User reviews

Even though it has an interesting concept of entering other countries' folklore, this movie was badly written and weakly executed, to a point where we can't even understand the storyline of some segments. They completely wasted this movie's potential.

..but it isn't.

While well intentioned the collection missed its target.

We need more folklore in cinema but the tales were undone by some ropey direction, crap make up and some dodgy acting.

The frustrating thing is that some of the stories had some unsettling and disquieting moments, but these were offset by the absurdity of others.

Although the stories are somewhat interesting, they do become tedious to watch after a while.

The visuals are good but each of the stories really didn't engage me, or leave me feeling as though I had watched anything of any significance.

The concept was good but unfortunately it delivers little.

This movie had an excellent concept and an exceptional introduction sequence.

But the stories... just didn't quite make sense.

Only three out of eight made complete sense - the American story, the Indian story and the Greek story.

The American story was laughable, the Indian story was vaguely creepy (probably the best one) and the Greek one was barely horror....

...much like the other stories, which came complete with bad effects, atrocious acting and incoherent storylines.

The concept was brilliant and I was so excited to see the movie... it's just a shame that I got all hyped up in the intro only to be let down by being downright confused throughout.

I have three stars. Two for the good stories (Greece and India) and one for the good concept.

If I were you, I wouldn't waste your time.

I was very excited to see this at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest after seeing the directors involved, but most segments were overwhelmingly mediocre. The concept is fantastic and most segments are visually compelling but ultimately fall flat.

The Cobbler's Lot, The Palace of Horrors, and Al Karisi were the strongest and best executed, where Melon Heads was the weakest, being laughable at best. The Cobbler's Lot was definitely the stand-out short, with a beautiful muted palette of unique visuals and dark comedy. Inspired by silent era and 70s psychedelic film, this was a charming ending to a disappointing anthology.

Good movie south by southwest, interesting concenpt bringing shorts together. Worked really well

T. S. Eliot's declaration illuminates the commonalities shared by these eight short horror films, based upon folktales from eight different countries (Austria, Turkey, Poland, United States, Greece, India, Germany, and Hungary). They are usually centered around children, the elderly, the disabled, the deformed and animals. The settings are often natural ones: forests, fields, streams, and ponds. More importantly, they share skillful direction, writing, acting, cinematography and music direction done at a high level. The terror to be found in the banality of everyday life, our remoteness from God and the proximity of the diabolical are shared themes.

It was a cool idea to have a collection of folklore/horror stories from different countries made by and in those countries, but dear god, the execution on the majority of these short films is awful. For about 2/3s of these stories, the plot and acting is so poorly done that they're almost hard to watch. I wouldn't call it a complete waste of time, but don't go into it with any higher expectations than an extremely low-budget student film.

The idea of this film is actually pretty interesting. With short horror, almost vignettes, from all around the world and culture specific tales and creatures. But that's about all that ended up good here. All the short stories were not scary in the least. With most being weird or gross at best. It was as if it was a bad art film combined with a bad horror film. It is very "artistic" interesting direction of the scenes and acting, but at the same time the acting is terrible and like a film school project while having slightly above the worst special effects. The film will really test your patience. Some of the stories really made me want to fast forward through parts of them and i needed to begrudgingly check a few times how much longer was left in the film. As an anthology, I felt that there were either too many stories in general or possibly it could have been split into multiple films, like other anthologies. Overall I think that the idea was interesting, but it went way too far into the artsy imaginative type of role and wasn't able to secure the horror it set out for, nor even the general interest from people looking for something to watch.

All of these stories are great. One of them maybe has some editing issues, but the myths hold up. The camera work is good and most of the visuals are eerie. The cool story and art in the one at the end is worth it alone.

Overall I think this was a great idea but was not executed to its full potential. Each story in this folk horror anthology had positives and negatives, but I don't think not one of them had the whole package, which I would expect from at least a few of them (if any I would say 5 and 8)

1. Beautiful with seemingly good acting. Monster looked silly and story over all unfulfilling and confusing

2. Not bad, decent story and a bit spookier but the girls whimpering became irksome.

3. Loved the look of this one and the story was intriguing but once again the ending was confusing and unfulfilling.

4. This is the first one that was just bad. I was beginning to become tired of the lack of dialogue, but once I got to this one I ate my words. The dialogue was awful, story was silly and the performances were stilted.

5. This one was probably the best. Makeup and special effects were super cool and the story was spooky and intriguing.

6. The acting and execution on this one were not really up to par but it was one of the more interesting stories.

7. This one looked beautiful and was weird and spooky but the ending left me at meh.

8. Quite liked the style of this one. Added nice variety and felt quite original with a Tim Burton flare.

I feel like for most this would probably land at a 4 but because I love the concept, am partial to folk horror, appreciated the positives and also have a love for and am forgiving with indi cinema I feel a 5 is appropriate. This is certainly not going to be for everyone. Many people will watch this and slowly become more and more annoyed with the underdeveloped stories. However if you take into account budget, time/length, and the giant scale this project took on across the world... it's pretty cool. I would recommend, but to someone who loves folk tales and has patience lol.

