Main cast: Natasha Lyonne (Bethany Daniels), Art Kitching (Seth Morrow), Jonathan Jackson (Devin), Bridget Fonda (Mary Hughes), and Henry Rollins (The Host)
Directors: Po-Chih Leong and Joe Dante
If a Tree Falls… and no one is around to witness it, does it count?
Okay, I know I’ve butchered that saying, but the first segment touches on this question in a way.
Bethany, Seth, and Devin die when their vehicle flies off the road and into the lake. They see their dead bodies inside the car as it sinks to the bottom of the lake… yikes.
Then again, since no one else witness their deaths, their… souls, ghosts, whatever remain still and allow them to resume their lives as if the accident and their deaths had never happened. In a way, they have cheated death, yay!
Devlin, the most religious of the three, however soon begins to despair at their situation. Surely cheating death is not allowed in the rule book of Jesus, so maybe they should just, you know, die! The other two, however, beg to differ.
Oh boy, this one, where do I start? It starts out fine, but soon degenerates into melodramatic swill that would make Twilight look restrained.
Whatever that is potentially philosophical and thought provoking is especially marred by Jonathan Jackson’s “Hi! I’m a wooden block today!” method acting and the use of bizarrely inappropriate upbeat music right after dramatic and tragic moments.
This whole segment feels like it had been changed and improvised a lot as shooting progresses, as the end result is just a mess of bad acting, bad line deliveries, and inexplicable decisions on the parts of everyone involved in the whole thing.
Next is The Occupant, a standard and even derivative “Oh no, there is a stranger secretly living in my house all this while… and I think they’re cray cray!” affair. It’s directed by Joe Dante, however, so it has some impressive pedigree.
In this one, Mary realizes that something is a miss when plates and stuff starting being moved around the house, but as par for the course in these stories, the cops don’t believe her.
There are only two possible outcomes here, and I’m hoping for the one that is on the less clichéd side. I get my wish, but even then, this twist results in more unanswered questions and even plot holes. Then again, I suppose one can wave away these plot holes due to the protagonist being a clearly unreliable narrator.
This segment is miles better than the previous one, if only because Bridget Fonda isn’t trying to emulate a block of wood too much. Still, there is something about it that feels just as unsatisfying to watch as the previous segment.
