Tales from the Dark 1 is a kind of interesting anthology from Hong Kong. There isn't that much of a connecting thread running between the three stories - other than the fact that some people in them can see ghosts, and all three tales are mildly confusing. Each individual story works well enough on its own in a kind of Masters of Horror/long-short film way. And they are all on the longish side (about 40 minutes a pop), so as a whole the film tends to drag a bit. The stories never really go for jolting scares or crazy twists, so that was kind of refreshing. But there just wasn't much of anything that made me think these stories needed to be told together, you know?
A quick rundown: (1) A down-on-his-luck/poor guy steals urns from a morgue and leaves ransom notes in their place. Predictably, some people (even undead ones) have a problem with this. (2) A fortune telling guy can see ghosts. He's quitting his fortune telling store in order to save his family. (This one is the most compelling and dramatic - but oddly also the funniest.) But on his last day, he sees a ghost and, with the help of a fellow shop owner who just got ghost-seeing contact lenses (?), decides he must help the spirit find peace. (3) A story about a villain beater (referred to as such in the movie - but "villain hitter" seems to be the more common English term online). I'm not sure what's lost in translation, but it's an interesting concept and a real part of folk sorcery in Hong Kong. Basically, you pay a mystic/street-performer to beat a small piece of paper which symbolically represents your enemy(s), while basically cursing the person. It's a really fascinating ritual and a cool part of the film. The story gets a little more outlandish (there's a little ghost/revenge stuff in there), but I was mostly intrigued by the concept of villain beating in general.
Generally, with anthologies, you risk spoiling everything just by giving a plot summary. But that's not really the case here. There isn't a heck of a lot to spoil in Tales from the Dark 1. Yeah, there are some spooky ghost tales, but generally there's never a big gotcha twist or anything like that. The stories just sort of casually unfold and mostly depend on atmosphere to get over. And it's half successful to that end. While not as in-your-face stylish as the last Asian anthology film I watched (Epitaph), it's well shot and each story is unique and decently constructed. Overall, it manages to be pretty enjoyable without ever being particularly memorable.
The main issue I had with the film is that it just sort of flatlines at "pretty okay." Nothing ever escalates - each story starts at about the same level of intensity and never really fluctuates too much. So it's not exhausting, but the general tone of things just gets kind of boring after a while. So even though there's space for the characters to breathe a little bit (40 minutes each feels a bit long for an anthology entry), the filmmakers generally skip that and get right to the scary business at hand. I guess the second story gives you a little character building, but that's kind of neutered by the fact that there are just too many characters to really focus on any of them.
So I don't know. I wouldn't go around telling people they need to see Tales from the Dark 1. If anything, the stories are more suited to a single/episodic-style watch. And now, having watched the whole film, Amazon is telling me that the stories are in fact available to watch solo on Prime:
(1) Stolen Goods
(2) A Word in the Palm
(3) Exorcism of Darkness
A Word in the Palm is probably the best (although oddly, probably the least "horrific"). So I'd recommend that. It's not really indicative of the whole though. Okay - so now I'm just rambling. Tales from the Dark 1 isn't great, but it's not a bad way to kill some time.
I would more or less kind of recommend this film.
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