My quick rating - 3,7/10. Shudder original. Don't go in "The Lake" type segment, pretty lame. "Brand of Evil" is a poor Satan-worshipping story. "Bride Before You" Ehhh.... "Fugue State" Tony Todd was in this short about religious fanatics. He was by far the best part. "Daddy" had a pretty decent premise to it but wasn't very well done. Very rushed feeling to it. "Sundown" Interesting swerve in this one although it was slightly obvious. As you can tell by the rundown of each segment, it wasn't very impressive at all. I know this was a follow-up to Shudders successful Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror which was a well-made documentary and launchpad for this showcase of Black writers/directors. The problem here is it really doesn't matter what color we are talking about since the shorts were just not good. None of them packed any punch to their stories. The first three were entirely too predictable while the last two were good ideas that just didn't get proper treatment. All of them were given the proper treatment as far as aesthetics. So it wasn't a lack of ability behind the camera. It was all just a quickly forgotten anthology. Lately, Shudder has been serving up some pretty good stuff, so an occasional swing and miss is expected. Still, it was able to slide in for #shocktober and will not become any staple for the holiday.
