In this Argentinian horror film, multiple tales crisscross and overlap, creating a whole that shows chaos in a city. Students torture teachers, party goers discuss snuff films, a couple is being spied on in a motel room, men standing watch have an interesting night, and mourners meet creatures in a cemetery. Written by Sebastian Rotstein with collaborative writer Nicolas Gueilburt and co-directed by Sebastian and Federico Rotstein, Terror 5 works these 5 stories together and interconnects them in a way that makes the whole work. The characters are varied but mostly young people, most likely to appeal to their demographic and for parts of the story to make more sense.
That being said, this is a big cast with each stories having their own team on scream per se and these teams work well together in terms of characters and what happens to them. The stories are rather simple which is not to say that they are not interesting, but their simplicity does lend itself to the short story format that they get here as opposed to full stories. The most effective story this reviewer is the one about the students and their teachers. The characters are more interesting and show more interesting development. The less effective is the group of party goers, drinking, smoking, and talking about these snuff movies one of them as supposedly seen.
This particular story is not bad in and of itself, but the characters are mostly grating leading the viewer to care less about them. The cast here could also be the reason being this. The two leads in the students versus teachers’ story have a good chemistry with the young woman giving possibly the best performance of the entire movie. Her performance if filled with emotions and care, while her love interest is a bit more confused about what is going and properly wondering as to what he wants to do.
Their performances make their segment stand out as the best of the bunch and give it more resonance for this reviewer. The film’s different segments all have cinematography by Marcelo Lavintman and editing by Nicolás Goldbart and Federico Rotstein which give them a cohesive look and help bring the stories together. The film entirely takes place at night, giving an extra connection between the stories and their settings. The choice of them all having some kind of connection, as small as it may be, also helped keep the stories flowing together and working together.
Terror 5 is a decent anthology in the vein of Southbound and A Christmas Horror Story in how the stories interconnect and the film goes back and forth between the stories. Terror 5 is a good film, but not great unfortunately. Some of the segments, mainly the students versus teachers one, are stronger than the others which creates a disconnect with the weaker, but not bad, ones. The look of the film keeps everything connected visually and the helps bring the stories together.
Ithaca Fantastik 2016 runs from the 9th until the 13th of November 2016.