My quick rating – 3.6/10. I’m not saying Tales from Black Manor was made by AI, but if a robot was trained on gothic Pinterest boards, voice-over apps, and a dusty copy of Immortality for Dummies, this would probably be the result.
The film promises an epic, centuries-spanning saga of the cursed Black family and their mysterious book of death, from the 1300s to the end of the world. What we get instead is a somber, slow-mo slideshow narrated like someone’s medieval PowerPoint presentation. Imagine sitting through a family reunion, but every branch of the family tree is obsessed with immortality, and no one has a personality. That’s this movie.
It’s sort of an anthology, but not in any way that feels intentional. Each segment introduces another Black family member with a name like “Aleister” or “Ivy,” who stares into the distance while someone explains their quest to defeat death. Then, without anything actually happening, we fade out and move on to the next centuries-old sad sack. Rinse, repeat, sigh.
The whole thing is narrated more than acted, and what’s narrated often contradicts or deflates the only semi-interesting parts. They even decide to circle back and undercut the “Miss Nobody” subplot from earlier, which wasn’t great to begin with but now just feels like someone deleted the wrong paragraph from the script and hoped we wouldn’t notice. Spoiler: I did.
Now, I won’t lie—this movie looks gorgeous. The manor is striking, the costumes are moody, and the cinematography is the kind of thing you’d screenshot and put on your vision board if you were planning a haunted wedding. But beauty can only get you so far when your movie feels like a gothic screensaver with a melancholy audiobook playing over it.
There’s almost zero tension, no characters to root for, and despite being a film about death, shockingly few actual deaths. Most are just mentioned in passing, like, “And then he was lost to the fire,” but we never see a spark. It’s like being told ghost stories by someone who’s allergic to excitement.
Honestly, the only character I felt anything for was the manor itself. It didn’t do much, but at least it showed up on time and looked fabulous.
In the end, Tales from Black Manor isn’t scary, thrilling, or even all that coherent. It’s the cinematic equivalent of slowly reading an ancient family diary while staring at oil paintings. With a sharper script, some on-screen action, and maybe one—just one—character worth following, there might’ve been something here. Instead, it’s a long, dreary walk through centuries of whispered nothings.
Skip it, unless you’re an immortal being yourself and literally have eternity to waste.
It is either Amazon or a couple of freebies to watch this one. Click Plex to watch now for free.