It’s a simple goal driven story, and the monster, who seems to be called Belial, is a fun design. While this one went by too quickly, it was reliant on a lot of action and very little filler. It was also quite brutal and bloody as Belial shreds its way through the contestants. This was funs stuff and a gory way to end the film.

I think the main fault of ALL HALLOWS EVE INFERNO is that there is an overlap of ideas on more than one occasion. Both Bakemono and Aftertaste deal with Asian ghosts involving food. Two segments begin with people driving down a lonely road. Things like that really shouldn’t happen in an anthology that’s purpose is to show a wide variety of strange ideas, and scary concepts. I didn’t have a bad time with this installment in the ongoing ALL HALLOWS EVE series, but I do feel they could have tried a bit harder to make them all distinct from one another.