III Slices of Life (2010) Reviews

• Good concept not realized due to terrible acting

  dean29002011-06-11

  I really do love horror anthologies and wish there were more made. I was hoping to be able to look past the budget and enjoy the film. Unfortunately it is impossible to look past non professional actors and watch a film in which this will be the only movie the main characters will be in because it just makes you want to cringe wit every line of dialog spoken. This has three stories and a wraparound story much like Creep show. The only story bearable is the final of the three. The movie is not scary, has zero tension, and when it attempts humor it falls flat on its face. I do not recommend this movie to even die hard horror fans. I do believe the stories could have been rewritten and made into a good little horror flick. However, this does not happen when you get your friends and family as the cast.

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• A Huge Waste of Time

  cliometrician2011-06-10

  After reading the six reviews here, and then watching the film, I can only conclude that these six are either friends of the actors, or they work for the production company. This is one of the worst indie horror films I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty. Think of the very worst of 70s low-budget horror films....now put this one in that category. There are three parts to the anthology: Work Life, Home Life, and Sex Life. The worst by far is The Programmer in Work Life. This part had some of the lamest acting I've ever seen on film and that goes for the entire cast. Not a one of them could have won an audition for a high school play. Dreadful. In Home Life the acting improved, and it showed some early promise of wit, but the wretched screen play fizzled out before the end. And yet this part was the pick of a bad lot. Sex Life, had it been played for humor, might have been marginally entertaining, especially the scene that's a takeoff on the movie TEETH, but on steroids. But weeping Jesus on the cross, the acting, direction, and plot begged to be put out of its misery. But I did like the kids' makeup. Do not believe a word of the first six reviews here....unbelievable how anyone could find even a modicum of praise for this rubbish. I only struggled through it so I could write this review as a warning. Sheesh!

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• Why do I do this to myself?

  Slowblivion2011-11-02

  After watching Slices of Life, SOL, I am reminded of what was once told to me. I know you can, but you shouldn't. In my case it was trying to steal road signs while drunk, in SOLs case, it's being made. I take offense to the numerous reviews of this film which are clearly friends of people who worked on the film or those workers themselves. Simply put, don't review if you are related to the project, it's tacky and looks desperate. I feel like direction may have been seriously lacking for the multitude of actors in this film. Not knowing where to look, not knowing what to do with their body, not knowing motivation for emotion or for lines... you name it, they don't have it. Another potential case of a Director/Editor/ADR/writer/Props/Producer/Makeup Artist doing a bit too much of everything else and not enough on any one job to do it well. This all could also stem from the 4 stories. I'm not going to go into each in depth since each could have a whole review and it would take far too long to write. So as an overall... You can't just say, hey, we've got 3 maybe OK ideas so lets just add a meaningless frame story and make 3 shorts. They don't stand alone and together they look even worse. Work life features meaningless dialogue with characters who have no impact on the story (stretching a thin plot for length). Not caring much about or for the protagonist means the climax (if not the whole story) is meaningless...which a girl who likes a guy who feels lonely being shot in the head is a pretty poor climax regardless. Then the denouement is cheesy and completely ridiculous. Home Life (book 2) starts out promising but quickly falls flat as the set up is trumped by an over eager jump into the horror. Then the "twist" is basically given to you after the husband first walks in the door at the beginning. There is no rising action as things simply just happen. One minute it's a a baby shower, then a demon child. Then a loving talk with a husband, then another haunting. Then supermarket, where visions occur. then home, where more visions and another haunting... No build up makes for scenes feeling lazily put together as well as just a prelude to some gory death. As for book 3, Sex Life... it's better than the rest as a story, but somethings are simply bothersome. The girl being molested by her uncle then getting vengeance with her crotch monster is unnecessary as well as the characters reaction (or non reaction) to her being raped in the first place. Not saying this story is good, merely put together better...as unbelievable as it is. The 4th frame story is just weak and pointless with zero pay off as of course the girl named Mira is in fact Irma...must have taken a page from Troll 2. Also, the fact that she has amnesia seems to be lost as she knows the protocol of the motel at the end while all she did was read her books at the front desk. I understand there are 3 separate stories wrapped up in the framing 4th story but the visuals within each sequence are confused. constant breaking of 180 line, unmotivated (frankly uninspired) camera movements, poor focus at times, completely unnecessary insert shots, inconsistent coverage, etc. Bottom line, not shot well. Continuity suffers through this film, as a script supervisor it bothers me to see these things. However I do recognize editing has a big effect on this and given the massive editing problems through this film that may be where the continuity errors stemmed from. Bad cuts, bad ADR, horrible SFX, using every cheap filter and general effect trick FCP or perhaps even Premiere has, I got a headache from the constant flashes, dutch angles, and digital shakes/zooms. Audio dies in this film. At times it's normal quality, then dips to on camera quality, then disappears, then reappears in ADR version... This isn't surprising as it took 4 years to film this so it's not realistic to believe they kept the same mixers or mics over that time frame. Look, bottom line is this should have been just the stories as shorts, this way the proper funds and time could be allocated to make the stories more interesting and the final screen product more valuable and entertaining. But as is, it's a cheap attempt at Creepshow or even a slightly more adult version of Are You Afraid of the Dark? My recommendation... avoid if you can. Not even much fun to try to mock as after a while even to riff becomes tedious.

