Seemingly as soon as you begin to fall you’re brought to a crashing stop as the dumb waiter slams into the base of the shaft. Above you the Mummy’s hand grasps at the empty air before disappearing from view.
Where are you? More importantly is there a way out for you…or a way in for…
Stumbling to your feet you look about you, dim light filters through a high dusty window and all about you are racks of circular metal tins…film reels, this must be some kind of store room in the cinema’s basement.
Searching the room for an exit you hear the sound of static and see a flickering light filtering through the racks of tapes. Mercifully as you round one of the stacks you see a door illuminated by the static fog emanating from a TV on a wheeled trolley. An old V/H/S tape player is stacked on top of the TV but there’s no time for that now, you head for the door.
As you reach for the handle you hear soft whirring and clicking sounds, the sound of a tape being pushed into the machine.
The static stops, and so does the light…
Here’s something we haven’t done before, something a bit different, an anthology film! I’m going to go right out and say that I love an anthology film, a bit like how I love short stories, it’s nice to be able to see a few different stories in one sitting, or if you really like, and this is more when it comes to the short stories, consume them over multiple sittings.
Not to say I don’t also like a super long individual film and the same when it comes to books, IT for example being my favourite, and that’s long as shit.
Anyway, we’re getting off topic. The film this time is the…multiple people directed, 2012 anthology film, V/H/S.
Oh! Not only is this our first anthology film, it’s also the first pure found footage film we’ve got to, if you don’t include the video sections of Sinister. I’m repeating myself here but I should also say that I love a found footage film, for me they’re probably the scariest subgenre of horror, along with ghost/haunting films, combine those two and you’re generally on to a winner, at least as far as scares go.
So how to review this. The film is made up of 5 short films, linked together by a 6th overarching piece. I considered giving each film it’s own score but it’s a little unfair on Adam Wingard’s Tape 56 which ties everything together as it has to serve a purpose and cannot stand on its own, so I decided I’m going to just score it as a singular piece of cinema, after all, that’s how it was presented. I will however break the review down.
Tape 56
As I mentioned the film is held together by Adam Wingard’s Tape 56, where we follow a gang of petty criminals who’ve been hired to steal a VHS tape from a house. It’s whilst searching for this tape that we are introduced to the individual short films.
The guys are a bunch of assholes who make money selling videos of them exposing women’s breasts in between making videos of them trashing abandoned buildings or secretly filming unsuspecting dates. It really sets them up as a group we’d like to see come to a bad end.
The main focus is a room full of CRT televisions and VHS machines which acts as a hub and is where the group view the various short films.
We keep returning to this group between each of the films as the situation becomes more and more concerning, at least if we cared about these guys. Let’s say for them…it becomes more and more concerning for them.
It’s really quite difficult to discuss this in much detail, especially in the spoiler free section but essentially it does a good job of both giving a reason for us watching the various films and keeping us on edge and interested in between.
Amateur Night
The first short film is directed by David Bruckner and follows 3 guys trying to pick up girls to take back to their hotel room. One of them is wearing glasses with a hidden camera in, which explains how we’re seeing everything.
The trio manage to bring a couple of girls back to their room and things progress from there. This being a horror film, they don’t progress well…
By the way as an upstanding British woman, what the hell is up with the amount of drink driving in US films. People are constantly getting wrecked and then driving cars, it happens in this and it just seems like something nobody I know would do, or have done even in their 20s. Maybe the people I know are super sensible, but I think maybe it’s a cultural difference.
Watching it this time I noticed some bits that hadn’t stood out to me before, namely how graphic it is, both in terms of nudity and of gore. V/H/S has an 18 rating and I feel like this particular part of it has a lot to do with that.
Some of the acting in this one is really good, a highlight for me was Joe Sykes as a high and giggling Patrick, but overall it was great and helped to sell this being real found footage.
I enjoyed this one, it goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting and was a lot more fantastical than most found footage films I’ve seen. The effects are good and the whole things feels like a believable night out, at least the realistic parts.
Second Honeymoon
The second short film is directed by Ti West and follows a couple, Sam and Stephanie, who are on their honeymoon. They’re recording everything so they have a record of it which again makes sense, especially as we skip about a bit, they’re not filming everything, which would be weird.
As the film goes on we are introduced to a 3rd party and the film really starts to put you on edge. Honestly I probably found this the most troubling of the films, pretty much all of the others have a paranormal aspect to them, this one does not. I’ve always found real life to be scarier than fantasy, like how I find for example Hostel to be more disturbing than Saw, because it feels more believable and less ridiculous. Here, in our ‘normal’ yet disturbing situation I found myself feeling most vulnerable and relating to the characters the most.
This is the sort of film that really takes advantage of the found footage style, it’s short but that works in its favour, it manages to keep you in suspense as well as shock you, all in about 12 minutes.
Tuesday the 17th
The third film is directed by Glen McQuaid and follows four young people, two guys, two girls as they’re driving to a lake in the woods. One of the group, Wendy, says that she goes there every year. The trip starts off like a fairly normal wilderness ramble but soon it seems that Wendy’s trip isn’t quite what the others expected.
This one started off fairly promising, but goes down hill very quickly. Unlike the previous film, this is one which could definitely have done with being longer. We have our classic, not much is happening, part of a found footage film, which is effective in making us suspicious, but then suddenly everything is happening so quickly that we don’t really have time for any one event to affect us too much.
The acting is a mixed bag with the two guys being fairly good, and the two women pretty bad. The gore in this one, though extensive also feels pretty silly and unaffecting.
On the plus side it has some interesting ideas which utilise the camera in interesting ways, but ultimately it’s the most forgettable of the short films and the only film which I felt actively hurt the collection as a whole.
