Disclaimer: The following review contains frank and explicit discussion of Vestra Picture’s new horror anthology, A Taste of Phobia. Anthologophobes and those that think anthologies are just a way to take a couple of good ideas and bundle that with a load of filler to occupy 90 minutes, proceed at your own risk. Viewer discretion is advised.

In the spirit of films like ABCs of Death, A Taste of Phobia comes to us from that same scattershot school of thought, a mangled mass of tones and ideas that peppers in just enough whiplash and euphoria to keep you on the ride for just one more segment. 14 directors have been gathered in a spray and pray offensive to push as many of your buttons as possible over the course of 90 minutes. That’s about 6 minutes per segment. 6 minutes to establish a premise, build characters, and bring everything to its gruesome conclusion. All of this talk of time is causing my chronophobia to act up, so let’s get to the meat of things.

Chaetophobia – Fear of hair

And so the bait is set. There are a number of considerations when devising the order of a piece of art that can take on multiple permutations like an album or anthology. Mood, pacing, but perhaps most importantly, quality. It never hurts to make a good first impression. A Taste of Phobia is certainly aware of this, as it bursts out of the gate with a sprightfully brutal little gem about a very clean-shaven barber that just wants to take a little bit off the top. Clinical color-grading and jarring cinematography meld with the boisterous energy of Figaro’s Aria from The Barber of Seville to create one of the best cat and mouse scenes I’ve seen in a long time. An extended 8-minute long segment that demands to be twice that length, this one from first-time director Lorenzo Zanoni is worth the ticket price on its own.

Pharmacophobia – Fear of medication

Then we get this one. It’s not bad. There’s a dreamlike feel that comes from some surreal visuals, including an island of foaming pill bottles and the softest of focuses that I’m convinced took an entire bottle of Vaseline. Kind of a fun punchline, but nothing too exciting going on here.

Parthophobia – Fear of vergins

Yup, that’s how they spell it. I tried looking up what a vergin was on Google Images and I found a picture of an adorable bronze man holding open his massive vagina. I would show you that image, but this is 2018 and adsense doesn’t let us have fun anymore. We open on a guy falling into a volcano, presumably to escape the invasion of the vergins. He wakes up and we find out he’s a porn star who’s been scheduled for a scene with a virgin. I mean, all virgins are in porn are completely legit. What, you think they’d just go on the internet and tell lies? He is not okay with this and his mind rejects the prospect by putting an After Effects bloat effect on the world that makes him go crazy. Not particularly compelling, but has its moments of enjoyable weirdness. Speaking of weirdness…

Coprophobia – Fear of feces

Do you want to see real truth? Do you want to see the id deconstructed? Do you want to see a man hunched over, buck naked, caked in his own refuse, engaged in a valiant struggle to shove a teddy bear monster up his ass? You are a very sick person and boy, do I have the product for you. Jason Impey , director of Women Prisoners of SS Camp from Hell and Grindsploitation 4: Meltsploitation, films I can only assume are of a similar class and nuance, casts our scene in a pallid green light evoking a grade school play purgatory and proceeds to guide the action with the artistic vision of a burgeoning Henenlotter. Martin W. Payne , known for Gimp Killer and Toxic Schlock turns in a tortured performance with all the pent-up tension and anxiety one would expect of a man terrified of the contents of his own toilet. 10/10, a soaring achievement in the fecal arts.

Mysophobia – Fear of Germs

While I’m not sure where the film or indeed the whole of human artistic endeavor could hope to go from there, Mysophobia is a competent, if tonally jarring follow-up. At first glance this almost appears to be a continuation of the first segment, with our lead bearing a similar level of hairlessness as in that segment, minus the Bob Geldof in The Wall no eyebrows look and featuring a similar washed out, anesthetized aesthetic. It takes a bit of time to get going, but it ends up making up a lot of ground in a gruesome climax with some simple, yet disturbing practical effects with a menacing ambient score and foley work.

