The Telling (2009)

There is a bit of a grisly segment where a sorority girl is killed. We flash forward one year to an induction sequence at the same sorority. Three pledges get the challenge to tell the scariest story that they know. So the film anthology has its overarching context ("Sorority Sisters").Story 1 (Dollface): A man and his girlfriend have a woman house guest for a couple of weeks. The man finds an antique doll in a dumpster. The doll is possessed, supposedly, and engineers the deaths of the two women, and manages to get the man blamed for it.Story 2 (Crimson Echo): A fading star gets fewer and fewer parts until she gets none when she's over thirty. Out of the blue, she gets a gig in Europe. She's desperate enough to take it. She's drugged and prepped. Then she meets her crew, who are all undead. What becomes of her?Story 3 (Prank Call): Three young women go out to catch a horror fest, but did not get tickets first. They return home with the hope that the cable guy is done. They get into telephone pranks; things go downhill from there.After the three stories are finished, the sorority rejects all three of the pledges. One of the pledges is the sister of the girl in the first sequence. Guess what happens next.-----Scores-------Cinematography: 7/10 Reasonably good.Sound: 5/10 Also reasonably good. Some of the incidental music was rather enjoyable, but I could not figure out what it had to do with the film.Acting: 0/10 John D'Aquino was the only one I recognized as an actor. The rest were uniformly terrible.Screenplay: 0/10 Oi, as bad as the acting. Well, perhaps worse: nothing new, nothing scary, nothing remotely believable.

In this horror anthology film, three girls pledge the most popular -- and cruelest -- sorority on campus. For their final task, they must tell the scariest story they know. Containing three distinct stories -- one featuring a murderous doll, one a has-been actress and her run in with a film crew of the undead and, finally, a hunt-and-kill fright-fest.There is really nothing to say about this one. I do not know the history, but based on what I was able to determine, this was more or less an excuse to get Playboy models to appear in a movie. And, you know, I guess if that is all they wanted to do, it worked.Now, if they wanted to be in a good movie, they failed. We have a very poor version of the Twilight Zone's "Living Doll" episode. There is a decent second segment but it is pulled off terribly. And after that... well, ugh.

Dreadful "horror" film of a bunch of vicious, cruel sorority sisters (right out of Cliché City) who force three pledges to tell horror stories to get into their group. One story deals with an evil doll that (for no good reason) kills people. The second is shot in black and white and deals with the undead. The third has three lousy actresses swearing nonstop and accidentally hearing a murder over the phone...and are sure that the murderer knows where they live.Every single story here is so predictable it's laughable. Within a few minutes you know how it's going to end. Even the framing story was familiar! The acting was downright atrocious. All of the women are beautiful but just horrible actresses. They look blankly at the camera and recite their lines. That's NOT acting. So you figure there might be some nudity or blood. WRONG! Except for some very mild and brief nudity in the second story all the girls remain fully clothed. As for blood or violence--there is some blood in the first story but it's SO fake it's more funny than scary. So let's sum this up: Predictable stories, terrible acting, no nudity, no violence. Really--what audience were they aiming for here? You can safely skip this one. A 1 all the way.

Three college girls must endure the insults and heresy of the sisters of Omega Kappa Kappa if they wish to become members, and are ordered to tell scary stories as a means of possibly being accepted. The first tale concerns Lily(Rebekah Kochan), who is being driven crazy by a creepy doll her lover found in the trash. The doll wants Lily's man all too itself, and his ex-girlfriend, Sarah(Kimshellet Garner), who is currently living with them until she can find a place to stay, is also in danger of falling prey to the doll. The second tale concerns a down-on-her-luck thirty-something actress, Eva DeMarco(Bridget Marquardt), who accepts a part in a European horror film, "The Crimson Echo", and learns that taking a part for the paycheck isn't always a good idea. The third tale concerns three girls who are besieged in their apartment by a killer they hear murder a guy over the phone while prank calling the victim. The wraparound story has a twist which concerns the suicide of a college girl named Briana who took her life after the sorority sisters rejected her desire to become a member of the Omega Kappa Kappa. This snoozefest has nothing to offer except pretty girls swearing and a climax where we see the bitchy sorority sisters get their comeuppance. The violence is tame; the film offers some minor titillation. None of the tales are exactly earth-shattering(..rather clichéd and uninspired), except maybe for the second story with a quote from a director with a Bela Lugosi accent, "The undead need their entertainment, too." Hugh Hefner's former squeeze, Holly Madison, is given star treatment, that in itself spells doom for this horror yawner. Each and every tale is predictable and by-the-numbers, even the twist which is satisfying because of those getting their just desserts(..pun intended).