The anthologies continue with this next title! Three Cases of Murder has fewer stories than the other two titles but they are each able to hold their own. I dare say this may have even been the best of the three even if it is the least frightening. This one is better to look at as more of a suspense collection. Each one definitely keeps a tense atmosphere the whole time the story is going on.

One of the stories is about a guy who has fallen in love with a lady that he met. He’s really excited because before now things haven’t really worked out for him. Unfortunately his work partner will be returning soon and for some reason the ladies all seem to like him at first glance. He can’t lose her…but sure enough the girl leaves him for his partner. Where things go sideways is one day she is found murdered and it looks like the friend did it. What should the lead do now?

Now right away you can see that none of the characters are particularly likable here. The friend has no real class to be stealing girlfriends like this. It doesn’t sound like it is the first time either and he has a habit of constantly getting drunk. The guy just does whatever he wants and unfortunately this seems to be appealing to everyone that he comes into contact with. I would say the friendship would definitely be over by this point.

Meanwhile the girl isn’t worth fighting for because she got with the friend so quickly. She is clearly not the loyal type and so you will be having to fight every guy who comes into contact with her. That’s not the kind of relationship that you want and the lead needed to move on. Also while some may say it is admirable to stick up for your friend in a murder case by lying to the cops, that’s not the right way to play it. You have to let the legal system do its job. If the friend did murder her, then he’s going to have to pay.

It’s not quite so straight forward in the story though as we get a few twists and turns. Characters aside, I thought it made for a really interesting story. You couldn’t really trust anyone here and it was tough to predict how it would end. The story was well crafted and definitely got things off to a pretty good start.

Then we have a story about living paintings. This one’s a bit harder to accept at face value but basically we follow an employee of the museum. He has been working here for many years and in particular likes a painting that is in the main room. The glass around it seems to break every day which is odd. One day a mysterious gentleman tells the employee to come with him inside the painting. It turns out that each painting is alive and people live in them. They can then leave to the human world when needed to get supplies and such.

It’s a really interesting concept to be sure. Unfortunately for the employee, this painting’s creator is rather mad. He is completely obsessed with making the painting be perfect and will stop at nothing for this goal. As the two of them hang out in the painting along with his wife and an old man, the employee realizes that things are getting more and more dire. Unfortunately he does not want to be rude and so he entertains them…until it is too late. The whole time you are just thinking that any half decent main character would have gotten out of this film alive. It’s not like the painter was that tough.

In fact, he was scared of the old man until the employee showed up. This guy can easily be beaten and leaving the painting appears to be very easy. So this was just a collection of errors by the main character for the situation to get this far. It is the most preventable story out of all the anthology ones I’ve seen and that’s saying something. I do really enjoy the concept though, this could make for a full length movie easily. It would take a really skilled writer to anticipate all of the effects of having every painting be alive though.

Finally we have a story that gets a little more intense. There is a man in parliament who is known as the best up and coming politician. He constantly knows what the right thing to say is and he just finished crushing someone’s career. That guy swears vengeance though and activates his dream powers. Now he is able to control the politician in his dreams, forcing him to do embarrassing things like dancing and singing. The worst part is that both of them are aware of these dreams so it feels like emotional blackmail. What can the politician do? One option may be to destroy the nightmare bringer in the dream but is that possible?

Now, this is a tricky situation so I do want to flag that right away. That said, it doesn’t feel unwinnable by any means. Keep in mind that the dream creator doesn’t seem to have any special powers in the real world. So there’s nothing he can do there and additionally he doesn’t have any real blackmail material since it stays in the dreams. At face value, the main character should have just ignored him and things would be fine.

There is the fear that these dreams could escalate further of course. If the dream creator wants to murder him then this would be the way to do it but all of that should be handled in the dreams. The politician just lets it get to him too quickly and essentially tanks his career in the meantime. It made for some interesting back and forth but as soon as the dreams began to break him down, that was it. I don’t think there was any coming back from that. The tragic thing is how close the lead was to winning here. He just needed to hang on a little more and perhaps the voice would have gone away. Perhaps though…no guarantees with powers like this.

Part of what helps the film succeed is that the script is solid for each of the three stories. The old writing style works well here and the pacing is solid. I didn’t think we needed the narrator between stories though. I always think it’s best to let the stories speak for themselves. If you need something to tie them together, then do it within the story like with the last two anthologies. Having someone randomly talking in between the stories just hurts the momentum. Not in such a way that it really hurt the film of course but it still felt pointless.

Overall, Three Cases of Murder was a pretty good movie. I thought that each of the stories were solid and kept me engaged the whole time. They had a good amount of twists and turns but most importantly, the core concepts were solid. There is a lot that you could really do with each of the premises. The main characters just tended to be way too passive in each of the stories. The first story would be the exception to this but the lead of the following two stories could have easily claimed victory. Perhaps that’s where the horror comes from, imagining that you could go down like this. Still, this is a film that I would recommend checking out.

Overall 7/10