Spoilers think the door to heaven needs clearer signage.

Here’s a rule of thumb, any movie that contains a collection of stories automatically becomes a mixed bag. There’s also a tendency for the overarching plot used as the excuse to introduce each story to become diluted. There are exceptions, but idea is to highlight the small stories. Because of that, engagement is limited to the story that you feel most invested with. Let’s walk towards the light in the distance.

Pandemonium (2023) was written and directed by Quarxx (aka Alexandre Claudin). Nathan (Hugo Dillon) gains back consciousness to find himself lying in the middle of the road. His car lies wrecked to the side. A cyclist named Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj) is standing aside, informing him that they are both deceased. Soon enough, they both exchange stories and unavoidably judge each other. Two sets of doors appear before them at opposite ends. One man can heard chants and harp music coming from one, the other can hear screaming and yelling from the other one. So…

Yes, one doesn’t need to be hit over the head but it does feel that’s what the film is doing. That being said, there’s a discussion that takes place that seems to challenge the judgement. You’d think this was leading to something, but don’t get your expectations up. I guess you can chalk it up to a comedic moment but some of those questions were legitimate. Eventually we do get to peek into hell’s gates to find bodies lying on the ground, and getting close to each we get their story.

We get two stories from hell. The first is a child that has just lost her parents and lives with a monster. The second one is of a single mother and her introverted daughter. I will let you discover both stories by yourself, but they are both horror content of the psychologically troubling variety. The performances are adequate and disturbing. There are minor loose ends in both, but not as much as the introduction story which we will eventually use to wrap up this collection.

It works and it doesn’t. I’d say there’s a lot of potential that is either left open ended or just dropped to the side at some point. Some side characters seems to be introduced for a moment just to disappear after a bit and never make a second appearance or seem to have an effect on the story. It’s almost like we needed the character to speak to someone and then once the expository dialog concludes they leave the scene. Feels like that could’ve been handled better, although at least one of them doesn’t exist.

Lightly recommended for casual horror audiences. Each story has plot holes and/or loose ends that are a bit frustrating, but visually it does manage some decent horror moments. I’d say it’s worth a watch for horror fan audiences that don’t mind some empty spaces.

That will do for now.