Studio:   Shudder
Director: Various
Writer:   Various
Producer: Josh Goldbloom, Brad Miska, James Harris, David Bruckner, Radio Silence
Stars:    Various

Review Score:

Summary:

Six "found footage" videotapes set in the 1980s depict eerie events featuring creatures, killers, ancient gods, deadly dreams, and the dangers of technology.

Synopsis:

TOTAL COPY (Director: David Bruckner - Writer: Evan Dickson)

Led by Dr. Pike Spratling, a scientific research team at Stamer University studies a shapeshifting being dubbed "Rory" that was found in the wilderness. Spratling attempts to communicate with Rory and teach him about human culture by continuously running videotapes in its containment unit. As Rory begins displaying disturbing abilities such as mimicking human forms and sprouting tentacles, fearful doctors exit the project over disagreements with Spratling on how to handle the growing danger. Rory eventually morphs into a monster that kills everyone in the facility, including Spratling. Rory then uses its tentacles to puppeteer two corpses so they mirror the movements in an exercise video.

NO WAKE (Director/Writer: Mike P. Nelson)

While Anna and her boyfriend Jared remain in a tent onshore during a camping getaway, Kevin operates a speedboat so Anna's brother Rob, Rob's crush Robin, and their other friends Drew and Kelly can go waterskiing. Unexpectedly, an unseen sniper shoots and kills all seven friends.

Despite fatal injuries gruesomely maiming their bodies, Rob, Robin, Drew, and Kelly inexplicably come back to life. Anna, Jared, and Kevin remain dead. The four reanimated friends find the roman numeral VII written in blood on their RV. They also realize they all went into the lake while the other three did not, so they conclude the water must have mysterious properties. Using a videotape that recorded the shooter's license plate, the quartet plots to take revenge.

GOD OF DEATH (Director/Writer: Gigi Saul Guerrero)

Ahorita TV cameraman Luis records morning show anchor Lucia De Leon in the studio while Gabriela Maldonado reports from the field. During the broadcast, a massive earthquake strikes the area, killing everyone in the studio except Luis.

A rescue team consisting of Karla, Eddie, Miguel, and Javier pulls Luis out of the rubble. As aftershocks continue to rock the city, Javier becomes gravely wounded and compels Karla to kill him out of mercy.

Luis, Karla, Eddie, and Miguel fall into a cave adorned with ancient drawings and stone idols dedicated to Aztec gods. The god Mictlan possesses Eddie, who kills Miguel before maiming himself. Mictlan materializes to eat Eddie's heart. Karla attempts to flee, but she too becomes possessed and tears out Luis's heart. After calling out various gods by name, Karla strips naked and kneels before Mictlan's statue while commanding him to rise. The cave walls shake violently. After the quakes subside, Gabriela Maldonado continues reporting outside.

TKNOGD (Director: Natasha Kermani - Writer: Zoe Cooper)

As part of her one-woman show presented to a small audience at Public Eye Theater, performance artist Ada Lovelace sneeringly associates advancements in technology such as virtual reality with a new, foolish religion. During a segment where she mockingly invokes an incantation to the "God of Technology," Ada becomes suddenly trapped inside her VR helmet while a digital demon appears on the video screen behind her. The entity invisibly mutilates Ada like a marionette until she is viciously torn apart and dies. The confused audience applauds.

AMBROSIA (Director/Writer: Mike P. Nelson)

The extended Wrigley family celebrates a birthday for teenager Ruth Wrigley. During the party, a young relative sprays Ruth with a squirt gun he says he was given by "a lady in an RV," which puzzles Ruth.

The party winds down with Ruth's mother honoring her daughter for fulfilling their family's longstanding tradition of murdering seven people, which supposedly brings prosperity to the Wrigleys. Ruth explains how she targeted seven friends in an RV she spotted at a gas station as she shows a home video of her shooting the seven friends in "No Wake."

Police suddenly surround the house. While all of the guests arm themselves, Ruth is reminded that no Wrigley can be taken alive. A massive firefight ensues between the family and the police. Ruth gets shot to death, but she quickly comes back to life. Ruth then tries to shoot herself in the head only to realize she cannot die. After police take Ruth into custody, a video reveals the four survivors from "No Wake" purposely put cursed lake water in the squirt gun given to Ruth's young relative.

DREAMKILL (Director/Writer: Scott Derrickson - Writer: C. Robert Cargill)

Detective Wayne receives a disturbing first-person video of an unidentified intruder using an electric carving knife to brutally murder a woman in her home. One week later, Wayne investigates the exact same crime in the exact same home. Wayne becomes confounded again when he receives a second tape of another murder and that crime then happens three days later.

Wayne tracks the mailed videotapes to a specific public mailbox. By staking out that mailbox, the police capture the mailer while he's in the process of sending a third tape. The mailer turns out to be Gunther, the teenage son of Bobby, a forensic investigator who works with Wayne.

Wayne interrogates Gunther at the police station with Bobby present. When asked how he was able to obtain tapes of murders before they happened, Gunther claims he has a habit of falling asleep while recording late night TV, and the tapes somehow recorded his predictive dreams, so he sent them to the police to warn them. Bobby privately confirms to Wayne that his family has always been prone to alarming premonitions.

From the third tape, Wayne is able to identify the address where the next killing will take place. Outside that residence, Wayne confronts Bobby with the revelation that all of the victims are connected to accusations of stalking and sexual assault against Bobby. Because of their prior working relationship, Wayne gives Bobby an opportunity to explain, but Bobby shoots Wayne in his head. Bobby then enters the house to commit the third murder.

