Director(s) – Fabien Chombart, Guillaume Defare (La Loi de Morphy), Nathalie Epoque (En attendant la Gloire), Francois Message (We Can be Gay Today), and Alexis Wawerka (Hot Hell)
Starring – Jean-Claude Dreyfus (Nympho, Delicatessen), Sophie Jarmouni (Unlocked, 3615 Usul), and Francesco Porcelli
Release Date – 2018
Rating – 3/5
Last year was rough for a lot of families the world over. My family and I was fortunate last year and Covid did not really affect our employment but I know many were hit hard during the pandemic. Many indie filmmakers were unable to attend cons to sell their products so they turned to online sales to offset the lack of income. SRS Cinema began running one hell of a pandemic sale that I took advantage of several times.
One of the first movies I snagged during this pandemic sale was the 2018 French horror anthology Necrologies. This looked like a fun anthology flick that I was happy to add to my collection. I never had a rush to see it but once I finished Bearkittens I figured it only made sense to follow it up with this.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a horror fan who trespasses onto an old cemetery to take some pictures when he is confronted by the caretaker. Instead of contacting the authorities, the caretaker invites the young man in to tell him some ghost stories about some of the deceased people in the cemetery. The first story follows a similar premise to When a Stranger Calls where a young girl is at home when she begins being stalked by someone calling her.
The second story follows a man driving through a rural road when he spots a wounded woman. However, she is not a normal woman and the locals are hunting her. The third story follows a news piece on a group of people protecting mankind from lizard men but the evil lizard men have infiltrated deeper into society than they suspect. The fourth story follows a real estate agent who kills an old lady in order to get her property but soon discovers a small creature living in her home. The final story follows an artist who paints an evil story about a demon. **Spoiler Alert**
I went into this expecting a great late night horror anthology with a fun wrap around segment and some bloody stories. What I was given was a great wrap around segment and a few fun stories with two falling a little short of the finish line. It was a great anthology but there was definitely some weak links.
The acting in this one is inconsistent but not bad. The wrap around segment stars Jean-Claude Dreyfus who does a phenomenal job as the story teller. He really gets into his role and his performance makes the film. The segments have some solid performances but, much like the stories themselves, we have some of the cast that shines while others miss their marks.
The stories in this one vary in quality. Some really hid hard while others are there to push the film’s running time. The wraparound segment is everything for a horror anthology. This one does a fantastic job at pulling all the stories together and I really enjoyed the approach having it be a caretaker of a cemetery telling stories of how some of them died. The stories are inconsistent with two of them dragging the film down. The final story following the artist and the lizardmen story were huge disappointments. They were sloppy and just really out of place with the film. However, the other tales were extremely fun and satisfying.
Finally, the segments, for the most part, have various amounts of blood and gore with two in particular delivering some seriously fun make-up effects and deaths. We also get a few fun creature designs that I really enjoyed. Sure, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in the genre but it’s still fun seeing other filmmakers deliver their own spin on it. Overall, Necrologies is a well put together anthology that has some seriously fun highs and a few lows. I recommend checking this one out especially if you are looking for some late night chills. It’s a fun one.
