Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Wonderful character development!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

After watching this a few years back, I didn't think too much of it. I remember liking the last section, Listen, with the music that makes people go crazy. On the strength of that segment, I decided to pick up a Blu-ray on sale.After rewatching the movie - out of order - I realized it's actually better than I gave it credit for.There are five segments. There's actually a thread connecting all of them. I checked the other reviews here, and it doesn't seem like any of them noticed this.The corporation that is centered on in the fourth segment has tentacles in all of the other stories. It also sets up the fifth segment.All of the stories have something to offer. They aren't especially scary, but at the least, they are interesting. The only one that suffers is the Sight segment, which seems like an interesting idea, but the execution is a bit confusing.

I came away from this with a good over all feeling; at least a feeling of liking the movie, as a whole, not so much from the gore that was just a bit too syrupy. So you get one over all story told in five parts without the usual arc to pull it together. Instead of that usual arc you get a "Wolfram & Hart" almost Umbrella Corp if somehow it had the Brazil twist running through the whole movie that works nicely, and has some nice little payoffs throughout, and upon re-review you see things from the new angle. Sadly the first story is just so slow, and dry that it really bogs the rest of the stories down from the start, so when Touch ends so very suddenly it sort of makes more sense. I wanted more from the blood effects, I just find making blood look like syrup is just cheap, it doesn't get like that till it has had some time to set, so the fresh stuff should look more like fresh blood. But I do pick. In the end I found that I really did Enjoy this movie, and would think that anyone not afraid of a little fake blood, and vomit (lots, of both) then you will to.

An anthology series about the five senses all interlocked together.The Good Story-Touch. Stranded in the forest after a car accident, a blind boy tries to find his way to help only to stumble across a serial killer's secret hideout. Unable to get away, he has to rely on his instincts to get away. While there wasn't a whole lot to really like here, as the ingenuity of the boy having to use his other senses to outwit the madman is negated by the twist ending of requiring him to survive anyway, it really saps the entry of it's potential as the forest setting works nicely and the scenes of him wandering around finding the area is pretty chilling. As well, it doesn't really use it's targeted sense all that well so it has some problems but remains the best of the episodes.The Bad Stor(ies)-Smell. Unlucky in life, a man receives a mysterious bottle of perfume from a strange woman and soon begins a run of good fortune. However, he soon begins to realize there's dangerous side- effects to the strange accessory. While on the surface this had some potentially intriguing ideas about the destruction of the human body and how those around us will forgo physical attraction over material wealth, the fact that these are downplayed so significantly in favor of a tired rehashing a romance between separated lovers makes this one feel much longer than it really is. In addition, the fact that this one never really plays up the fact that the perfume makes all the difference and it never exploits how it smells to others is a real lost art, meaning this one is really only watchable for the make-up effects on the decomposing body.Sight-Troubled by his loneliness, an optometrist uses his machines to extract his patient's memories and use them to experience their life. When he inadvertently triggers a homicidal man into a killing spree, he finds himself on the killer's list. Frankly, this could've been something as it really plays on a true fear for once, in that the strange machines at the doctor's office do more than help us, and the stalking in the abandoned office late at night really get quite chilling at times, but this one is just way too short to mean anything. It's got all the ingredients it needs to be creepy and chilling, except length for everything is over far too quickly and it never really uses the sight angle at all as the whole stolen-memories angle is used to experience their lives, not to fix his ailing sight and the process for stealing memories is happened-upon, which could've made this work more than it does. It's the closest to going up, but it stays down here.Taste-Heading into an office for an interview, a man finds the agency who called him in to be quite unusual and strange. When he rejects their offer, he finds himself stalked through the hallways by the executive who has a strange habit of eating the ungrateful. Quite simply, this was the lamest entry in the series. The main point here is that it has no connection to it's chosen sense, and features a man running away from a woman with a strange contraption on her head that lets her devour human flesh. It doesn't have any time devoted to it and really seems to be there simply to interconnect all the different story lines together since that's how we know they belong together, but it doesn't do anything with them and feels so lame and unrealistic the image of the contraption is wasted by all the negative elements around it.Hearing-Attempting to fix a documentary, a film crew finds their subject is an insane music composer who crafted a tune that made people commit suicide. Unaware of the dangers of their assignment, they soon realize the deadly powers of the song and try to stop it from spreading. Another one that had potential with a pretty creepy set-up and a rather innovative approach to a clichéd subject, but instead the insistence of this one to appear as a found-footage piece severely diminishes it's impact. The shaking footage and tons of obscure shots really do this one in, and when the horror finally hits home it's in the last few minutes since all they do is argue with each other over how to edit the piece together and then flashes of the song that they're working on. A great concept, horrible execution.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity and drug use.

Saw this at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival last night. This is a very cool concept for an anthology film. There are five segments, each one representing a different one of the five senses. I thought all of the shorts had a very unique "voice." Each segment had an unexpected take on the sense that was portrayed. I enjoyed the look of the films. We were told that Claudio Rietti shot most of the segments. The only segment that looked "different" was the "HEARING" segment, but that's because it was found footage, so it worked. Surprisingly, each story had a very different tone, which was cool.A few notes on each segment (MINOR SPOILERS): SMELL: Had a bit of dark humor throughout. The director said he was inspired by Tales From the Crypt, and it felt like a lost episode of that show. This was a pretty intricate story with a lot of cool elements. Mixed funny/gross/dramatic in a fun and weird way. Great music. The director and the main actors from this segment were there for a Q&A afterward. Fun to hear them talk about doing the gore effects.SIGHT: I enjoyed the performance of the "evil boyfriend." This segment also had some cool "vision effects." I felt the ending was predictable. However, the concept was very original. Cool sound design.TOUCH: Great performance by the little boy. The villain is the same actor as the "evil boyfriend" in SIGHT. Not sure if it was supposed to be the same character? That was a little confusing. Overall, though, cool story with good tension throughout. Cool camera work and "blind POV" shots.TASTE: This one looked really cool. Neat location, interesting setup. Drags a bit in the middle. I was antsy waiting for what was going to happen. The main character is going to an interview at a strange corporation. We see characters from the other segments that presumably work for this evil corporation, but that's not explained very well. Cool, bloody ending.LISTEN: Nice play on the found footage concept. Felt sort of like a horror version of the Dharma Initiative tapes from Lost. Good chemistry between the two leads. The ending felt rushed or poorly executed and didn't quite work for me. But it was great until the finale.After the five segments, the film just ends. I was disappointed with the ending. We never get any explanation of how these shorts are tied together. We see characters from all the shorts appear at the evil corporation in the TASTE segment. Also, we hear about the "Watershed" company. But, it's never really explained how the characters or worlds fit together or what the intent of the evil corporation is. I would have loved one last little segment at the end to sort of wrap it all up and give us some answers.Overall, I think it was a solid effort by everyone involved. We were told that each segment had only 4 days to shoot and a very tight budget. Considering those facts, the quality is EXTREMELY impressive. There aren't that many "scares" in the movie. Horrific things happen, but overall it's more suspense/thriller with some gross-out gore moments. I think SMELL and LISTEN stood out the most, maybe because they were first and last and had the longest running times. However, I really liked all the segments. Most anthology films have one or two good segments, but every segment in this film had an interesting story, good characters, and great production value. Also, I'm glad I got to see this on the big screen with an audience. It was a crowd-pleaser.NOTE: 5 Senses of Fear was produced for the Chiller Network. I never watch that channel, because it's not HD, but I might make an exception to watch this again on May 31st.