As anthology films go, it's very good. Poe is one of the most popular authors of all time, so adapting his work is nothing new, but presenting it in this style is refreshing. I liked the art style for all 5 segments, especially "Th House of Usher" sequence with Christopher Lee narrating. It does the stories justice as well, because they're not stretched to fill a whole movie. A couple problems though, while I understand the significance of Bela Lugosi narrating, the audio quality is the worst of the segments. However, the story is super familiar to me, and the animation helps show what's happening, so I won't complain that much. The second complaint I have is del Toro narrating. His accent is almost too thick to actually tell what he's saying, and the story isn't as familiar to me as the other ones, so I was left confused. Aside from that though, this is a very well done adaptation of multiple Poe stories, that treats it's author with respect.

I love both animation and Edgar Allan Poe and that made me curious about this animated anthology movie. Let me start off by saying that the narration and the voice acting is the most consistent in its quality through the relatively short running time. I can't pick my exact favorite of the narrators, but I think my over all favorite of the segments was "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". It really comes down to personal taste. Each segment has its own unique visual style, and even though it can be a little hard on the eye adjusting to new styles for every segment, I found it adding to the atmosphere and the experience. The one which awoke the fewest reactions of "wow" or "interesting" in me was the last segment in which it looked nice when characters remained still, but didn't have fluid movements. An interesting watch with great atmosphere done through great narration, ominous music and mostly nice visuals, but too uneven to be called extraordinary.

Edgar Allen Poe's stories have endured for decades, and with showings like this--demonstrating how his work continues to fire the imagination--they'll continue to do so for years to come. Each animation style is uniquely suited to the story. The choice of a stark black-and-white stylistic animation combined with the incredible sound of Bela Lugosi reading "The Tell-Tale Heart" was sheer perfection. Sir Christopher Lee and Julian Sands matched 'Dracula's' prowess in reading with fully immersive and emotional narration. And Guillermo del Toro... My gods. He was absolutely the PERFECT choice for reading "The Pit and the Pendulum." The inflection, the emotion and the intensity of his narration was completely profound. Although I was a little disappointed that the final piece--"Masque of the Red Death"--wasn't narrated, that changed in seconds with how incredibly effective the purely visual storytelling was. The score was amazing. So completely suited to this absolutely overwhelming piece. Everything about this was mind-blowing and I will be purchasing a hard copy as soon as I possibly can.

"Extraordinary Tales" is an animated film which consists of five Edgar Allen Poe stories and the notion of such an animated project sounds very exciting. I was also excited because the reviews I read on this were rather positive. Imagine my surprise when the film began and the computer graphics looked as if they were created back in the late 1990s! In fact, almost any video game you'd buy today would look nicer. The characters are sometimes blocky, there is little fluidity and the film just looks cheap at the beginning of the picture. The quality, unfortunately, was generally this poor throughout. Perhaps the praise for this is because a lot of people love Poe. Additionally, several amazingly good actors provide voices for the characters...such as Christopher Lee, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro and even, oddly, Bela Lugosi (using archival a rather archaic archival recording). But with these talents and this writer, it should have been magnificent....not an ugly mess of an animated film that looks as if some first-year film students created it. Each of the five stories is animated very differently in style...but all are rather lacking, though the fifth story at least was interesting when it came to the animation style. I cannot ignore the glaring ugliness of the CGI and only focus on the stories and voice actors. For my time, I'd much rather just listen to audio records of the stories by these voice actors. This just debuted on DVD from Netflix...don't say I didn't warn you.