Fuji reviews V/H/S 2

[Fuji Vice]

V/H/S 2


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Two private investigators, Larry and Ayesha, investigate the disappearance of a young male college student. Upon entering the student's home, they discover a large stack of TV sets and VHS tapes, and a laptop with a still-recording video on it. They stop the recording and go to the beginning, where they see the boy talking about how strange the VHS tapes are. Larry investigates the house and tells Ayesha to watch the tapes. As she watches the odd videos, strange things begin to happen in the house.

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After my viewing of V/H/S, I too felt like some of the victims in the film, almost as if I’d been brutally beaten, had my penis ripped off, my throat slashed, a knife stuck in my forehead, an alien fetus implanted in my stomach and finally, run over by a train. Ok, so that’s probably a slight exaggeration, but in all honesty I did feel a little bit haggard after getting through it, especially considering all the good things people had to say about it. Obviously sitting down to watch V/H/S 2, I had similar feelings, perhaps even more so due to people who hated the first one saying they loved the second. Would this be more of the same? Would I never want to watch a movie like this again? Would I still feel like my penis had been ripped off? The answers to all these questions waited, and so I popped in the tape and here’s what I saw…

"Heeeeere we go......."
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Tape 49

Similar to the first film, this one features a narrative that allows for each successive video to be played for our viewing pleasure. However, where the first one failed horribly at providing any sort of entertainment and simply existed for its narrative purposes, this one actually is a little fun. The characters are established well from the beginning, filming a guy cheating on his wife and then offering to sell him the footage for more than what she’s paying them in the first place! That’s pretty cold, but it’s also pretty damn smart, so I immediately took to these characters more than the idiots in the first film. The rest of the narrative plays out in a much more logical way than just “one guy watches video, disappears, next guy comes into room, watches video, disappears” and by the end there’s actually a relatively satisfying conclusion. Plus in this one you actually get to SEE something happen, as opposed to the first where it’s mostly a big blur. Definitely and improvement over the original in every possible way and a good start for sure. 2/5

"Is there any chance that this ends well?"
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Phase I Clinical Trials

Directed by Adam Wingard (who had previously directed the awful frame narrative of the last film and current film “You’re Next”), this one was just awesome and an excellent start to the film. Unlike the previous film’s first short, “Amateur Night”, there seemed to be nothing amateur about this at all. The gist of the story is a guy who’s been in a car accident gets an eye transplant that allows the company that did it to monitor him and see what he sees. Of course it also comes with the caveat that he can “see” ghosts, or images of things that could be haunting him. What follows is a first-person perspective freak out, complete with creepy kid, nasty man in his underwear, a hot chick getting naked and, eventually, a nasty demise. This reminded me a lot of two Chinese films, The Eye (remade for the US with Jessica Alba) and My Left Eye Sees Ghosts. Both feature eye transplants that allow the recipient to see something that they shouldn’t and both are meant to be pretty creepy (although the second film is also quite funny). Personally I wasn’t bothered by these comparisons, since this short really did make me jump a couple of times and had me ready for whatever was coming next. I even found there to be a pretty interesting story set up in it (were the people haunting the man victims of the car accident that he’d been in and if so was he the cause of the accident) and a little story goes a long way to making something, even something short, interesting. 3.5/5

"Talk about a case of the old poison eye!"
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A Ride in the Park

Holy shit, hold the damn phone, this short is a zombie one shot from the perspective of the zombie! That’s unbelievably awesome and probably the first time I’ve ever seen that particular thing done. That’s basically the whole story as well, guy wearing a Go Pro camera gets bitten, turns and starts looking for victims, eventually taking a shotgun blast to the head. Simple, but effective, and again, totally awesome given the perspective we’re shown here. This short was directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, who most horror fans will know as the two men that brought us the groundbreaking film “The Blair Witch Project” way back in 1999. While I wouldn’t consider this short as inspiring as that film, I can see the possibilities for it down the road and felt that the techniques used were excellent. If I had any complaints about this short, it was that there was literally no plot outside of the main guy being bitten. However, that didn’t bother me that much because it was so refreshing to see a zombie’s POV. I guess I could complain about how the zombie understood what his girlfriend was saying on the phone at the end, but meh, I don’t care because this was just a lot of fun and that makes two in a row. It’s a MIRACLE!!! 3/5

"BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS~!"
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Safe Haven

In this short, a documentary film crew is allowed entry into the compound of an Indonesian cult in order to interview the leader, a man who may or may not be sleeping with the children in order to “purify” them. However, soon after they get there, the leader gets on the microphone, proclaims that “it’s time” and then all hell breaks loose. No, seriously, all fucking hell breaks loose and this turns from an interesting pseudo-doc into an all-out war. Words really cannot do justice to everything that happens here, suffice to say that this is prime adrenaline rush material that grabs on tight and doesn’t let go until the bitter end. Directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans, Safe Haven is quite simply the best short in this series yet and the only one that I could imagine being expanded into a feature film. However, if you’re even the least bit squeamish, I’d stay as far away from this as possible, because it is pretty damn disgusting. The amazing part about this short is that things that shouldn’t work (demon rising from the womb of a pregnant woman, people literally blowing up) all seem perfectly normal because of how messed up everything else going on is. If I had even a small complaint here, it was that the back-story of the friend impregnating the other guy’s fiancée seemed a bit cliché, but given the course of the events that take place after that revelation, it makes enough sense to not be a big deal. Anyhow, I cannot wait to see more from these two filmmakers and as I say, if they want to expand this into a feature, I am so down with it! 4/5

"Amazingly, this is the tamest thing in the entire short...seriously."
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Slumber Party Alien Abduction

This short is directed by Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun) and provides exactly what the title says, an alien abduction at a slumber party! Besides winning the award for “best title for a short in either film”, this is a great way to close things out and a welcome change of pace after the sadistic “Safe Haven”. There’s a lot of comedy here, and a quick introduction to a group of mostly likeable kids that are in for one hell of a rough night. Does this sound familiar to you? It should, because it’s basically the template of every successful 1980’s slasher film, and unlike the awful Tuesday the 17th, this one does everything right. The perspective here is from a camera attached to the family dog, which is yet another unique way of filming things and showing us an angle that we normally wouldn’t think of. While I did think some of the shots had trouble coming across coherent, I didn’t have any real trouble following what was going on. This short is amusing until the aliens show up, and then it actually gets pretty damn scary, with a lot of unsettling shots and some gut-churning motion. The aliens themselves are really creepy looking and certainly don’t appear to be the friendly sort, and the fact that its mostly young kids involved in their kidnap attempts makes it even scarier. The final shot is also quite remarkable and totally kills the ending of “Amateur Night”, which I believe may have been Eisener’s intention since he probably realized how bad that one was! Anyhow, fun and scary is a great combination and this was a great way to end the shorts of V/H/S 2 so yeah, it’s pretty much win all around as far as I’m concerned. 3.5/5

"Something tells me they've graduated from kidnapping cows."
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As with yesterday’s review, I’ve averaged out the scores I gave to each of the shorts and have come up with a 6.5, immediately showing that their quality is far above those in the first. However, I’m actually going to go ahead and give this film an entire extra point in its overall score, because not only was it great as a whole, it was SO much better than V/H/S that the entire concept has been redeemed in my eyes. It’s like everyone involved here watched the first one, realized everything wrong with it and became determined to repair the damage that had been done. Well, they succeeded, and rather than continue to heap praise on V/H/S 2, I’m going to give it the 7.5/10 that its earned and go pop it back in to the player to relive the whole damn experience again!

"Coming up tomorrow...disease is hip."
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