Boring doesn't even begin to describe this grimfest. Two stories out of the eight (the American one and the weird fairy tale at the end) just about manage to garner interest. The rest are either so 'deep' they fail to make their point, or gross out that they'd turn your stomach. Either way this is one book of tales to leave on the shelf.

Well, for an anthology, then the 2018 "The Field Guide to Evil" wasn't a particular masterpiece. Not even while brandishing eight different stories based on real myths and folklore.

What went wrong here? Well, for starters the fact that most of the stories weren't really all that compelling or interesting. Might be a bit harsh to say, but it is the truth. While the visuals in the various segments definitely are interesting and mostly good, the contents of the stories just mostly fail to capture my interest and it felt mediocre at best. And with such an output, it became somewhat of an ordeal to sit through eight different stories.

Now, don't get me wrong, some of the stories actually are fairly good, but in overall, the anthology just failed to be all that interesting.

I do like the fact that they went around the world to put different folklore and myths from different countries into the anthology, because it definitely added variety.

The acting in the different segments was definitely good enough, just a shame that the actors and actresses didn't have an enticing script to work with in most of the stories, because it made the anthology drag behind and suffer.

If you do make it through this feature length anthology, and I do sincerely applaud you if you can endure that, chances are slim to none that you will ever return to watch "The Field Guide to Evil" a second time.

It felt like you never really got to submerge deep enough into the various tales to fully understand or get into the myth and folklore. The storytelling and narratives just felt way too superficial, given the limitations of time to tell each story.

This anthology definitely had potential, but it just ultimately failed where it mattered the most. As such, my rating for "The Field Guid to Evil" becomes a mere less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

I'm no expert when it comes to myths and folklore, but the subject matter does interest me. I had never heard of any of these stories. That doesn't mean they aren't, but in eight tries I figured at least one would ring home.

Now whether or not these are familiar tales doesn't have any bearing on the quality of the movie representing them. However, all of the elements in movie making certainly have something to say about the movie's quality.

Some of these shorts were very lean on dialogue. That's not always a deal breaker though. There are a lot of great movies out there that use very little dialogue. The difference is that the good ones still manage to tell a clear story and captivate their audience. The silent shorts in this anthology were just confusing and distant. One segment traded dialogue for a baby crying sound effect on a loop. Hey movie maker, we get it. The baby is crying. Make the point and get off it. A constant baby crying is as distracting as when they have a phone ringing or a car horn going off for way too long. It just becomes an annoying noise.

I didn't realize how bad the acting was in this until the American segment played out. Wow, was that bad. That one played like a student film. The parents were just the worst. No chemistry with each other or their son. The boy was everything wrong with child actors all wrapped up in one.

And lets not leave out the gore. Why do inexperienced filmmakers and viewers, for that matter, think that gore and horror go hand in hand? Why? Being frightened, startled, psychologically tormented, or just creeped out are all valid aspects of horror. I don't know where or why gore seems to think it has a place here. If its done right and done with purpose, it can be very effective (Bone Tomahawk comes to mind). This entire anthology never once used gore to an advantage, but it used it in every segment. Just trying to gross someone out isn't horror.

After watching this senseless abomination, which its main result was the sick, shocking, disgusting, bloodstained scenes, whose only purpose were to fascinate the viewers who have similar IQ with the one of its creators, I came into two conclusions: First, that this anthology is actually a huge insult to the great traditions of the countries mentioned, (a kind of degrading of these amazing and magical folklore stories) And secondly that surely there is a remarkable channel of communication and cooperation between each idiotic, shallow, without any real talent and without awareness of any kind of work of imaginative literature, foolish filmmaker. I am quite sure though that such a hideous and without substance result, which generally seems to be a"tendency" that appear in most forms of art besides the 7th, won't find any fertile ground for long. Guys, it is OK to produce a correct Cinematography but I think you should open a book once in a while.

I pretty much enjoyed the whole film, the quality was uneven but the stories were good overall. What Happened to Panagos the Pagan and The Cobblers Lot were particularly enjoyable for me as the cinematography was quite beautiful, especially the cave shots in the former.

I hope there is a sequel as they featured no folk tales from the British Isles. We have some absolute corkers.

A cool addition to the Folk Horror genre.

So they try to gross you out instead.

I gave up half way through and I NEVER do that.

Please stop trying to pass this dross off as horror.

Making people feel sick isn't scary.

Odd stories from around the world. Acting skill runs the spectrum. I like how little dialog there is how I was constantly asking myself out loud 'wtf just happened??'

This was the biggest pile of crap I've seen in a long time....crap stories... crap acting...extremely low budget, and where was the horror element. Just please, I implore you to stay far away from this waste of time.

Cute concept (world folklore anthology); well executed.

