Tales From Six Feet Under is the third film from writer/director Nicholas Michael Jacobs. It’s no secret I found his first film Night to be less than impressive. His second, Urban Fears was a big step in the right direction, however. Will the third time be the charm?
Shot in black and white, Tales From Six Feet Under delivers three stories in a forty-five minute running time. The stories are framed by a skeleton faced being known as The Visitor (Nicholas Michael Jacobs) wandering through a graveyard. It occasionally pauses to tell us how someone came to be occupying their grave.
The first story tells the tale of Joe Roth (Brian Jacobs) whose father tells him to clean up the basement where he finds a Ouija board. He ignores warnings not to mess with it, with predictable results.
The Silhouette Demon (Gianna Jacobs) itself is creatively done and suits a no-budget film like this. But the story itself is bland and the board looks like it was bought at Target that afternoon, This really called for a beaten up old thing found at a garage sale. Something that looked like it had a long, evil history.
Sam Hooper is the subject of the second segment. This one is about a guy trying to write a horror film. He finds himself in a horror film instead after he gets a box containing a ventriloquist’s dummy from The Visitor.
This one is a bit more creative than what we’ve seen from Jacobs in the past. Things shift between What is happening and the writer’s visualization of his work. Jacobs plays both the writer and the character he’s writing about, which is rather confusing at first but then becomes creepy.
The last of the Tales From Six Feet Under is about birthday girl Jennifer Burton (Alexis Beacher). Her boyfriend has to work late and cancel their dinner plans. She starts getting messages from an unknown number. They saw that is was her birthday on social media and don’t want her to be alone.
If you dislike subtitles you’re going to hate this segment. There is no dialogue, all the conversation is via text messages. It’s also obvious as hell who’s messaging her.
Plenty of filmmakers have said that the best way to learn how to make a film is to go out and shoot one. And on that level, I have to give him credit for actually getting Tales From Six Feet Under shot. But at this point, I think Jacobs should consider waiting until he has a bit more cash to spend and making a film with better production values and a tighter script.
Tales From Six Feet Under will debut on Amazon Prime April 15th. You can see more of his work on his YouTube Channel.