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• Tales From The Crap

  chaozengine2011-10-24

  A movie that - in theory - could've passed muster as rejected Tales From The Crypt flick. The movie is three separate stories with an overall framing sequence set in a Bates Hotel ripoff The sequence doesn't really make sense though they obviously needed something to keep the movie organized. Each story itself would've had some redeeming quality but the director went with the cheap route going with blood, gore, and cheap SFX. The first one is probably the 'best' of the three. The second one shows its cards too early to be of interest. The last one is of the "kids run out of gas and find a place" variety which manages to throw a history twist and but then goes straight into the dumpster halfway in. This movie could've been a WHOLE lot better and that's the real waste here (and why the movie gets only a 3).

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• Impressive but Flawed Omnibus Horror Flick

  jfrentzen-942-2042112011-08-06

  The on screen title III SLICES OF LIFE amusingly renders the "three" in its Roman numeral, aligning the look of its rough edges with the hand-hewn lettering on the covers of three "books of life," a central motif in this gruesome horror effort. This omnibus movie, which is neither as bad as some here have said nor as fantastic as others purport, alternately succeeds in its various reworkings of horror movie motifs and fails on some of those trappings, too. Apparently inspired by George A. Romero's CREEPSHOW but also owning much to the classic British omnibus flicks from Amicus and other studios (TALES FROM THE CRYPT [1972] comes to mind), 3 SLICES OF LIFE -- I shall drop the Romans as the end credits revert to the Latin -- is a mixed bag but one that, in the end, I liked. The best episode in the trilogy, SEX LIFE, closes the film. Neatly constructed, it weaves two seemingly unrelated tales into a clever pay off -- the heroine of the piece unwittingly inherits a literally monstrous family curse, which neatly ties up some plotting involving an incestuous horror that begs for final justice. The characters in SEX LIFE -- the villains, that is -- are not what they seem, which is a nice change from the previous two tales, which are much more obvious in their villainry. The acting in SEX LIFE is, likewise, far better than in the preceding segments, HOME LIFE and WORK LIFE. However, SEX LIFE (as with the rest of the segments) suffers from director-writer Anthony G. Sumner's insistence upon bringing in unrelated horror tropes (the legend of Countess Bathory, in this case) that have no business in the movie at all. Sumner shoehorns various in-jokes and references as if to tell the viewer he knows his stuff about Romero, Sam Raimi, and David Cronenberg -- as well as the more arcane trivia, such as Bathory. This indulgence takes away from the basic storytelling, though, which is otherwise good. SEX LIFE is good enough to stand alone without the baggage of 3 SLICE's framing story or the other pieces, of which the framing story is the most valid. It conjures a spooky was-it-a-dream attitude brought into focus via some supernatural folderol involving personality transfer; there is also a clever use of bringing in characters from the other episodes to create mild chills. The second segment, HOME LIFE is also smartly framed, presenting some truly frightening ghost children who haunt the very pregnant protagonist. But the piece is frankly overlong and the nice build-up of suspense is damaged by a very messy, gory finale. Here, again, Sumner has a handle on special effects sequences but tends to fall back on cheap tricks instead of trusting in what is essentially decent storytelling. The bane of many low-budget horror movie directors is they give up and rely on banal in-jokes and references to other movies to cover up obvious plot holes; or, they are just lazy and think a good wink and a nod in the direction of zombified George Romero-isms will tide them over. Meanwhile, the audience feels cheated. Sumner cheats us in the latter way in the first tale, WORK LIFE. An ostensible comic-gore romp, this segment offers a nerdy office worker who feels slighted and sends out his "zombie email virus" disk to infect the world. His transformed colleagues become drooling EVIL DEAD-like zombies and chase him around until destroyed by gun-toting government bio-terror soldiers, in the manner of Romero's THE CRAZIES. In spite of these excesses, Sumner is a talent to watch. 3 SLICES OF LIFE succeeds admirably in some ways, especially in the last segment. Its failings may be chalked up to a filmmaker simply trying to bite off more than he can chew. --Jeffrey Frentzen

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