Tenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 Southbound

I do enjoy horror anthologies - I like the short film nature of the individual segments - and after reading the more-than-lukewarm review of Southbound (2015) on Final Girl, I thought I should check it out.  This one doesn't have a strong, overarching framework, just the voice of a radio DJ fading in and out, and characters from the various segments passing each other by.  I'm okay with that.  Sometimes the framework gets pushed too hard.  Here, the segments are only loosely connected.  Of course, everyone in the movie seems to be stuck in Hell, so that's a tie that binds.

The first segment has a couple of blood-spattered dudes just trying to get home after a rough night.  They stop by a diner/gas station and then get caught in a loop, unable to get away.  They are being stalked by some flying/floating/skeleton/tentacle/bug things and let me tell you, the creature design on those ... things is GREAT.  Really, really creepy off in the distance and fantastic up close.  Best part of the whole dang movie.

The second segment has a girl band stranded with a flat tire in the middle of the desert.  They are picked up by an extremely dorky couple who are straight out of mid-century.  Things go from weird to worse, however, and the girls find themselves in the clutches of a cult.  This segment is also pretty good.

One of the band members escapes and whilst running away, gets hit by a distracted driver in segment #3.  When he calls 911, they say they can't locate him and advise him to move the mangled girl to the next town he gets to.  He finds a small, seemingly deserted town with a hospital; the hospital is also completely deserted.  The 911 operators tell him he'll have to try to save the wounded girl himself and walk him through some gory body horror.  Pretty gross.

Then there's a completely WTF bit about an old dude that shoots up the sketchiest bar on the planet, looking for his sister.  Things get super weird and hard to follow there.  And then there's a nasty, violent home invasion segment that ties to the first segment, although it's not clear how or why, and then there are more tentacles and my notes at that point are just: WTF? WTF?? WTF is going on???

Like most anthologies, Southbound is hit or miss, with probably more misses than hits.  But while it may have been incoherent at times, it was never boring, so that's a big point in its favor.  Add that amazing creature design and you've got a low budget, indie omnibus flick that isn't a waste of its running time.

P.S. Stacie Ponder is doing an ENTIRE month of posts on the new Suspiria.  It's on my list to get to for this month.