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This horror anthology rips off the premise of the Amicus classic, Asylum (1972). A new psychiatric employee at an asylum is given the files of five patients, to see if she can find a common thread to their delusions. A sort of test to see if she's a good fit for the asylum.

The cast is mostly drab and talentless, especially dreadful lead actress, Elissa Dowling, though Nicolette Pullen comes close behind as second worst.

The writing is banal, and lacking in originality or creativity. In the first tale, a woman picks up a man, invites him to her bedroom, then locks the door. Whereupon the boogeyman emerges from the closet and kills the man.

Ho-hum.

The old 1980s TV show, Tales from the Darkside, had several similar stories, but with more originality and talent.

Like so many horror films these day, this film tosses in some Argento style colored lights. The makeup for the boogeyman is also decent. But the stories are dull, the cast unappealing.

There are also some sloppy errors. While still sane, Pullen's character has short blond hair with dark roots. Much later at the asylum, sitting in a straight jacket, she has the same hair.

The problem is that after having spent time at the asylum, her hair should have grown out and be all dark. It's doubtful that asylum beauticians would provide meticulous hair care for a straight jacketed loony.

It's a small thing, but it's the sort of thing that filmmakers striving for perfection should look out for. Obviously, no one strived for perfection in this dull film.

Yes, this movie is really bad. Awful, wooden acting. "Special effects" strings pulling at objects. An ax flies through the air and "chops off" a woman's head (but it looks like the ax was held offscreen and used to knock off a mannequin's head).

Yet Carnage has a definite Z movie charm.

I especially love that it's set in the New York City area. Watching this film, I'm wondering, was this house located in Queens, Staten Island, Nassau County?

I lived in the NYC area in the 1980s, and seeing the streets and cars brings back memories of my youth.

I saw this film on an old VHS tape. The images are washed out and grainy, yet that only adds to the film's low-budget, retro charm.

This is a well crafted film. Acting and production values, including makeup gore effects, are all very good.

Yet throughout most of this film, I was bored. There is much exposition, characters standing around and talking, revealing themselves to us. That's nice, but it feels pointless. We know they are doomed to die. Because this is a prequel, we know they won't win. They'll be killed.

So this film is mostly just watching these characters chatter about this and that, before they're led to the slaughter.

There's also some annoying silliness. Rex hangs out at the gas station, telling people that whatever they need -- lunch, bar-b-Que, camping equipment, lamps, anything -- can be had by going to his grandpa's house. "Yeah, he sells all that." No matter what the person wants, he's told that grandpa has it for sale.

So all these idiots go to the house. Well, they hang around the field outside for a while before they enter. A normal person would have left long before, but, these being horror characters, they're stupid enough to think that an old man in the middle of nowhere has a large and diverse inventory of sales items.

This film is called a prequel, but that implies an origin story, and this is not that. The cannibal family is already as they were in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So really, it's just more of the same.

Which is why this film feels so pointless. Why make yet another Chainsaw film about city slickers driving through a small town and being butchered and cannibalized by local rednecks? If you're going to invest so much talent and work into making a prequel, why not write an original story to go with it?

The filmmakers did a great job of slavishly recreating the look and feel of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only to slavishly retell the first story (i.e., avoid any originality, origin story, or point).

They have talent. I suggest they apply it to a new story next time.

I don't get those who call this a slasher classic. There are many better, more original and/or artsy slasher films from the 1980s -- Curtains, Night School, Silent Scream, The Funhouse, House on Sorority Row. The Burning is not one of them.

The Burning is a derivative "summer camp" slasher film, with the usual cast of stereotypes -- the bully, the nerd, the sleazy girl, the good girl, etc. It lacks even the clever twist of a Sleepaway Camp.

There's one burning and one killing in the first ten minutes, and then 45 minutes of nothing. Just boring summer camp hijinks. It's as if the director thought he was making Porky's. Maybe it's to "create character depth," but the characters remain stereotypes.

The gore is good, but the body count is low. Eight, which seems high, but five of them are all in one brief massacre.

The ending is unsatisfactory. The Final Girl isn't even on the scene. She's gone for help, so she's not really a final girl. Instead, the killer is confronted by two guys -- a creepy nerd who spies on naked women and the man who was responsible for disfiguring the slasher.

The slasher is more sympathetic than either of these two guys, but the two guys defeat the slasher. Really, I wish the slasher had killed them both.

This really crappy film fails on every level. The sound design is a mess, often too loud, often too low, with different sound levels from shot to shot (probably used the in-camera mic). Acting is amateurish, and the script is confusing and nonsensical. The gore effects are childish; lots of blood but unrealistic.

Even so, I liked this film. Like others here, I bought it under the title Broken Skull in the 4 DVD pack. I've watched it three times over the past 20 years (I seen 100s of horror films multiple times). So obviously it has something going for it.

