So Dark Whispers: Volume 1 (and presumably any future volumes) is an anthology film featuring 10 short, dark pieces created by women — a production of Hemlock and Cedar Films, an Australian company that “focuses on female-led, character driven genre films for international audiences.”

Anthology films are a mixed bag. The best ones (I’m thinking of Creepshow and Twilight Zone for example) keep it to four or five titles.  It’s hard to really develop a story in less than 20 minutes. Not impossible, but hard. These shorts average out at less than 10 minutes apiece, and some are more successful than others.

Short anthologies like this do have one advantage over longer ones: if you don’t like one, you don’t have to wait long for something different. Think Spike and Mike. Think vaudeville (a subject near and dear to my heart).  And then there’s the question of theme: how cohesive do you want the pieces to be? There’s advantage to having them all be as different as possible, and there’s advantage to having them linked by some common element.

So there’s a big challenge here.  Did Dark Whispers: Volume 1 do it well?

Well, it’s a mixed bag, because of course it is. How could it be anything else? While tone, characters and even medium vary from piece to piece, there’s a recurring theme of unreliable narrator, of imagination versus reality, of welcome and unwelcome death.

Most of these shorts feel like act one of a 90’s knock-off Twilight Zone series. There’s not quite enough to them for them to feel like a complete story. There’s not enough to engage us so we care about the inevitable “twist” that most of them feature. I think sometimes it’s because of a vagueness from the filmmaker, but some feel like they are a severely-edited version of a longer piece. A trailer for a film that might be pretty fun to watch.

Which is not to say they’re bad, and it’s definitely not to say the collection is bad. It’s just a little empty overall.

My personal favorites of Dark Whispers: Volume 1 are the two where something happens. They’re not just an idea for a story, or a premise for a tall tale, they’re fully-developed in the time and feel complete. “The Man Who Caught a Mermaid” (directged by Kaitlin Tinker) and “The Intruder” directed by Janine Hewitt) were both by far the most interesting stories.

In the former, the wife of a fisherman obsessed with catching a mermaid has a surprise when she peeks into his shed. In the latter, a woman waits for police to arrive after she calls about a prowler.  Because they both seem to relax and just tell a story, the endings seem natural and unforced. No torturous “what a twist!” capper.

“Grillz” (directed by Lucy Gouldthorpe) is also fascinating, but in a different way.  It’s an unusual take on a vampire serial killer, and it’s not so much a complete story as it is a fascinating flashback from the middle of a much bigger film. It’s a “what if” setup that feels like it will lead to something quite grand and interesting. It leaves me wanting more, but not feeling short-changed.

Mixed bag as Dark Whispers: Volume 1 is, I am looking forward to Volume 2.

6 out of 10 Mermaid Boobs