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Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories Review: An Amateurish Mess, But Will Hopefully Get Some Actors Better Jobs In Film

Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories

You know, there's no fun in tearing apart someone's fun little microscopic-budget passion project. Even if the extended sit was genuinely unpleasant all the way through, it still doesn't feel right to heavily criticize something that it seemed people really enjoyed making — and did so with less than a fraction of the cost of other films.

And make no mistake, this was a miserable sit. The story, if that's the right word for it, makes absolutely no sense and is beyond stupid. Its many attempts at humor, most of them intending to be meta and self-deprecating, are simply not funny. Whenever it makes vague motions in the direction of wittiness and deeper meaning, it trips all over its own ungainly mess.

Also, this sucker clocks in at just under two hours.

The film in question is Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories, which came out late last year. It is something of a horror anthology movie loosely strung together by multiple framing narratives. Like most anthology films, it's helmed by multiple directors: Nathan Thomas Milliner, P.J. Starks, Sean Blevins, Justin M. Seaman, James Treakle, John William Holt, and Jon Maynard. It stars names that few would recognize and have mostly worked with one or more of the directors above: Barbie Clark, Thomas Dunbar, Jacob Ewers, Erin Troutman, Caleb Shore, and Christopher Bower.

Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories Review: An Amateurish Mess, But Will Hopefully Get Some Actors Better Jobs In Film

The segments in Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories are oddly separated. The opening, "Murder, Death, Kill", is presented straight until it abruptly ends and revealed to be a horror film remake that two guys are shouting at in a theater in a section called "Haters". This proceeds until they start watching a movie taking place on Halloween wherein murders are starting to occur. We watch a woman assaulted and almost killed, when the killer is interrupted by another killer who almost kills her, who is then interrupted by a shadowy figure. This section is called "Trick or Treat". The shadowy figure triggers a flashback-type thing that focuses on a couple hemming and hawing about buying a house in a section aptly called "A Killer House".

From here, they keep finding stains and messes that are quite obviously linked to murders, each one launching into another segment. Those segments are called "Blood Bath", "Feeding Time", "The Deathday Party", and "Fear, For Sinners Here". After these wrap up, "A Killer House" concludes, which then finishes "Trick or Treat" and then "Haters".

I'd go over the story of each vignette, but there's not much to talk about in each one. They're barely plots. They are setups and immediate payoffs, like the shortest sections from ABCs of Death (another real shit movie, by the way).

The directorial and camera work is overall pretty bad, with each section feeling cohesive if for only the fact that none of them are filmed well. "Fear, For Sinners Here" by Milliner, comes closest to showing some competence in that it can perform genuine visual storytelling. Unfortunately, that is also the slowest-moving section with possibly the most inane payoff.

"Deathday Party" by Seaman has a fairly amusing premise with its murderous yet adorable elderly couple. It's still not enjoyable, mind, but it took steps in that direction.

Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories Review: An Amateurish Mess, But Will Hopefully Get Some Actors Better Jobs In Film

The writing is uniformly awful from beginning to end. The dialogue is terrible, the aforementioned plots are dumb, and the humor calls for no laughter throughout the entire two-hour runtime. Decent writing can be accomplished without a budget; it just requires talent.

The acting is abysmal throughout Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories, with Thomas Dunbar ("Murder, Death, Kill"), Caleb Shore ("Feeding Time"), Kevin Arnold ("Blood Bath"), and Jessica Schroeder ("Fear, For Sinners Here") being the exceptions.

There is something to be said for the gore effects in this movie. They are, mostly, really good. The blood looks great. It's ridiculous and copious, but it looks good.

The killer designs are pretty unexciting. There's something in "Murder, Death, Kill" that looks like a mixture of DC's Scarecrow and Jason Voorhees. There's this one thing that appears in multiple sections with a black mask and red eyes that I'm pretty sure is a Scorpion from Mortal Kombat mask repainted.

Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories Review: An Amateurish Mess, But Will Hopefully Get Some Actors Better Jobs In Film

Just give this one a pass. I hate to kick something around with this low a budget that was clearly a passion project, but passion projects have been bad before. Furthermore, money has nothing to do with filmmaking talent. Just ask Michael Bay. Heck, Paranormal Activity was made for $15,000. Whatever you think of it, I'm not a big fan, it was competently made and at least looked like a movie.

Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories was made by amateur filmmakers, and it shows in every inch of the movie. It tries to undercut its own shoddy state by making jokes about it, and that makes it hard to enjoy even as a bad movie. There are competent moments and elements that make me hope that some of the people involved can use this on a resume down the line, so they can make better movies. That doesn't change the fact that this one is awful. Give it a wide berth.

One last thing, though: there's one line in "Murder, Death, Kill" that caught me off guard, and I had to write a weird observational paragraph about which thinks way too hard about the subject at hand.

Someone says the line, "It takes the Devil of Hell's Kitchen not to see that." This is a freaking Daredevil reference, but they didn't refer to him as Daredevil? They call him his urban legend nickname from the Netflix series? What in the hell? Plus, these are redneck thieves and bandits; do they have Netflix subscriptions? Do they have time to watch Netflix? Even if they did, why not call him Daredevil?

Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories Review: An Amateurish Mess, But Will Hopefully Get Some Actors Better Jobs In Film

Anyway, don't watch Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories.


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Joshua DavisonAbout Joshua Davison

Josh is a longtime super hero comic fan and an aspiring comic book and fiction writer himself. He also trades in videogames, Star Wars, and Magic: The Gathering, and he is also a budding film buff. He's always been a huge nerd, and he hopes to contribute something of worth to the wider geek culture conversation. He is also happy to announce that he is the new Reviews Editor for Bleeding Cool. Follow on Twitter @joshdavisonbolt.
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