THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL (2018)

Studio:       Legion M
Director:    Ashim Ahluwalia, Can Evrenol, Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, Katrin Gebbe, Calvin Lee Reeder, Agnieszka Smoczynska, Peter Strickland, Yannis Veslemes
Writer:       Robert Bolesto, Elif Domanic, Silvia Wolkan
Producer:  Ant Timpson, Tim League
Stars:     Various

Review Score:

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Summary:

Eight horror stories from around the world explore frightening international folktales.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

THE SINFUL WOMAN OF HOLLFALL (Austria – Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala) – While washing clothes in a stream with her mother and other village women, Kathi spies Valerie intentionally soiling her pants with blood to hide the fact that she is pregnant. Afterward, Valerie calls Kathi over and the two young women sneak into the woods together.

Kathi’s mother catches Kathi kissing Valerie. Kathi’s mother warns that sin will summon the demonic Trud as she forces Kathi to repent with prayer.

On another day, Kathi has sex with Valerie by the stream. Kathi returns home to her farm to find her family’s goat inexplicably died. Kathi immediately begins praying and scrubbing herself.

Kathi suffers sleep paralysis when she feels something heavy crushing her. Kathi’s mother advises her to pray. Kathi dreams of the Trud swallowing her.

Kathi arms herself with a knife and masturbates to summon the Trud. Kathi slashes at the creature when it appears. The next day, Kathi’s mother is seen at the stream with knife wounds on her face.

While naked, Kathi throws pebbles at Valerie’s window. Kathi skips away into the woods beckoning Valerie to follow.

HAUNTED BY AL KARISI, THE CHILDBIRTH DJINN (Turkey – Can Evrenol) – A pregnant woman begins wearing a goat charm stolen from the invalid grandmother she cares for. While the young woman gives birth later, her grandmother as well as the family’s goat outside are heard shrieking.

The young woman begins praying when her grandmother’s eyes suddenly turn into those of a goat. The woman later dreams of her grandmother becoming a goat monster that stabs her child in the eye with the goat charm she stole.

When she wakes, the woman throws away the charm and slaughters the goat. She then dumps the dead goat down a well.

The woman finds the charm inexplicably returned to the house. While the woman is momentarily locked in the bathroom, the goat monster takes her baby.

The woman finally breaks free and follows her baby’s cries to the well. The woman becomes trapped when she falls into the well, yet she finds no sign of her child. The woman looks up to see a vision of herself cradling the baby. The grandmother-goat monster then seals the well’s lid.

THE KINDLER AND THE VIRGIN (Poland – Agnieszka Smoczynska) – A kindler meets a mysterious woman who promises he can have great power and wisdom if he consumes three hearts from the recently deceased. The kindler digs up graves and eats the heart of a man as well as the heart of a newborn child.

The kindler is arrested for desecrating corpses. At the graveyard, it is revealed that the kindler’s third victim was the woman who appeared to him. She is seen nude and bleeding from having her torso skinned, although her heart remains intact. The kindler tries explaining that he was using her skin to make a drum for the emperor so that he would be unconquered.

War rages outside the prison where the kindler is jailed. The kindler furiously writes a letter.

BEWARE THE MELONHEADS (America – Calvin Reeder) – Chris and Macie take their young son Arnold to a remote house in the woods for a holiday. When his ball becomes lost in the trees, Arnold meets a strange boy named William, whose face Arnold cannot see.

Arnold briefly goes missing while walking with Chris and Macie later. Chris and Macie encounter a bearded hiker before recovering Arnold, who only wandered off to pee.

Arnold tells his parents about William at dinner. However, they become convinced that William is imaginary.

That night, William sneaks into Arnold’s room. The following morning, Chris and Macie find Arnold missing. Chris goes to search outside while Macie runs to the kitchen to call police. Macie stops dead in her tracks when she encounters a small person whom the audience does not see.

Chris becomes caught in an animal trap. A group of young children with grotesquely oversized heads captures Chris. A diminutive doctor then shows Chris that he turned Arnold into a melonhead too. When Chris asks what happened, the doctor responds, “we crawled inside his head daddy.”

