When Horror Anthologies Should Just Stay Buried
Sequels are tricky. Horror anthologies are trickier. Tales from the Dark 2 somehow manages to fail at both. Directed by three people (Gordon Chan, Lawrence Ah Mon, and Teddy Robin) — which is three too many — this 2013 Hong Kong horror follow-up to Tales from the Dark 1 feels less like a cohesive film and more like three unrelated YouTube shorts that all forgot to end.
Based on Lilian Lee’s short stories, this sequel promises seductive nightmares, supernatural games, and demonic moral lessons. What it delivers instead is cinematic NyQuil — the kind of movie that makes you grateful for possession, because at least then something interesting is happening to you.
Segment 1: “Pillow” — or, How to Kill Sleep and Logic
We open with Pillow, a segment that can best be described as “the world’s worst sleep aid commercial.” Fala Chen plays Ching-yi, a nurse suffering from insomnia after her boyfriend Ho-hong (Gordon Lam) leaves her. She buys a pillow stuffed with herbs — as one does — and suddenly starts sleeping like a baby. Unfortunately, she’s also dreaming about having sex with her missing boyfriend.
It’s supposed to be sexy and eerie. Instead, it plays like a late-night soap opera with a head injury. The dream sequences go on for so long that by the time something supernatural happens, you’ve forgotten what movie you’re watching.
Eventually, we learn that Ching-yi accidentally killed Ho-hong during an argument — because stabbing someone in the neck is the universal sign of love — and hid his body in her closet like a particularly messy roommate. The boyfriend she’s been dreaming of turns out to be a life-sucking demon masquerading as him.
There’s real potential here: guilt, repression, erotic nightmare imagery. But the execution is flatter than a cursed futon. The scares are telegraphed, the pacing is glacial, and the visuals look like they were shot through a jar of Vicks VapoRub.
By the time security officers break into her apartment to find her near death, you’re not horrified — you’re relieved.
Segment 2: “Hide and Seek” — Ghosts, but Make It Group Therapy
Next up is Hide and Seek, a story about a group of youngsters who return to their abandoned primary school to play a game of hide-and-seek at night. Because apparently, urban explorers in Hong Kong have never seen Ju-On, Ringu, or common sense.
The group consists of the usual horror stereotypes: the leader who says, “What’s the worst that could happen?”, the skeptic who immediately dies, and the side characters so interchangeable they might as well be ghosts already. There’s also an elderly caretaker who warns them to leave before dark — which they, naturally, ignore.
Spoiler alert: everyone dies.
The setup is familiar: flickering lights, giggling spirits, the unsettling sound of footsteps echoing down hallways. But instead of tension, we get endless scenes of people wandering around with flashlights yelling, “Where are you?” as if summoning the plot itself.
It’s not scary. It’s not funny. It’s not even coherent. Half the time, you can’t tell if something supernatural is happening or if the cameraman just tripped.
When the twist finally arrives — that the group didn’t survive the night and were ghosts the whole time — it lands with all the shock value of discovering your coffee has gone cold. It’s the Sixth Sense ending minus emotion, logic, and the part where you care.
Segment 3: “Black Umbrella” — A Demon Walks Into a Bar… And You Wish He’d Stay There
Finally, we arrive at Black Umbrella, the only segment that even tries to do something weird. Teddy Robin, who also directs, stars as Uncle Lam, a polite old man wandering Hong Kong at night with a black umbrella, performing random good deeds. He saves a woman from being hit by a bus, alerts the police to a mugging, and lectures a robber about morality — basically your average night for a supernatural grandpa.
Each good deed earns him a little tally mark on his umbrella handle, which is a nice touch — if you ignore the fact that it leads nowhere. The story drifts from scene to scene like an elderly ghost looking for a plot.
Eventually, Lam meets Jenny, a prostitute who lures him to her apartment. When she and her thug boyfriend try to rob him, Lam reveals his true nature — he’s actually a demonic creature who eats human guts. It’s supposed to be shocking, but the transformation scene looks like a Halloween costume malfunction.
The gore is so cartoonish it feels like the special effects team ran out of fake blood and decided to use ketchup packets from a McDonald’s instead. It’s one of those rare horror moments that manages to be both over-the-top and underwhelming, like Scooby-Doo meets The Exorcist on a $12 budget.
By the end, we’re left with a moral lesson about the futility of good deeds in a corrupt world — which might’ve been profound if it hadn’t followed a scene where a tiny man eats someone’s intestines like spaghetti.
The Common Thread: Horror Without a Pulse
Anthology films can thrive on variety. When done well — think Three… Extremes or Creepshow — each segment brings a distinct flavor that adds up to a satisfying meal. Tales from the Dark 2, however, is more like a buffet where everything’s undercooked and vaguely smells like mildew.
The three stories share nothing except a total lack of tension and pacing. Every segment takes its sweet time setting up atmosphere, only to collapse in a pile of clichés: cursed objects, haunted schools, vengeful spirits. It’s as if the filmmakers each wrote “ghost” on a napkin and went their separate ways.
The cinematography tries for mood but ends up looking like CCTV footage of someone’s nightmares. The color palette shifts from “dimly lit morgue” to “dead flashlight battery.” The editing feels allergic to momentum. And the sound design — that mix of loud stingers and whispering voices — just reminds you that your TV remote has a mute button.
Performances: Drowning in the Shallow End
The actors do their best, bless them. Fala Chen deserves credit for making “possessed by pillow” almost believable. Gordon Lam’s ghost boyfriend looks appropriately miserable, though that might just be him realizing what movie he’s in.
The young cast in Hide and Seek spends most of their screen time screaming each other’s names, while Teddy Robin gives a performance so quirky it feels imported from a better movie entirely. Unfortunately, no amount of charm can save dialogue this clunky or direction this aimless.
The Horror of Sequel Syndrome
Released just four weeks after Tales from the Dark 1, this sequel feels less like a continuation and more like a contractual obligation. Where the first film at least had flashes of originality, this one feels stitched together from horror leftovers. It’s cinematic fast food: cheap, overprocessed, and guaranteed to give you creative indigestion.
You can practically feel the directors fighting over tone — is it psychological horror? Camp? Ghostly tragedy? Existential metaphor? No one knows. The result is a movie that feels like three different people tried to make a ghost story on the same set and forgot to tell each other when they were filming.
Final Thoughts: Tales from the Dull Side
By the time Tales from the Dark 2 limps to its conclusion, you’re left wondering what the moral is. Don’t buy cursed bedding? Don’t play hide-and-seek after midnight? Don’t trust elderly men with umbrellas? Whatever lesson it’s trying to teach, it’s lost in translation between boredom and confusion.
It’s a horror anthology without horror, a sequel without purpose, and a bedtime story so dull it might actually cure insomnia — though perhaps not the demonic kind.
Verdict: 1.5 out of 5 stars.
Tales from the Dark 2 proves that not every ghost deserves a second story. Sometimes, it’s better to let the dead — and the franchise — rest in peace.