This was much more subtle than a lot of mainstream horror which I think will subvert some watchers expectations, either positively or negatively.

I found the opening short examining the socio-religious stigmas surrounding homosexuality to be artful and insightful with a positive empowering message that wasn't crass or overstated.

At least one short examined elder care through the lens of witchcraft. The last short was a delightful dark comedy--Grimm meets Aesop.

It was cool to see something new in horror under the guise of being old.

THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL is based on a reallly neat concept: present an anthology of mythologies and folklores around the world which lend themselves to a horror treatment.

Of course, there is already such a thing as folklore horror, and it turns out that even some unexpected horror subgenres, such as the Italian Cannibal movies from the 70s and 80s had their content origin in (or better: were originally inspired by) anthropological field reports, though these are commonly regarded as outgrowths of the Mondo films, a wave of anthropological mockumentaries started by the (in)famous MONDO CANE(1962).

FIELD GUIDE's global orientation takes it as close as a professed fiction movie can get to a "anthropological" treatment of horror. If you are familiar with folk horror, you know that best movies in the genre, such as THE WITCH (2015), THE RITUAL (2017) and THE HALLOW (2015) have atmosphere in spades, a slow to modest pace, and they refuse to spell out every last detail for the audience.

I suspect that the latter two aspects are not really well-appreciated by wider audiences, and that makes folk horror a little bit of an acquired taste. Most of the segments of FIELD GUIDE are open-ended in one way or another, and probably because there was not as much time to establish the story and characters as in a full-length feature, this may contribute to several of the segments feeling incomplete.

On the flip side, both the introduction and almost all the segments are very strong on atmosphere, sometimes using daring film-making techniques to achieve it. Plus, I for one appreciate learning about folk legends and myths.

I have read other reviews which say that watching the movie can feel like a drudge after a while, and admittedly, this criticism has something to it. I think there are two reasons for this: first, folk horror being generally slow and open-ended, tends to demand more from the viewer than your average horror movie, and second, most of these legends are going to be unfamiliar to most viewers, making it hard to fit them in a broader context. A hypothetical anthology of, say, vampire or zombie shorts would likely not face this issue.

For this reason, I think the most fulfilling and ultimately enjoyable way to watch this film is to watch a segment, then peruse wikipedia or some such source to learn more about the myth in order to contextualize what was just seen, reflect on it, and then go on to the segment. That means instead of treating the experience as watching a single movie, the probably most rewarding way is to treat it as eight shorts.

In that light, a brief discussion of each segment is warranted:

1. "Die Trud" (the Trud) tells the story of a woman haunted by the eponymous incubus-like demon in Austrian Folklore. The strength of this short is that it sheds light on the decidedly natural (as opposed to supernatural) origin of many a folk myth, especially in relation to behaviors which may have been considered deviant by past societal norms.

2."Al Karisi"(which means "the Scarlet woman") tells the story of a pregnant woman and caregiver of her invalid mother who is haunted by the eponymous birth-giving demon in Turkish folklore. What this short does especially well is suffuse itself with a continual atmosphere of dread and foreboding.

3."The Kindler and the Virgin", based on Polish folklore, features strong atmosphere and a good concept but an open ending that is likely to frustrate many viewers.

4."Beware the Melon Heads", based on a Midwest US folklore involving eponymous creatures, is the weakest segment of the movie.

5. "The Palace of Horrors", shot in black and white and one of the most atmospheric segments in tbe anthology, tells a story involving a Bengali folk myth about a crumbling palace in the Sundarban tropical forest. The palace is visited by two visitors looking for human oddities for none other than P. T. Barnum, and find more than they expected. This segment (for those who appreciate such matters) is also the most Lovecraftian, even making a direct reference in one fleeting shot.

6."Whatever happened to Panagas the Pagan?", featuring the malevolent folk legend Kallikantzaros, has some of the nicest visuals and atmosphere in the anthology, but unfortunately with a lack of context, it is hard to make sense of the conclusion

7."A nocturnal Breath", both thematically and geographically somewhat similar to "Die Trud", features a demon in Bavarian folklore associated with pestilence which haunts a brother and sister. It is one of the strongest segments in the anthology.

8."The Cobbler's Lot", based on a Hungarian folk tale involving two brothers who become rival suitors for a princess, makes some of the most daring stylistic choices in the anthology. It is likely to be one of those films one either loves or hates.

For what it's worth, the 4 segments I personally liked the best were "A Nocturnal Breath", "The Palace of Horrors", "Die Trud" and "Al Karisi".

Finally, it is interesting that this movie was crowdfunded. I wonder whether it was able to recoup its investment. From a cultural perspective, movies like this are in my opinion definitely worth investing in.

Couldn't make it past the second "story"- absolutely banal trash. no real plot and certainly not remotely scary. this should not have been made. it's an overall waste of money and resources. if this constitutes "original horror" no wonder garbage like the pet sematary remake keeps winning over the dullards.