Sinphony is a collection of nine very short tales packed into a ninety-minute running time. Since there are so many and they’re so short I’m just going to give a quick summary of each one. First up is a short vignette about childbirth that’s part one of “Symphony of Horror” directed by Sebastien Bazile and Michael Galvan from Bazile’s script.
“Mother Love” written and directed by Jason Ragosta is about a serial killer who goes after a woman and her young son. But they don’t know she’s in a group chat with her coven.
Writer/director Steven Keller’s “Ear Worm” deals with a father and son mould removal crew that runs up against a strain that fights back.
Haley Bishop contributes “Forever Young” about a woman who finds a cure for aging on social media. But it has an unexpected side effect.
A woman tries to capture a moment in time, but the moment refuses to be captured in Mark A. Pritchard’s “Limited Edition”.
”Do Us Part?” is a story of a relationship after one of the couple has left not just the marriage but the land of the living, by writer/director Kimberley Elizabeth.
In Jason Williams’ segment “Tabitha” a woman injured in a robbery gone bad is trapped in her car by a menacing being.
“Maternally Damned” is Nichole Carlson’s take on a pregnancy with more complications than normal.
And then we get the wrapup of “Symphony of Horror” to round out Sinphony’s running time.
If you’re wondering why Sinphony is subtitled “A Clubhouse Horror Anthology”, it’s because was conceived on the audio-only social app Clubhouse. While it seems like an odd thing to hype, I’m sure that seemed like a great idea at the time the project was conceived and Clubhouse was being called the next big thing. But now that everyone has moved on to the next next big thing it seems dated and gimmicky.
As for the film itself, from a technical standpoint, the segments that make up Sinphony are all solid. There aren’t a lot of effects and apart from a possessed baby that’s obviously a doll with red eyes, there’s nothing embarrassingly bad. Even the CGI is decent for shorts that were obviously shot on a budget.
Storywise, none of them had me wanting to fast-forward through them which is unusual for an anthology with this many segments and Sinphony deserves praise for that. But at about ten minutes each, they all felt like they could have used more time to flesh out the story and make some details clearer. Granted there’s a bit of interconnection between some of the stories that does help. The sketches on the wall in “Limited Edition” or the mask in the second part of “Symphony of Horror” for example both connect to other segments.
And that’s a trouble with not only this film but others like The ABCs of Death or A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio which also premiered at BHFF a couple of years ago. With so short a time for each segment, many of them don’t have the time they need to properly tell their story. While I much prefer four or five better developed tales I also know that the anthologies with lots of shorter segments, some with twice as many as Sinphony, have an audience and they’re the ones the film is aimed at. And I expect they will enjoy it a lot more than I did.
And in the end how much you’ll like Sinphony will come down to how you like your anthologies set up. Those who like the shorter format should be quite happy with it, but it’s well enough done that others may want to take a chance on it as well.
Sinphony premiered at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival and Dark Sky Films will release it to theatres, Digital and VOD platforms on October 21st. And if there aren’t enough stories for you here, FilmTagger can suggest more films for you.
This looks like a crazy film!