Tuesday, August 4, 2020

In short: For We Are Many (2019)

A demon trying to convince a king of making a pact pages through his book of greatest demonic hits. I’m not sure how convincing a devil’s dozen of tales where characters’ encounters with demonic entitites end badly for them should convince anyone of this being a healthy sort of partnership, but hey, I’m not in the soul-buying biz.

This is an anthology movie made by thirteen English language directors “from around the world” (among them Scotland’s finest, Lawrie Brewster) that packs thirteen wee tales into eighty minutes of film. The only rule seems to have been a connection to “demons”, where a demon apparently can be anything from a creature of Christian mythology to the Wendigo. It’s a fun anthology, thanks to the loose concept very diverse in tone and style. The film does come from the very indie side of indie horror, so don’t expect gigantic production values, though everyone involved found better locations than warehouses, even if it’s only a patch of woods (there are a lot of woods in this movie), which is all I ask of anyone making movies, even tiny ones, on pocket money.

Of course, with segments that are about five to six minutes long, there’s not a lot of depth to the tales, but more often than not, these five or six minutes are focussed and never boring, with enough stylistic differences between the segments you can at least be sure you’ll enjoy the next one when one doesn’t find your approval. What most of them (there are a couple of exceptions, but I’m not going to take more time complaining about a five minute short short than it takes watching it) have in common is a cool monster, most directors involved somehow managing to squeeze a cool demon or two out of nothing.


All of which makes For We Are Many a very worthwhile movie in my book.

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