William cuts a piece of flesh from Chris and feeds it to Arnold. Chris is then killed.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PANAGAS THE PAGAN? (Greece – Yannis Veslemes) – Having left ‘The Land Below,’ a kalikantzaros goblin infiltrates a Greek city during holiday festivities in 1984. Panagas and his fellow drunken revelers discover the goblin in their midst and capture it.

After being bitten by the goblin, Peristeri fetches the priest Zolotas to perform a pagan ceremony over the hole leading to The Land Below. Panagas and the other revelers tear at the goblin and drink his blood like wine during the ritual.

Once the hole finally opens, Panagas disappears. Panagas is seen entranced by the fabled blue flame in The Land Below.

THE PALACE OF HORRORS (India – Ashim Ahluwalia) – Jim recounts how he was an assistant to A.B. Gentry, a procurer of exotic finds for P.T. Barnum and the Ringling Brothers, in the summer of 1913. Jim narrates how he and Gentry journeyed with Indian guides to the palace of a mad king rumored to have harbored unique creatures and curiosities.

An unusual woman forbids Gentry from opening a sealed hatch in the palace’s cellar floor. The woman claims a living deity dwells in a subterranean chamber and warns that it cannot be seen directly without driving a human mind mad. However, Gentry is permitted to purchase the other freaks and oddities on hand.

That night, Jim heeds the woman’s warning by refusing Gentry’s order to break into the hatch and kidnap the supposed god. Gentry breaks into the chamber himself. Jim goes looking for Gentry and discovers that Gentry tore out his own eyes. Jim faints from fright to later wake inside a Calcutta hospital.

A NOCTURNAL BREATH (Germany – Katrin Gebbe) – In the Bavarian Mountains in 1780, huntsman Xaver witnesses his troubled sister Anni succumbing to convulsions as a mouse-like creature known as a drude exits her throat. Anni seemingly dies until the drude reenters her mouth, at which point Anni returns to life.

Anni tells Xaver she dreamt of their cow Minka. Xaver slaughters the cow and burns it when he discovers it was bit by the drude. Anni warns Xaver he will not survive on the mountain as only so much of the “good Anni” remains in her body.

Anni dies again when the drude leaves her to infect Xaver’s dog Wachter. Xaver is forced to slit his dog’s throat. The drude returns inside Anni, who reanimates again.

Xaver considers shooting his sister, but is unable to pull the trigger. Instead, when the drude begins to exit Anni’s body once more, Xaver puts his mouth to his sister’s, allowing the drude to possess his body instead. Anni takes the gun and shoots Xaver to destroy the drude.

COBBLERS’ LOT (Hungary – Peter Strickland) – Nondescript shoemaker Tivadar and his jealous brother Botond vie for the love of Princess Boglarka. When Tivadar expresses his love for the king’s daughter, the king tasks Tivadar with proving his devotion by resisting the temptations of a fabled pool to retrieve a magic loosestrife flower.

The princess secretly sends a raven to observe Tivadar’s actions. Botond also secretly follows his brother. Tivadar retrieves the flower, but ends up in an orgy with several nude maidens at the pool.

While Tivadar is still at the pool, Botond attempts to woo the princess back at the castle. When the princess expresses her love for Tivadar, Botond tells her that his brother died in the forest. The princess suddenly slits her throat in despair.

Following Boglarka’s unexpected death, Botond pays his respects at her coffin. Boglarka suddenly resurrects and kills Botond, explaining that her raven told her truth about Tivadar’s fate.

Tivadar throws away the loosestrife flower upon hearing of the princess’ death. Tivadar pays his respects at her coffin, where Boglarka reanimates once more. Telling him that her raven reported he did not remain faithful, Boglarka kills Tivadar.

A new shoemaker makes slippers for the king from the flesh of the two brothers.

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Review:

Regardless of whether or not the eight segments in “The Field Guide to Evil” click with you, and they certainly won’t with everyone, the motivation behind the movie’s making involves a fascinating filmmaking concept.  Produced as a spiritual successor to the “ABCs of Death” anthologies, “The Field Guide to Evil” taps nine directors generally known for avant-garde indie fare to create short films based on fear-filled slices of folklore specific to their home countries.

What’s additionally intriguing is that these are lesser-known legends that many people, including residents of those regions, are unlikely to be familiar with.  Romanian bloodsuckers, Japanese ghosts, and Scandinavian sasquatches sit this one out as we’re instead treated to unlikely tales involving an Austrian ‘Trud,’ a German ‘drude,’ and a childbirth djinn from Turkey.

