V/H/S (2012)

Studio:       Magnet Releasing
Director:    Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence
Writer:       Simon Barrett, Nicholas Tecosky
Producer:  Gary Binkow, Brad Miska, Roxanne Benjamin
Stars:     Calvin Reeder, Hannah Fierman, Mike Donlan, Drew Sayer, Sophia Takal, Norma C. Quinones, Drew Moerlein, Helen Rogers, Daniel Kaufman

Review Score:

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Summary:

Six “found footage” films tell terror tales of aliens, cults, stalkers, urban legends, and killer creatures.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Tape 56 – Gary and his group of criminal vandals are hired by an anonymous source to steal a mysterious VHS videocassette. The thieves break into their target’s house only to find the man dead in front of several televisions displaying static. One by one, the criminals are killed after watching the tapes left near the televisions. When only Gary remains, the dead man reanimates and kills Gary.

Amateur Night – Shane, Clint, and Patrick go binge drinking at a bar with the intention of meeting women and filming a sex video through a camera hidden in Clint’s glasses. Clint meets a socially awkward woman named Lily while Shane meets barfly Lisa. Both women go back to a hotel room with the three men. When Lisa passes out, Shane initiates sex with Lily. Lily initiates a threesome with Clint, but Clint changes his mind and retreats to the bathroom. Lily grows angry when Patrick tries taking Clint’s place. Lily morphs into a hybrid monster and kills Shane and Patrick. Clint flees outside, but Lily eventually catches up, sprouts wings, and flies away with Clint.

Second Honeymoon – Sam and Stephanie take a trip to Arizona. A strange girl knocks on the couple’s hotel room door and asks for a ride. Sam dismisses her. Later, the girl sneaks into the couple’s room and films herself poking Stephanie with a switchblade while Stephanie sleeps, stealing $100 from Sam’s wallet, and dipping Sam’s toothbrush in the toilet. The next day, Sam accuses Stephanie of taking the money from his wallet. That night, the girl sneaks into the room again and stabs Sam in his throat. The girl is revealed to be Stephanie’s lover. The two women kiss and Stephanie asks the girl if she erased the recorded footage.

Tuesday the 17th – Wendy, Joey, Samantha, and Spider go hiking in the woods. Wendy cryptically refers to mysterious deaths, even warning that all of them will die, and mutilated bodies occasionally flash as brief glitches in Joey’s video camera. A phantom killer, The Glitch, blurrily appears on camera and kills Samantha and Spider. Wendy tells Joey that she used everyone as bait to catch the mysterious killer who murdered her friends on a previous camping trip. The Glitch appears again as corrupted video and slits Joey’s throat. The Glitch triggers several of Wendy’s preset traps, but he eventually kills Wendy too.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger – Over a series of video chats with her long-distance, longtime boyfriend James, strange occurrences convince Emily that her apartment is haunted. James discourages Emily from picking at a bloody wound that mysteriously appears on her arm. During one of her chats with James, three ghost children who are actually aliens appear and Emily collapses. James rushes into Emily’s apartment, revealing he had been nearby all along. James communicates with the aliens while surgically removing a fetus from Emily’s body, further revealing that he had been harvesting from Emily’s body under the aliens’ direction for many years. James breaks Emily’s bones and when she later recovers, she has no memory of the incident, much like a similar occurrence barely recalled from her childhood. Unbeknownst to Emily, James carries on with another long-distance romance with a woman whose arm bears a wound exactly like Emily’s.

10/31/98 – Chad, Matt, Tyler, and Paul unknowingly end up at the wrong address for a Halloween party. The four friends explore the seemingly empty house and when they encounter paranormal activity, they presume it is part of a Halloween haunt. In the attic, the quartet stumbles upon a group of apparent cultists engaged in a ritual around a restrained woman. Realizing that the ritual is real when the cultists assault the woman and are supernaturally attacked themselves, the friends rescue the woman and escape the house as it explodes with paranormal activity. Driving away with the woman, the car suddenly stops and the woman vanishes. The woman reappears outside the car as the men realize they are locked inside with the car stalled on train tracks. Chad, Matt, Tyler, and Paul futilely try to open the doors as the train collides with their vehicle.

