"Nightmare Cinema" starts with a bang, a fun story that uses horror cliches to play with an audience's emotions and expectations. I believe some of the best filmmaking here is done in the cinema with Mickey Rourke's projectionist character in terms of suspense, tone and interesting subject matter. I was wondering if his story would have an interesting conclusion but it serves as more of a backdrop.
Our stories here feature a strong black and white nightmare concept, a final touching story about loss of loved ones and an opening film that pokes at the slasher concept like "Cabin in The Woods" or "Tucker and Dale VS Evil" did so perfectly. The first story sometimes strikes an awkward cord where it is not quite goofy or serious and it is uncertain causing some bumps in the opening.
The film generally uses situations we know and have seen before then puts amusing or darker twists on them. "Nightmare Cinema" is a lot of fun though which matters more than most elements of the horror experience. There is one or two stories that seem disproportionately boring or completely and utterly over the top but it seems hard to fault a horror anthology film for this. Recomended.