If you have any familiarity with this filmmaking collective’s catalogue, which includes “Baskin” (review score), “Berberian Sound Studio” (review score), “Goodnight Mommy” (review here), and “The Lure” (review here) to name a few, then you have a starting reference point for the type of style in store.  This eclectic, eccentric assembly of international creators regularly crafts content better suited for an arthouse than a grindhouse.  This in turn means an audience has to be steeled for outside the box approaches, as “Field Guide” drapes itself in allegorical dreamscapes as opposed to easily digestible fright film fare.

“The Sinful Woman of Hollfall” as well as “The Kindler and the Virgin,” respectively the first and third segments, exemplify the anthology’s overall aesthetic. Both are beautifully shot pieces, a consistent trait throughout the octet’s entirety, almost scarily skilled at time travel transportation to countries and centuries seldom depicted in cinema.  At a minimum, “The Field Guide to Evil” provides a terrific tour of times and places few other films visit.

Both are also burdened by their own ambiguity.  “Field Guide” features a number of ‘Choose Your Own Conclusion’ narratives, with some thematic meanings more frustratingly opaque than others. As visually engrossing as it is, “The Kindler and the Virgin” in particular runs off the rails in expressing its intent.  It’s one thing to ask a viewer to divine an isolated element in a film.  It’s another when every inch of material remains open to interpretation.

Can Evrenol takes a straighter stab at the jugular with his shocker “Haunted by Al Karisi.” It’s a weird choice for following “The Sinful Woman of Hollfall” however, as their distinct lack of dialogue, prominent use of goats, and important incorporation of nightmares make them echo each other despite differences in their stories.

“Beware the Melonheads,” one of only two segments in English should subtitles be a factor for you, incorporates the same weirdo sensibilities that American director Calvin Reeder put on the table in “The Rambler” (review here).  “Melonheads” is by far the campiest short in the movie, apparently intentionally, although its askew silliness combined with a contemporary setting makes it the black sheep of the bunch.  Awful acting reddens an already sore thumb, yet its mid-movie placement offers an ideal opportunity for a bathroom break.

“Whatever Happened to Panagas the Pagan?” finds a more appealing way to be fun without sacrificing atmospheric eeriness.  Taking place in 1984 Greece, the film feels dated even further back.  An appropriately odd goblin supplies smirks while a macabre mauling of said creature supplies occult overtones. “Panagas” has another odd ending, but the crazily crooked path taken there makes the journey worthwhile.

Ashim Ahluwalia’s black and white “The Palace of Horrors” adds a little lick of Lovecraft. Set in 1913 India, the Ringling Brothers’ procurer of sideshow oddities takes a trip to a mad king’s palace to peek at an entity man was not meant to see.  As with “Panagas,” the final reveal underwhelms in execution, yet the bizarre buildup couldn’t be more effectively unsettling.

Out of Germany, “A Nocturnal Breath” plays a lot like “The Sinful Woman of Hollfall” in terms of tone as well as fiction.  At this point in the anthology, “The Field Guide to Evil” really feels the drag of its two-hour runtime.  That dreamy quality alluded to earlier takes a bigger and bigger toll since, even with monsters and murders, the movie plays a patience game with slow to burn smolder.

Luckily, “Field Guide” saves perhaps the best, or at least the most purely enjoyable, segment for last.  “Cobblers’ Lot” uncannily captures an authentic fractured fable feel with its silent film frame. Telling a fairy tale of two shoemaker brothers vying for the love of a princess, Peter Strickland’s Hungarian-set short ends the movie on a note light in spry spirit, but also dark in its deliciously demented moral.

As expected when dealing with an anthology from a diverse slate of men and women working separately, blood doesn’t flow at the same rate or intensity, resulting in an inconsistent experience that isn’t universally pleasing to all palates. While some of these experiments go up in a puff of smoke, all of them fire on smart efforts whose cinematic sincerity shines through independent of each piece’s success or failure.  “The Field Guide to Evil” may not have long legs, but a terrific unifying hook is enough to earn appreciation as a memorable endeavor.

Review Score:  60

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