I suppose I enjoy a peak into the amateurish work of low-budget filmmakers before digital cameras became prevalent. I wonder, who are these obscure actors and filmmakers? Yes, theirs films are crap, but they tried hard to make a movie when it was much more difficult.

And if you suspend your disbelief, and overlook the plot holes, it's possible to enjoy the hammy acting and nonsensical story.

I bought the DVD because it featured several Dark Shadows actors. And it was nice seeing them again -- though I felt sorry for them that they'd been reduced to working in this mess.

This production has an ultra low-budget feel. Shot entirely on stage, indoors, with green screen backgrounds. The scenes are very talky and pointless. I couldn't follow the logic of the plot. Lots of babble, which only serves to pad a dramatically vapid production.

Lara Parker and Kathryn Leigh Scott were under-utilized, so there wasn't even the pleasure of seeing them so much. At least Jerry Lacy had a more substantive role.

This is a very small story. So small that the 1980s horror anthology TV show, "Tales from the Darkside" told the same story in a 22 minute episode, "Payment Overdue."

Both "Payment Overdue" and "Nocebo" are about a rich white woman who is callous to a Third World seamstress. Her callousness causes a death, and a supernatural force "turns the tables" -- the rich white woman is condemned to share the fate of her Third World victim.

In "Payment Overdue" the victim was Puerto Rican, in "Nocebo" she's Philipina.

In "Payment Overdue" the rich white woman is a bill collector, in "Nocebo" she's a fashion designer.

In "Payment Overdue" retribution comes from a guardian angel, in "Nocebo" from a voodoo witch.

But while the details vary, it's essentially the same story.

So "Nocebo" took a 22 minute story and dragged it out to 97 minutes, without adding anything of value. You know what's going to happen from the start. You know Diana (the Philipina witch) is sinister from the start. You spend the whole movie watching Eva Green suffer and suffer until she meets her inevitable doom. I guess that's some people's idea of a good time.

I loved Eva Green in "Penny Dreadful" and "Euphoria." But "Nocebo" is a bad as "The Luminaries."

This film has been called a "slow burn." It certainly is tedious.

A mother takes her dying daughter into the woods, to see their old family home. At least we're told that the daughter is dying. By film's end, I wasn't sure.

I think director Cory Choy would take that as a compliment. It's that sort of film. Nothing is for certain. The film is wide open to interpretation. There's no resolution or closure. The only thing I was certain of was that the mother is insane. But again, that's just my interpretation. Yours might differ.

There's much talk about Emily, the mother's dead daughter, and the dying girl's sister. But by film's end, I wasn't sure if Emily was real, or had ever been real. Maybe she was, maybe not.

Both mother and daughter have visions that might be hallucinations or ghosts. I don't think there's a correct answer, but at least I should care what the answer might be. But I didn't. I was bored and annoyed by the film's ambiguity and "mystery."

Reviewers have said, "This film defies all our expectations!" Well, but I lost interest within a half hour, so I didn't have any expectations. But I kept watching, because of all the positive reviews, which had me hoping that something mystical or mind-boggling would manifest. Perhaps like Twin Peaks. But Esme, My Love is no Twin Peaks.

Choy is in love with her shots. So much so that she has difficulty trimming any fat from her film. We are "treated" to endless shots of lakes, mountains, trees, sunsets, sunrises, closeups of leaves, insects, and eyes. Lots of eye closeups. At film's end, we are treated to additional shots of a freshly dug hole. And of an abandoned green car. To no purpose. Yes, I know the hole is there. I know the car is there. It wasn't necessary to show me these several more times.

I suppose Choy thinks she is "creating atmosphere" or "mood." But it's just dreary padding. Throughout the film, I kept wanting to shout, "Get on with it already. Let's see something happen. What's this all about?"

Running at 105 minutes, Esme, My Love could easily have been trimmed to 85 or 80 minutes, without losing anything. Instead, the pacing would have improved.

The production values are nice. Good acting and cinematography. But without a good story, it's all wasted.

Not scary. Most of the film is a soap opera about small town girl Maria having left for New York City, now returning to reconnect with old boyfriend and realize that There's No Place Like Home.

Other reviewers have listed this film's many idiocies. I'll list some that haven't been mentioned yet:

* Maria is an attorney for an evil oil company. In the middle of the film, she announces that she's changing sides. She's quitting her client, and intends to represent the other side.

In real life, Maria would be disbarred for that. You can't represent one side in a dispute, then switch to the other side in the same dispute. It violates attorney-client privilege. Maria would know her first client's plans, legal strategies, strengths and weaknesses, etc.

