Fuji reviews V/H/S

[Fuji Vice]

V/H/S


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A group of criminals videotape their exploits, which range from destroying abandoned houses to assaulting women in parking garages. They soon expand their business to robbery after a third party offers them a large sum of money to burglarize a house and steal a single VHS videotape. Breaking into the house, the criminals find the sole occupant dead in front of a bank of television sets playing white noise. They also find hundreds of unmarked VHS tapes, and set about collecting them all to ensure that they retrieve the right one. However, as they play some of the individual tapes, strange things begin to happen.

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I’ve long been a big fan of horror anthologies, as I love the idea of a movie made with the short-attention span crowd in mind. The prospect of seeing not one, but several movies all wrapped up in a neat and tidy package is appealing to me and to a lot of horror fans, judging by the success of the anthology film. Creepshow, Tales from the Darkside and others have been generally well received by the horror crowd over the years and now it appears the horror anthology film is going through a bit of a renaissance. V/H/S, released in 2012, can be considered one of the first of this new wave of anthologies, and like many early versions, it has a lot of kinks that need to (and will eventually be) ironed out. The major problem is that it is just too long, choosing to show a whopping FIVE stories not even including the wraparound one. That’s just too many to hold the interest of the viewer over a nearly two-hour period, and the fact that only a couple of them are worth watching again doesn’t help either. Rather than encompass the film as a whole, I’m going to look at each of the shorts separately in order to identify just what went wrong with this movie. So sit back, relax and enjoy ride…

"A man after my own heart."
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Tape 56 (Wraparound Story)

This story is simply designed to keep the videos popping into the player, but it also attempts to be a little bit scary itself. At one point the dead man in the chair disappears only to reappear again later. At another, a character sees what appears to be a naked person walking around down in the basement. SHOCKING! Of course this all leads to each of these individuals in the house dying, although we really only see one of them post-death. I get the reasoning for this story, but I thought it was totally boring and would rather have just seen the tapes played in order without it. I’d rank the “acting†here as subpar at best, and none of these guys were likeable in the least so I didn’t give a crap when they were killed. 1/5

"Hey dadio, I don't wanna' go, down to the basement, there's a creepy naked guy down there."
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Amateur Night

The first real short of the film, Amateur Night is directed by David Bruckner, who had previously directed the obvious Stephen King rip-off film “The Signal†and is currently making something called The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes. Hopefully his work there is a step up from what he’s done here, as Amateur Night really does come across as an accurate reflection of its title. Basically these dudes decide to use a camera embedded in a pair of eyeglasses to film themselves banging some random chicks. Of course this doesn’t work out too well for them when one of the girls that they pick up happens to be a demon that delights in ripping out throats, penises and pretty much anything else she can get her nasty hands on. Yes folks, that’s right, a penis gets ripped off in this short and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that I felt mine was being ripped off while watching it. I did enjoy the creepiness of the demon girl and her little “I like you†line, but it wore thin quickly, much like any charm this short may have had. Not a very good start at all.2/5

"Would you take this chick back to your hotel?"
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Second Honeymoon

Next up is Second Honeymoon, from director Ti West. I’ve loved almost everything he’s done in the past, particularly The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, so I was pretty stoked to see what he could come up with here. Well, after watching it I can say that it was definitely better than Amateur Night, but not by a whole hell of a lot. There was definitely an inherent “creep†factor in this one as I think anyone can appreciate how scary it is to have someone watch you while you sleep. Unfortunately I also thought Paranormal Activity handled this much better and in the end this one kind of comes across as an attempt to cash in on that fright factor. I thought the story here wasn’t bad mind you, and it did have a logical and coherent pace, but overall I wasn’t that impressed. The gist is that these two people on a second honeymoon have an encounter with a weird girl who then breaks into their hotel room and films them while they sleep. I won’t give away the “shocking†ending but I didn’t find it all that shocking outside of the actual death scene itself, which was just plain nasty in its rawness. Two down, three to go and I’m not feeling confident at this point that the rest of the movie is going to be able to redeem itself.2.5/5

"PANTIES!!!!!"
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Tuesday the 17th

Not only does it allude to Friday the 13th in its title, this short is basically a sped up version of it and every other slasher film ever made. Unfortunately that’s not a good thing, as condensing the material just shows how inane it really can be when in the hands of someone who doesn’t understand it. That someone is director Glenn McQuaid, who had previously made the little seen but totally underrated film “I Sell the Deadâ€, although you’d never know he’d done something good by watching this. I thought Amateur Night was pretty bad, but this one is hands down the worst so far and really doesn’t bear much mention other than it sucks and should have been removed from the film to save time. Your quick summary here is that a girl lures a group of friends to a lake as bait to trap a killer that had previously killed some of her other friends. In my mind, the moral lesson to be gleaned here is that being friends with this girl is a bad fucking idea while I’ll say the same of sitting through this short. Save your brain but try and seek out “I Sell the Deadâ€, it’s seriously worth your time.0/5

"Don't worry, even if you could see what it was this would still suck balls."
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The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger

Just when I was about to give up all hope on this film turning out ANYTHING worth watching, this nifty little short appeared and made me feel a little better about things. Directed by Joe Swanberg, who also played the husband in Second Honeymoon and is a well-known filmmaker in his own right, this story of a woman whose apartment may or may not be haunted is quite well done. Both the leads (Helen Rogers and Daniel Kaufman) are strong enough to be believable in even a short time frame and their organic acting ability is certainly the best on display in this entire movie. It helps that Swanberg is known as an improvisational director, as it appears the majority of the dialogue in this short was un-scripted. The idea of shooting it from the perspective of a video chat session also works to its advantage as it’s a unique way of doing the “found footage†thing that has been seemingly done to death over the years. Finally, there are a lot of scares here, from ghosts running in and out of rooms to the old La Casa Muda camera flash gag. Definitely the best of the bunch so far, but then again that’s not saying a lot given the competition.3.5/5

"Relax, it's just a little kid for goodness sake."
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10/31/98

The final short here is directed by a quartet called Radio Silence, who also appear as the actors in it. The premise is four guys get lost on the way to a Halloween party and end up in a weird house that they think is gimmicked for the night. Of course it turns out to be a house from hell and soon these guys are running for their lives as all sorts of weird shit happens. Basic to be sure, but the effects work here is stunning, from objects levitating and throwing themselves around the house to a bunch of creepy arms coming out of the walls. The grand finale is actually set up earlier in the short and shows a nice sense of foreshadowing, something that had been decidedly lacking up to this point in any of the others. This is basically a non-stop thrill ride, a rollercoaster for the senses and if only it had a slightly more interesting story it could have given the previous short a run for its money for best in the film. I’d also be interested in seeing more from this group of guys, so at the very least they accomplished the goal of getting some notice for their work here.3/5

"Talk about the wrong way to get a hand."
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After watching the entire thing, I have a hard time rating it as an overall film because the shorts are all so different. However, if I average out the scores I gave each of those individual shorts, I get a 4.8, which rounded up gives us a rating of 5/10. Unfortunately I’m going to round down here, because the fact that Tuesday the 17th exists and the film is just way too long is enough to drop it by a point. So in closing, check out the final two shorts and you can pretty much skip the rest unless you’re a fan of Ti West’s work and want to see what he can accomplish in a short time-frame. I’m pretty disappointed with V/H/S as I’d heard a lot of good things, so I can only hope that V/H/S 2 is capable of redeeming this concept. 4/10.

"Tomorrow...MORE tapes!!!"
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