I do love me some compilations and that is just what The Source of Shadows happens to be. Small bite-sized delicious horror stories pushed into a 90-minute sausage eager to be devoured. Maybe I shouldn’t write these synopses while I am hungry… But enough food analogies. Are these bite-sized (God damn it!) stories any good? Only one way to find out!
As previously said, this is a compilation. Because of that, I cannot really give a decent synopsis or we’d be here all night. Instead, I will provide an overall feelings analysis after having watched it all. One of the big things is that all of the short movies had incredible scenery and some pretty decent production value. You can tell that these up-and-coming directors were given some bags of money to produce their horror stories. Some used their budgets wisely and ended up with some pretty decent stuff. Others missed the mark rather badly.
Another major theme that I need to address in The Source of Shadows is the overuse of jump scares. I thought we had gone over this plenty of times. Loud noises do not equal scary. Just because I jump out of my seat because hellish screeching ravages my eardrums does not mean that I am actually scared. Give me terror that keeps me asking, keep the monster secret, keep me in the dark rather than be all up in my face.
If you enjoy good horror then this will be a bit of a roulette ride for you. But as a horror geek I enjoyed some of the stories, others were okayish, and a few were just bad. But the overall balance tips in the favor of this being a recommendation if you want some braindead horror for your Friday night spooks!