* Maria is attacked by the wolf in the middle of the night. By the time the police are there, taking her statement, it must be well past midnight. Then two women (one of them a teenager) show up with a fruit basket to make Maria feel better.

Huh? How did they know that Maria had just been attacked? Shouldn't they be asleep at home? And what's a teenage girl doing coming out so late, to pick up a fruit basket from the grocery store to take to Maria?

The writer wanted to show that small town folk care about Maria, inspiring her change of heart. But an intelligent writer would have set that scene for the next day.

I only got this because it had Eva Green. Loved her in Penny Dreadful. But even she can't save The Luminaries.

Actually, I think Green was cast in The Luminaries because of her work in Penny Dreadful. She gave an amazing performance in Penny Dreadful's seance scene, and in The Luminaries, Green again performs at a seance. But this time, her seance performance is bland, drab, uninteresting.

I guess it shows that Green is the sort of actress who need the right script and director for her talents to really shine -- and The Luminaries has a dreadful script, poorly directed.

The biggest (of many) flaws in The Luminaries are the script and editing. The story is told in multiple time lines. Events are always flashing forward and back, across not just two time lines, but many. I was never clear whether I was seeing the future, or the past, or current events. It's as if someone wrote the film in linear fashion, then threw the pages into the air, and however the various scenes fell, that's the order in which the story was told.

Performances range from poor to mediocre, with the two leads -- Eve Hewson and Himesh Patel -- being on the poor end. To see Eva Green's best work, I recommend Penny Dreadful and Euphoria.

So many things wrong with this movie. Cheap sets, boring story, mostly mediocre to poor acting, with an annoying lead character

The story is a typical Lifetime woman-in-jeopardy film. (Is this a Lifetime movie?) A nurse (Natalie Zea) touches a dying (dead?) woman, and thinks she has a psychic connection with the woman. Zea then believes that the woman was killed by someone she knew (a lover?), and not by a random mugger, as the police think.

Zea gives a dreadful performance. She's playing the heroine, yet she's wholly unsympathetic. Pushy, mouthy, and annoying. Writers will do that. They think that if their character is on the side of right, anything they do is justified. So Zea follows people, self-righteously pushing herself into strangers' lives, because she's a self-appointed crusader. (She later freaks out when the stranger pushes back into her life.) She breaks into the dead woman's apartment and steals evidence. She later haughtily tells the police, "Well, somebody has to investigate, since you're not doing your job." (Actually, they are.)

The lead detective is almost as annoying. He becomes Zea's love interest. He's a typical "bad movie" cop. He beats up and threatens a suspect AFTER he knows the suspect is innocent, simply because the suspect upset Zea. We're supposed to be rooting for the cop, because, hey, what a tough cop! And we're supposed to sympathize with him and Zea, because they're lovers seeking justice, whereas the suspect is (supposedly) a lowlife, even if he is technically innocent.

There is a "surprise" ending, but so what.

I watched this film because it had Juliet Landau in it, but she only has a tiny cameo.

There is NO STORY. Just a bunch of amateur actors hanging out, talking at a Halloween party.

There's the hint of potential conflict. A homeless man has crashed the party. But nothing comes of this. At one point, Cole accuses the homeless man of being homeless and a thief. But the other party goers ignore this confrontation, so it goes nowhere.

Later, Cole seems to throw out the homeless guy. But then a few minutes later, we see that he didn't. The homeless guy is still at the party.

Everyone has a good time, and then goes home. The End.

What is this movie trying to be? From the title, I expected a horror film, but it's not.

For a while it seemed like the film was trying to be a romcom. One woman kept complaining that she can't find a good guy. But it's not a romcom.

Is it a chick flick? A bunch of woman engages in "smart chatter"? Well, but there are no real conversations. Just snippets of talk as the film moves quickly from one party goer to the next. And many of the female party goers are bimbos, not smart chick flick types.

For a brief moment, the film seemed to be a Christian feel good movie. Two party goers say they know the homeless guy. That he goes to their church. They explain that this guy is a brilliant community developer who became homeless after losing his wife and child to a drunk driver. But that he's learned a lot on the streets, and now has an amazing plan for an "environmentally sustainable homeless community."

Wow, this homeless guy sound so perfect! A loving husband and father who lost his family to a drunk driver -- AND he's working on an environmentally sustainable homeless community! No wonder the romcom girl is interested in him. Except that brilliant, sensitive homeless men are fantasies.

The film also takes a stab at magical children's fantasy. There's a gypsy fortune teller that keeps appearing and disappearing without explanation.

But there's also a lot of sexually explicit humor and semi-nudity, so it's not really a Christian feel good movie or a magical children's fantasy.

It's just a mess. No evidence of a script. Just snippets of haphazard conversation from a large, random group of party goers. Boring.

Sorry, I don't believe all the 10 star reviews.