This pick and mix of short horror films by different directors is a decidedly mixed bag, with a couple of flavoursome, sugar-rush-inducing treats – but many more stale, unchewable duds. The framing device, directed by Carlos Goitia, has DJ Candy (Paula Brasca, offering a reasonable anchoring performance while really rocking a dark lipstick) on the night shift, taking calls from listeners recounting their own scary stories. In between these mini chapters, resourceful Candy copes with a creepy caller named Jack (as in Jack the Ripper, he helpfully notes) who harbours a grudge against her for an earlier slight. The ending twist comes with a dull thud.
Among the short films, the best is far and away Foxes, an eerie modern fairytale about a lonely photographer (Marie Ruane) living on a seemingly entirely empty housing estate full of ticky tacky identical houses in Ireland. She becomes obsessed with a skulk of foxes that invade her rubbish bins – so much so she starts to take on vulpine characteristics, much to the chagrin of her husband (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor). It’s quite a striking work, made in 2011, which is why its director Lorcan Finnegan has gone on to make some notable features (Nocebo, Vivarium, Without Name).
It’s downhill after that. A few of the stories feature circularity as a theme, like Playback by Nathan Crooker, in which a security guard keeps seeing terrible things happening to him in the future on CCTV cameras; it’s a tale that appropriately enough goes nowhere. Insane, directed by Adam O’Brien, is a mouldy ghost story set in a psychiatric hospital that a realtor is offering a tour of for a film-maker thinking about making a movie there; at least the performances are adequate. The remaining chapters limp on without distinction until the last, a gory grand guignol ditty called Chateau Sauvignon (direction credited to one David M Night Maire, ha ha) about a pair of suspiciously pale father and son vintners; that at least has a certain dark wit.
• Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker is released on 24 April on digital platforms.
