Nightmare Alley (2010)

I think one reason I really like anthology horror is that it's generally harder to screw up than your typical horror feature.  It's like a short story: all you have to do is introduce your characters, do some buildup, then get to the scares and/or gore and move on to another three-hit combo.  All the basics are laid out to you, just watched Creepshow or either of the Trilogy of Terror films and move on from there.  Of course, the ease one can film anthology horror really heightens my bad reaction when I see a bad example of the sub-genre.

Enter NIGHTMARE ALLEY.  The first worrisome sign is the fact that the film boasts seven scary tales, but it only seventy minutes.  Okay, I think.  It's a little on the short side, but that means more gore and doom per minute, right?  So here's the opening story, which I'm going to describe in detail for some important reasons.

We start with some homeless guy walking in a longcoat that kind of reminds me of The Hitchhiker, which is the last pleasant thought I'm going to have for the rest of the film.  We then cut to two punks (?, see picture below) discussing crazy stuff like moshpits and faggots and how they love to beat up everyone and fuck pussy also faggots suck maaaan.

Then the homeless guy appears next to them and offers them the newest issue of NIGHTMARE ALLEY in exchange for a cigarette.  The punk kids then proceed to denigrate butt rock some more, which for some reason enrages the homeless guy to the point that he pushes one of the kids to a wall and knifes him then pees on the corpse and I begin to really regret watching this on a lark.

The other punk guy, who ran, hides by a garbage dumpster, then proceeds to read the new issue of NIGHTMARE ALLEY.  We see that NIGHTMARE ALLEY is apparently one of those awful 90s indie comics that were drawn with color pencils and a severe lack of talent, and that it shows the punk READING THE COMIC AND THEN GETTING HIS HEAD CUT OFF and guess what happens next.

(also, note that the guy actually says "holy shit" as opposed to "huh," which really harms the presaging legitimacy of this comic)

You may be thinking: "wow, that was pretty dumb, but it's an opening story and I'm sure they get better."  Here's the thing: they don't.  The three-minute film about a killer bum and an evil comic book is easily the best thing this film had to offer.  The reason for this is pretty simple.  For a film where the stories are on average only ten minutes long, they somehow take forever for something to happen, and when it does happen, it's predictable and dumb.  Each story is introduced by a pale-faced guy in a top hat that I'm guessing is supposed to harken back to the Cryptkeeper, but the former's monologues are more along the line of "boy, that really sucked for that guy, our next story is about a guy who's about to have his life really suck."

Every story on here is basically the same awful garbage.  Sure, the plots are slightly different, but they all feature the hallmarks of terrible indie horror:

RPG dialogue:  By this, I mean that every line sounds less like it came out of a real human's mouth, and would be more at home in some 16-bit rpg's blue dialogue box scrolling across the screen.  It's got that stilted, poorly executed diction that is probably an equal result between the screenwriter being hopelessly incompetent and the actors either being too scared to adlib or having the worst improv skills imaginable.

All my friends are actors now:  Granted, this isn't always a bad thing, but it sure as hell is an issue for NIGHTMARE ALLEY, as every person in the film is either a fat, unappealing male or a fat, unappealing girls who want to look like Bettie Paige.  There is exactly one person in the film who isn't either horribly nervous or trying to get over their nervousness by yell-acting.

Nothing going Nowhere:  As I mentioned above, despite each story being around ten minutes, it's amazing how NIGHTMARE ALLEY manages to fuck up pacing so bad.  For fuck's sake, a majority of the stories have filler scenes, such as "guy talking to his cop buddy about nothing relevant whatsoever " or "girl fiddling with silverware for thirty seconds," "other guy walking through dollar general," and of course an endless plethora of cars going out of driveways, down roads, and then back to the same driveway.  On the other end, when you finally get to the scares, they're just as underwhelming.  I'm not saying that scares need to be some big budget feast, but if your story's climax is beyond the reach of your cash reserves, one either needs to rewrite the story or find an entertaining way to suggest things.  For example, say the climax to your "cowboy zombie" story involves zombies entering a town and devouring it, but you didn't get the permit to do the scene in time!  Some filmmakers would find intelligent ways to get the idea across that didn't scream WE'RE BROKE, such as merely showing the zombies approaching the town, or showing a spooky aftermath.  But NIGHTMARE ALLEY is beyond such pitiful conventional theories, and just pans across the skyline of some tourist ghost town while dubbing in burning noises and screams.  

Some internet reviewers have tried to defend the film under the premise of the fact that it's not taking itself seriously and uh the director clearly likes horror movies so leave it alone bro.  And really, it's not fun kicking around a production that never had a chance to begin with.  On the other hand, this was the first thing that came up when I looked for reviews on the movie, so I don't even know anymore what I'm dealing with.  I guess it's nice that the director is having fun with this sort of shit, and I would have enjoyed it more drunk out of my mind watching it with friends, but that's also the case with 12 Oz Mouse.  Is that what you want, NIGHTMARE ALLEY?  To be on the same level as 12 Oz. Mouse?

Actually, you probably shouldn't answer that question.