There’s a special category of TV horror from the ‘90s that feels like the cinematic equivalent of stale Halloween candy: you bite in expecting something sweet, but instead you get chalky disappointment and the faint taste of cardboard. Twists of Terror, a Canadian made-for-television anthology once titled Primal Scream (a name that was too cool for this dreck), is one of those cinematic Smarties rolls you wish had stayed in the bag.
It promises terror. It promises twists. What it delivers is three reheated campfire stories that wouldn’t scare a toddler hopped up on Pixy Stix, wrapped in a framing device starring a sweaty hermit who looks like he should be on an episode of Hoarders: Paranormal Edition.
The Host: Discount Crypt Keeper
Our guide is Philip (Joseph Ziegler), an agoraphobic loon who apparently lives in a condemned building and sorts through yellowing newspapers like a serial killer who couldn’t make the cut. Imagine if the Crypt Keeper lost his sense of humor, his skincare routine, and his agent, and you’ve got this guy.
Instead of witty one-liners, Philip just looks clammy and mutters like a man who’s three missed prescriptions away from becoming an actual headline. His job is to set up the stories, but he’s so forgettable that when he cuts back in between segments you think, Oh, right, him. Why is he still here?
If this is our horror host, give me Are You Afraid of the Dark? and a bucket of cold sand any day. At least the Midnight Society had charisma.
Story One: The People You Meet (Or Don’t Want To)
This one’s about Joe and Amy (Carl Marotte and Jennifer Rubin), a couple on their second honeymoon. That’s already your first red flag—no one needs a sequel honeymoon. They’re run off the road by some maniac in a sportscar and end up hitching a ride with a local who’s creepier than a Subway Jared fan club.
Turns out he and his buddy are kidnappers, dragging the couple to a cabin in the woods. Sounds promising, right? Wrong. The pacing is so sluggish you’d think the movie was shot in slow motion. The big “twist” is that Amy and Joe were planning to set each other up. Yes, the married couple are basically trying to murder one another. The problem is, the film has given us zero reason to care about them. By the time they start double-crossing, you’re rooting for the kidnappers to just speed things along with a chainsaw.
The moral here? Love dies, but Canadian TV horror dies faster.
Story Two: The Clinic (Rabies, Nightmares, and Bad Lighting)
Next, we follow a traveling salesman (Nick Mancuso, probably regretting signing the contract) who gets attacked by a dog and staggers into a “clinic.” Except it’s actually an asylum where the patients are in charge. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but with less Nicholson and more ketchup on the walls.
At first, it seems like the salesman has rabies-induced hallucinations—blood everywhere, patients waltzing down hallways, and a doctor who looks like he should’ve lost his license after the first lobotomy. But then—surprise!—it turns out the asylum inmates have taken over.
That’s not a twist. That’s just Halloween bingo. You could see it coming ten minutes in, when the doctor started acting like he was auditioning for a community theater version of Dr. Caligari.
The segment could have been creepy, but instead it plays like a PSA about why you should never trust Canadian health care. The “mad” patients aren’t scary—they’re basically extras told to “act zany” and wave their arms around. Watching this story feels like being trapped in an improv class run by deranged drama students.
Story Three: Stolen Moments (Or: Pets Before Bros)
Finally, we get Cindy (Françoise Robertson), a shy woman with too many pets. She meets two men at a bar, goes home with them, has sex, and then murders them. That’s the whole story. The “twist” is that the meek woman is actually a killer. Shocking—if you’ve never seen a horror movie in your entire life.
The biggest scare here is the acting. Cindy’s “transformation” from shy to psycho happens with all the subtlety of a light switch. One moment she’s biting her lip and looking nervous; the next, she’s stabbing like she’s auditioning for Basic Instinct 2: Montreal Drift.
The film seems to think it’s saying something profound about loneliness, female rage, or inner darkness. What it’s actually saying is, “We ran out of budget, so here’s five minutes of pet reaction shots and a shovel.”
The Real Horror: The Budget
The entire production was budgeted at $4.7 million. Where did that money go? It sure wasn’t on the sets, which look like they were borrowed from a Canadian soap opera. It wasn’t on the gore, which is sparse and usually just ketchup splatters. And it definitely wasn’t on the script, which has the imagination of a grocery list.
The scariest thing about Twists of Terror is the realization that Paramount Pictures bought the distribution rights. Someone at Paramount actually sat down, watched this, and thought, Yes. This will terrify audiences. That executive should have been forced to watch it on loop as punishment.
The Performances: Check-Cashing 101
Jennifer Rubin, once promising in Nightmare on Elm Street 3, phones it in so hard her performance could qualify as a long-distance call. Françoise Robertson plays Cindy with all the nuance of a bad soap villain. And poor Nick Mancuso, once the suave star of Stingray, is reduced to wandering hospital corridors yelling “What’s going on?” every ten seconds like a man trapped in a bad escape room.
Joseph Ziegler as Philip is the MVP, but only because he embraces the madness of the role. He sweats, he rants, he flails at newspapers. He’s not scary, but at least he’s committed—like he belongs in the asylum segment but wandered into the framing story instead.
The Twists: Predictable as a Hallmark Movie
Each of the stories promises a shocking finale, but they all fizzle out like a wet firecracker. Couple betrays each other? Yawn. Asylum run by inmates? Seen it. Shy woman is actually psycho? Groundbreaking—in 1955.
The only true twist is realizing that you wasted 90 minutes of your life on this anthology when you could’ve been rewatching Tales from the Crypt reruns.
Final Verdict: Twisted? No. Terrifying? Also No.
Twists of Terror is neither twisty nor terrifying. It’s like a Goosebumps episode aged badly and lost its charm. The production is cheap, the stories uninspired, and the acting uneven at best. Worst of all, it tries to sell you reheated clichés as shocking revelations.
If you’re looking for horror anthologies, stick to Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat, or literally any random Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode. At least those had the decency to give you one good scare before bedtime.