Mazeophobia – Fear of Mazes

Well, we’re six segments in. We were overdue for a stinker and you could smell this one coming over the segment with the actual shit. Managing to fit so many technical and artistic blunders into a short where so little happens might actually be worth recognizing in a dystopian future where the Razzies overtake the Academy Awards (should be around 2025 at this rate). It’s just unpleasant to look at with a white balance that goes from looking like the Sun is moments away from consuming the Earth to amateur dark ride footage. The characters are paper-thin and the performances must have been captured in a single take. The cinematography seemed actively antagonistic to my attempts to milk any joy from his experience and the nonsensical plot features a deus ex machina that is improbable even by that standard to make a flimsy political message. The maze concept itself is relegated to some terribly dry quasi b-roll so the director could get the go ahead to make the completely unrelated short that he wanted to make. This is the film’s low point and if you can get past this, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but the best of times are behind you, which is convenient because I need to start wrapping this up and we’ve still got more than half this film to trudge through.

Astrophobia – Fear of stars

I guess this is what happens when you take the term “cosmic horror” literally. The story follows a man who becomes obsessed with an astronomy Youtuber going by AstroViking and begins to descend into existential madness as he comes to grips with his insignificance in the universe. Featuring some pretty engaging acting from  Giulio Pampiglione as Adrian as he becomes increasingly obsessed with this world that seems to be completely unknown to him, I still had trouble getting past the feeling that while the short treats it subject as though it were staggeringly profound, it ends up feeling like a horrific parody of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

Mageirocophobia – Fear of cooking

A woman is cooking a delicious meal of raw fish on a massive bed of chopped carrots when the food starts talking to her and making her hallucinate vegan talking points. Some interesting lighting and corny CG effects that are charming in their own way make for a fun lightly-surreal short.

Gerascophobia – Fear of aging

Set in the near future where the human body is a vessel that can be bought and sold to maintain immortal youth and beauty, an aging model looks for a bargain replacement, but as usual, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. The acting here isn’t anything special and the concept isn’t entirely fresh either, but there is a bold visual and aural style here that emphasizes visual metaphor as a way at digging into something more meaningful, some of which hit and some that did not and a payoff that should please fans of technological dystopian fantasy like Black Mirror.

Politicophobia – Fear of politics

Edginess incarnate. Apathy politics through the lens that voting is a meaningless action that fuels an inherently corrupt power structure regardless of which path is chosen. Not necessarily a worthless premise, if not necessarily the most useful philosophy, it at least serves as bountiful source of satire. Nuance and cleverness are in short supply here, however, as a old white man in a suit with clown makeup on orates aggressively in German while a talking head drones on about how meaningless everything is, man. Aggressive fence-sitting and disengagement at its finest, I’m just not sure what it’s hoping to achieve.

Somniphobia – Fear of sleep

An engineer has been up for days working on a project but he still isn’t done and his employer isn’t willing to take that for an answer. This is a very visual short that chronicles his deterioration and mania as he tirelessly works on his project with some uncomfortable close zooms and use of light and shadow.

Oneirophobia – Fear of dreams

A woman dreams about getting pulled around in the desert and the colors keep changing like we’re at a disco. Other than that it looks nice enough, but there isn’t too much to say about this one.

Nyctophobia – Fear of the dark

You seen Lights Out? It’s Lights Out.

Hemophobia – Fear of blood

This one’s mostly just to tie up the wraparound, which I haven’t mentioned because it’s pretty inconsequential to the plot. Just a woman watching the segments on a TV with an occasional break for some gore or nudity and that’s basically how it ends, with some more senseless gore and nudity. I’m not complaining.

As a fan of the genre, I found A Taste of Phobia to be quite enjoyable overall. It has several completely forgettable segments, but that’s expected of just about any anthology and most of the stuff worth seeing is conveniently placed towards the beginning. I would say if you aren’t a big fan of the genre, still give the first short a try, which is excellent and see how that goes. If you’re like me and can’t get enough of them, you’ll probably want to stick around until Mazeophobia, but only the hardcore will want to want to stick it out to the very end. A Taste Of Phobia won’t be converting many anthologophobes out there, but given that it’s available for free with Amazon Prime, it’s might be a better way to kill 20 minutes than watching reruns of Tales from the Darkside.

Rent or buy A Taste of Phobia on Amazon.