THINGS (1993) **

Things is a shot-on-video horror anthology.  What it lacks in budget, it makes up for with cool monsters and some decent gore.  It’s not completely successful (not by a long shot), but there’s some things to like about Things.  

In the “Wrap-Around” (**), a woman finds her husband’s mistress at a sleazy hotel room.  She pulls a gun on the girl and ties her to a chair (while topless).  She then proceeds to tell her two stories about ghoulish “things”.

The first tale is “The Box” (**).  A quartet of prostitutes buy an old theater and turn it into a den of inequity.  The evil mayor wants them gone and is more than willing to turn his evil face-biting slug monster loose on whoever gets in his way. 

The low budget, crummy videography, and amateurish acting has a certain charm.  The best thing about this segment is the slug creature that resides in the box.  It’s obvious that most of the budget went towards creating the monster, which is okay, I guess.  There’s a solid helping of gore and at least one decent jump scare to keep you interested.  Too bad the scenes where the surviving girls stalk around the theater looking for the monster are slowly paced, darkly lit, and go on far too long.  

“Thing in the Jar” (**) is the second story.  An abusive husband tells his wife, “There’s only three things you got to do:  Eat, Shit, and Fuck!”  Soon after, she begins having increasingly violent dreams about him killing and torturing her.  When she tells him about them, of course, the lout is completely unsympathetic.  Her instincts turn out to be correct and her hubby tries to do away with her for good.  He quickly discovers she won’t go away so easily.

There is some good camerawork and lighting in this segment.  Unfortunately, the sound really sucks.  (The sound effects of crickets almost drown out the dialogue in some scenes.)  While a couple of the hallucinations/dreams are funny (like when the wife sees eyeballs in her husband’s eggs), the domestic disturbance drama isn’t all that involving and the acting is rather wooden.  The monster isn’t quite as impressive as the slug from the previous story, but the villain’s comeuppance is appropriately gory.  

As far as shot-on-video horror anthologies go, Things isn’t nearly as bad as most.  There are one or two effective moments here, which is more than you can say for most of these flicks.  That’s far from making it a winner though.