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Review:

Measured by IMDb scores and Rotten Tomatoes ratings, the popular preference for ranking the “V/H/S” anthologies is “V/H/S/2” (6.1 and 70%), “V/H/S” (5.8 and 55%), and then “V/H/S: Viral” (4.2 and 39%).  Metacritic flips those first two, and “found footage” film fans can argue which of that pair is better the same way “Star Wars” fans debate which prequel is worse, though majority opinion banishes “V/H/S: Viral” to the basement no matter what.

My personal preference skews the other way.  Praise for the third film is virtually exiled to an all-consuming abyss of overwhelming dislike from the masses.  Yet I applaud the effort each “V/H/S: Viral” (review here) filmmaker put into attempting CPR on a dying, if not already dead, format.  Maybe “Dante the Great” didn’t float enough boats, but how many other mockumentaries take on that type of atypical tale?  Perhaps Nacho Vigalondo’s “Parallel Monsters” rubbed some the wrong way, but have you forgotten its depiction of dangerous doppelganger genitalia?

“V/H/S” doesn’t pass the same tests for creativity or memorability.  I first saw the original installment when it was released in 2012.  Revisiting it for this review in 2016, I realized I had little recollection of “Tuesday the 17th” until midway through that segment and no memory whatsoever, somewhat shockingly given the gonzo gusto of its nutty twist, of “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger.”

That’s the only tell I need to convince me “V/H/S” is the weakest link in the series.  The first film has the disadvantage of being a year older that its first follow-up, but there shouldn’t be too much trouble recalling Adam Wingard’s wild eye, the zombie picnic in the park, or the alien abduction sleepover from “V/H/S/2” (review here).  Now name the winged woman of “Amateur Night” starring in her own spinoff film (review here) or detail the key events in Ti West’s “Second Honeymoon” from “V/H/S.”  If it’s been more than two years since your last viewing, I’ll wager you can’t.  By comparison, how long do you think it will take for the incredible cult carnage of the first sequel’s “Safe Haven” to make a similarly speedy exit from your mind’s eye?

I’d break down “V/H/S” by individual segments except their interchangeability makes such an effort mostly meaningless.  “10/31/98’s” chronicle of four flippant friends encountering a house of Halloween horrors is the singular standout.  Lo-fi CGI is perfectly masked by the “found footage” frame for an impressive orgy of paranormal poltergeists, although the scant story can’t hide that it is merely a springboard for digitized scares.

More premise than plot fits as a summary for the other shorts, too.  Forgetting the function of a wraparound is to actually wrap around, “Tape 46” confusingly concludes prior to the final segment with a whimper proving its purpose as little more than a disposable frame.  “Second Honeymoon” and “The Sick Thing…” particularly feel like their filmmakers had half an idea and still rolled camera with a “whatever.”

Each with different directors, writers, and actors, the six shorts comprising “V/H/S” are nonetheless united by their insistence on including male characters who are obnoxious and women baring breasts without substantial script motivation.  Literally every single story features one or the other, sometimes both.

Joe Swanberg’s character interrupts romancing his wife on their “Second Honeymoon” to accuse her of stealing $100 from his wallet.  Two teens in “Tuesday the 17th” come to terms with an unrequited crush by debasing the object of their affection as a “crack whore.”  Hoodlums forcibly lifting an assaulted woman’s shirt in “Tape 56” and “Amateur Night’s” trio of drunk skunks slobbering salaciously on unconscious barflies compete for the crown of most offensive behavior.  Never mind unwoke.  Everyone is unentertaining.

Weighing in at nearly two full hours, “V/H/S” overstays its welcome, and the solution isn’t simply cutting a segment.  Each short is ironically too long.  Strung together, the movie squanders any shot at momentum due to regularly resetting the timer on uninteresting exposition and unnecessary padding buffing up already bountiful bloat.  “V/H/S” has an issue with focus when it comes to its pieces as well as its big picture.

Throw in awful AV hiccups intentionally used to explain “Amateur Night’s” glasses cam frame skips and “Tuesday the 17th’s” conceit for its video glitch killer, and “V/H/S” doubles its trouble as an annoying sight and sound experience.  Popular votes can poo-poo “V/H/S: Viral” all they want.  I’d watch that movie again.  This one I wouldn’t.  Though if I wait even longer than four years to have a third go, maybe I’ll fully forget having ever seen “V/H/S” at all.

Review Score:  45

V/H/S: Viral Review

V/H/S/2 Review

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