Having fallen asleep in the interrogation room, Gunther wakes and watches the video that recorded his latest predictive dream. Bobby returns to the police station where he guns down multiple officers in a firefight. Upon entering the interrogation room, Bobby threatens to kill his son for outing him as a murderer. Gunther warns that isn't what happened in his dream. Bobby continues killing cops until Gunther shoots him in the head.

Review:

My review of "V/H/S/99" (review here), the preceding entry in the long-running series of "found footage" anthologies, concluded with wishful thinking. In summing up how that movie's pieces had little to do with the year they were set in or with the first-person format they were forced into, I remarked, "Hopefully the upcoming 'V/H/S/85' will have a better time tying into its era than this one did, and hopefully the 'found footage' frame will become important again as well."

To my dismay, neither of those things happened. "V/H/S/85" either equals or outdoes "V/H/S/99" in being tied to the two numbers in its title and to the videocassette conceit only in peripheral ways inessential to the tepid tales told. The result is a consecutive collection of incongruent stories whose tenuous connection is just that they're sheltering under the same thin umbrella whether they, or the audience, like it or not.

How does an assortment of "shorts" end up with a 111-minute runtime? Because segments like "No Wake" fill up on the fluff of seven friends farting around, looking at a lake, and then waterskiing for four straight minutes of totally avoidable uneventfulness. "No Wake" sneaks in an insert of pull-top beer cans along with someone doing a brief "Macho Man" Randy Savage impression to qualify the 1985 setting. Then it's down a long, rocky road to a cliffhanger ending that won't get resolved until three segments later in a companion piece from the same filmmaker, Mike P. Nelson.

Writer/director Gigi Saul Guerrero takes an opposite approach by getting to the goods almost immediately in "God of Death." Set during an earthquake that unleashes a bloodthirsty Aztec god on a doomed rescue crew during a morning news show, "God of Death" moves quickly, keeps its intensity high, and stages action for maximum shock value. Energetic entertainment gets undercut, however, because "God of Death" largely relies on hectic events to create a hubbub it hopes will distract viewers from noticing there isn't thick substance behind the light setup.

For people outside of New York or L.A. who don't have aspiring actors in their social circle and thus don't know what this is like, "TKNOGD" simulates the excruciating awkwardness of having to sit through someone's overdramatized monologue with a handful of other friends held hostage in a makeshift theater without air conditioning above a Hollywood Boulevard alleyway. I don't think that was director Natasha Kermani's intention with her segment where a performance artist's one-woman show ends in an unexpected mutilation, so let's chalk up this one as a bust and move on.

As the payoff for "No Wake," "Ambrosia" isn't fully satisfying. The characters from the first chapter only appear in passing, and their tie to an EC Comics twist could have been excluded entirely with a minor rewrite. But the climactic firefight riddled with bullets and bloodshed, which is most definitely not for viewers triggered by depictions of suicide, contains so much visceral violence that "V/H/S/85" enjoys a much-needed adrenaline jolt following a stretch of languor.

With only one full segment left to go at this point, it becomes crystal clear that "V/H/S/85" has nearly no content that's actually exclusive to the 1980s. The shorts happen to take place in 1985 when the year could easily be 2025 for all it really matters. The only material difference would be improved video fidelity since everything wouldn't be filtered through the frustratingly blurry VHS footage dominating this movie.

In what should not be a surprise to anyone, the strongest segment comes from Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, the two people on the production who have extensive backgrounds on theatrical features with bigger budgets. An example of "understanding the assignment" for a "V/H/S" segment, "Dreamkill" may have even started as a feature film idea until cowriters Cargill and Derrickson rightly realized how much better it would play without padding. Not necessarily specific to 1985, the year still makes sense, as does the "found footage" format in this genuinely eerie story about dreams predicting a serial killer's grotesque mutilations.

In addition to its efficient script, "Dreamkill" adds to its nightmarish aura with unsettling audio and gritty film grain that creates the sickly feel of a macabre murderer's underground home movies. Ironically, this has the side effect of proving how much better the overall anthology might be, at least on a technical level, if segments weren't shoved into shooting within one of the worst mediums possible. As a second unintended side effect, "Dreamkill" diminishes "Ambrosia's" action in hindsight since "Dreamkill's" gruesome gore and explosive gunplay are so much more sharply produced by comparison.

I nearly overlooked the wrapround, "Total Copy," which would be understandable considering its flip, almost offhanded inclusion as minor comic relief. Each interlude is an eclectically edited assembly of TV bits and talking heads culminating in a throwaway sight gag that makes you say, "All that for this?"

Which might be a fitting sentiment for "V/H/S/85" as a whole. I took a brief break in between each segment because it was a real labor to trudge through the entire thing. Even with "No Wake" stopping on a cliffhanger and "Total Copy" dropping breadcrumbs to build a mystery, there is never a feeling of forward momentum incentivizing an excited desire to keep going in one uninterrupted sitting.

In keeping with the way I rated "V/H/S/99," my scorecard for "V/H/S/85" totals one standout and one clunker, with the rest being mostly mid. I want to have higher hopes for the next installment, "V/H/S/Beyond," but seeing how my previous wish went unfulfilled, it'd undoubtedly be better if I didn't have any expectations at all.

Review Score: 50