HORROR DVD/BLU-RAY REVIEWS

After sitting through all 13 shorts in a row, I've come to a very confident conclusion: shorts really aren't my thing. This may be a direct result merely of watching this particular collection, however, I doubt it. You see, if I'm watching a horror film, or any film for that matter, I need or rather, demand some form of conclusive storytelling. I don't like being thrust into a situation, have some weird stuff occur, and then have the thing end without so much of an ounce of explanation.

Sadly, that was the general feeling I was left with after viewing NIGHTMARE HOUSE. Hey, I understand that these are shorts and not meant to take up a great length of time. However, that doesn't mean that I can just be left completely oblivious to what's happening. Each of the thirteen tales wants to start something odd or creepy and then hit you with some sort of fast, cheap jolt, and then close the curtain. To put it dirty, the shorts want to beat you off for a bit and then, right before that one final stroke that could make you cum, it stops. Yup, it's mostly blue balls all around for these shorts.

And perhaps that is what a "short" is supposed to be... but that doesn't mean I have to like it. That's not to say that each tiny episode was complete crap. Actually, that isn't true at all. I only loathed two or three of them. The rest were well short, fairly well acted, and contained some very interesting storylines. I just wish that most of the lines had a true endpoint. The short that came closest to succeeding in this respect, was the one involving a woman who "cleans up" after crime scenes. So I guess that one was my fave.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the stories contained in this collection did not clean up as tidily as I would have hoped.

Audio English 5.1 Dolby Digital

An Artifact Gallery that delves deeper into "haunted objects" contained in some of the shorts.

A Portrait Gallery that describes some of the shorts' characters.

A Trailer for Volume 2 of NIGHTMARE HOUSE.