Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker – Review

Tune in to Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker . This horror anthology, the sequel to 2019’s A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio gets its UK premiere on digital this April, courtesy of Reel 2 Reel Films.

Each segment is from a different director , including Nathan Crooker (Midnight Delivery), Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium), Carlos Goitia (Asylum: Twisted Horror and Fantasy Tales), David M. Night Maire (The Hobbyist), Mia Kate Russell (Auditioning Fanny), Ryan J. Thompson (The Dark Tapes) and Adam O’Brien (Banshee).

Candy (Paula Brasca – Focus) is a late-night radio DJ for Nightmare Radio who invites listeners to share their real-life horror tales. But when a contributor’s phone calls become more and more persistent, what begins as a host of harmless spooky stories, turns into something far more sinister as she discovers just how far an obsessed fan is willing to go…

As callers share a series of frightening and diverse horror stories – from ghosts seeking revenge to vintners with sadistic intent – Candy’s own predicament steadily worsens. Can she stop her nightmare from becoming a reality before it’s too late?

The through thread of the radio DJ works fine, giving an Adrienne Barbeau Stevie Wayne in The Fog vibe to proceedings. The Night Stalker who calls, is a little bit Ghostface mixed with Jigsaw, with a sprinkling of Alfred from Batman and the story, as with most of the shorts, comes to a completely foreseeable end.

The first segment is called

A woman in a house, TV turns on and off playing screaming sounds and weird pictures of bleeding eyes and men in historic garb, she’s scared (well you would be) or is she having a mental breakdown. Oh and there’s a Bride for some reason. There’s some nice touches to this, the lighting is great, but it just isn’t particularly scary, even the loud noise jump scares didn’t really get me. The bride just looks like her net curtains have fallen on her head. Not off to the strongest start, but does hold your attention.

Our Crypt Keeper DJ says “We begin dear listeners with a woman dressed as a bride and then total darkness. Better not draw any conclusions.”

I’m guessing something’s lost in translation there but O.K. Candy, we won’t.

We then move into

I really enjoyed this segment, it had a nice psychological, body horror, folklore slant to it, and if you have ever tried to build your own business from home, you might see yourself in it… a bit.

Set in an overgrown dilapidated cookie cut housing estate, giving an unsettling Dr Caligari feel a photographer is struggling for business, spending a lot of time alone at home, add some marital problems and it’s the perfect set up for her seeming mental decline. At night some foxes visit her bins, and she becomes obsessed with them, tracking them to take photographs.

What is the meaning of everything she sees, is it real? Her behaviour becomes more and more erratic until her husband has to confront her. Why is she obsessed with the Foxes? Is there something about the house they live in in a seemingly deserted estate?

Horror wise this is arguably the strongest segment of the whole film. It’s not perfect, it’s a bit all over the place, but it’s really eerie and if you like your folk horror you’ll get a kick out of this one.

Next up we have

A man gets a glimpse of the future via his T.V. picking up the CCTV in his apartment block.

This segment was a nice idea, but didn’t work for me. Didn’t particularly make sense and feels like it would benefit from being a feature film rather than a short so the idea of this guy being able to see into the future via his T.V. could be expanded. The thing in the footage looks very much like man in The Strangers.

Let’s move on to

O.K. as far as I could work out this is about an estate agent, or a location scout, showing a film maker around a possible location which is an abandoned insane asylum. It’s nicely shot and the performances in it are good, but the story just made no sense to me really to be fair. There’s no connection between what occurs to the people in it. It’s vengeful spirit malarky that doesn’t really hit the right notes. Having said that, there’s some decent tension building and it’s shot nicely it just falls short with some “Why not just go out the way you came” moments. And the end…

We now get to the crux of Candy’s connecting story, we see Jack and we get some (a little on the nose seeing as he’s called Jack) The Shining action. The Radio show is seemingly being broadcast from an old squat. Bizarre.

Anyway, next up is

I’ll be honest, the confusion levels weren’t helped by this section.

A woman’s driving with her sister, goes to a garage a man pulls in and “kidnaps” her sister. She drives off AHEAD of the kidnapper and is chased, headlights being flashed, horn being blasted. Then nothing. She turns around to go for a look, as you do in all good horrors. Then the end makes it obvious what they where trying to show. Unfortunately the actions of her driving away, rather than following combined with the whole thing being almost dialogue free with no noise coming from within the “Kidnappers” car during the chase make it a little bit confusing. You work it out, but none of it makes much sense.

The last section is

This is the most filmic of all the sections and closes proceedings well. A family run winery seems to be crushing more than grapes. Some visitors come, and enjoy the unique welcome only given at Chateau Savignon.

Another short that would probably benefit from being a feature so they could explain a little backstory. Not much I can say about this one to keep it spoiler free apart from, who are what are they feeding with the juicy goodness they are squeezing?

Then we go back to find out what became of our gracious host Candy.

All in all this is a mixed bag of horror shorts, some hit, some miss but none are completely awful (which is often the case with anthology horrors). I don’t know if I’ve just watched too many horrors in my life, but none of the segments were particularly scary. Foxes and Chateau had me intrigued and wondering what was going on, giving an overall unsettling feeling, but the ones that you’d think would be “shockers” like Playback and Insane just don’t really hit the mark. They’d likely be really good if you just stumbled across them as stand alone on Youtube, but they don’t really have enough of a feed through for an anthology.

It’s enough to keep you watching and the performances across the entire thing are fine.

I’ve actually watched it more than once, and can’t decide if that’s because it was good enough for multiple watches, or if it was just because I wanted to make sure I’d not missed something obvious to help with my confusion with some of the shorts.

Anyway…

You’ll never forget the night you set the dial to Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker.

On UK digital platforms 24 April 2023

“This is Nightmare Radio, where horror stories never end.”

The end