The Sick thing that Happened to Emily when She was Younger
Wow, long title! The fourth film is directed by Joe Swanberg and takes place across a series of video chats between a girl, Emily, and her boyfriend James. Emily’s arm is bothering her and she also keeps hearing things in her apartment at night.
Having recently watched Host, I think the video call format works well for a horror film. We get to see one party react to things they’re seeing at the other character’s location, including things they can’t see themselves, for example if it’s happening behind them.
The acting is a little hard to judge in this one, Emily, played by Helen Rogers, is good. Her reactions feel genuine even if she is a little strange, though considering her experiences it doesn’t seem off. James on the other hand, played by Daniel Kaufman, well I’ll just say it seems bad, but then it really isn’t, is that vague enough for you? There’s really only two characters of any consequence and they do a good job of selling the scene.
This one is a lot more interesting than it seems at first glance, but honestly I wasn’t really sure what the deal was with some of what happens till reading up on it after the fact, this can sometimes be the case with found footage type films where we’re not getting an overview but are in fact inside the events ourselves. Good ideas, some good scares but it didn’t quite get everything right for me.
10/31/98
The final film is directed by the group collectively known as Radio Silence.
Here we follow a group of four guys heading to a Halloween party, one is dressed as teddy bear with a camera embedded in it, which explains, if a little strangely, why all of this is being filmed.
The guys seem a bit unsure of the address of the party and ultimately end up at a seemingly empty house where strange things start to happen.
Something that really stood out to me with this one were the special effects, which are great, especially for a short film and for something in this sub-genre. I actually had a lot of fun with this one, love me a creepy house film and I found myself swept along as the guys explored the place. There was a bit more to this one as well, it successfully combines a few tropes into something that makes sense…well mostly at least.
So that’s it. I’ve given a general overview of the 6 films the best I can without spoiling them. The question is, what did I think of the film as a whole presentation? It’s a mixed bag, there’s some good stuff here, some great ideas, but there’s also some bad. Tuesday the 17th alone brings this down a whole point for me and there’s nothing here warranting anything higher than a 4 in the first place. I said I was going to review this as a whole so we have to look at it as a singular experience, therefore I’m going to give V/H/S 3 Meat Forks out of 5. As a platform for filmmakers I think it’s an excellent premise, but of course that means our experience may be inconsistent and it doesn’t take much to bring the overall experience down, there’s definitely some good stuff in here though.
OK fine, if I HAD to put them in some kind of order of how much I liked them, and not including Tape 56, it would be:
- Amateur Night
- 10/31/98
- Second Honeymoon
- The Sick thing that Happened to Emily when She was Younger
- Tuesday the 17th
1, 2 and 3 are pretty good, 4 is OK and 5 is bad, at least in my humble opinion.
**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**
Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.
Tape 56
Having the guys slowly picked off one by one whilst they watch the other films in the anthology works well, I particularly like how they just disappear during the other films so we have no idea what happened to them.
The ending in quite fun with our final guy finding his decapitated friend and then being attacked and killed by the old man they thought was dead. The close up of the zombie’s face at the end is pretty gross looking and one of the creepier shots in the whole anthology.
Again it’s hard for this one to really stand out as it’s there to do a job. It does that job well though and is much more interesting that just watching the other films back to back.
Amateur Night
I mentioned before about this one being quite graphic, well the bit that really stood out to me was when Lilly, the creature, rips one of the guy’s genitals completely off and they land in the corner of the shot! I have no idea how I forgot about this happening, you’d think I’d remember something like that! Male genitals are fairly rare to see in films, let alone fairly intact, but detached from the body.
The ending reminded me of Jeepers Creepers with Clint being carried off by Lilly. This is what I was talking about regarding it being fantastical, it’s great to see a creature feature found footage piece, the extent to which they took it taking me by surprise. This definitely came across as the ‘Main’ film in the anthology.
Second Honeymoon
OK so I didn’t mention about the gore in this one earlier, because in this case I felt like it was quite spoilery, but damn, it fakes you out as well.
So earlier in the film we are introduced to a 3rd party who has Sam in particular on edge, we then have a scene of that person filming the couple asleep in their beds, holding a knife out, so we know they are armed, but then nothing come of it. The second time they’re filming the sleeping couple we don’t see the knife, till suddenly it’s in Sam’s neck and we get a ton of blood, it feels very much like something that could happen, and reminded me a bit of the home movie scenes in Sinister.
Tuesday the 17th
So what I did like was using the glitching camera to have footage of the previous murders flash up on screen, that worked well and really took advantage of the format.
The ‘Glitch’ killer themselves, I’m split on. It’s an interesting idea but as a threat the fact that he could be injured, if only temporarily turned him into a less visible slasher villain like a Jason (Unsurprisingly considering the film’s title) but what makes those films work is that we’re very aware of the killer, here the killer is a bit of a half way house and I found myself not really scared of them because I couldn’t focus on them. For me…visible killer yes, invisible killer also yes, blurry/distorted killer…eh. I’m sure some people find it even more scary like that, it just didn’t work for me.
The Sick thing that Happened to Emily when She was Younger
When I mentioned about James’ acting in the earlier section, I couldn’t really explain it without spoiling things. He seems like he’s not great at acting as he often seems like he’s reacting strangely to Emily, but then when we find out that he in fact IS acting, inside the film, then it’s actually a great performance, it’s no wonder he comes across the way he does.
I like the twist that he’s helping, somewhat under duress it seems, some aliens to use human women as incubators, that’s an interesting idea. What doesn’t really seem to make sense, and seemed to be there just to throw you off and make you think it’s a paranormal situation, was the Alien kids. They’re just there occasionally, being weird and hanging out in Emily’s apartment. This is the bit that I don’t think works, at least as far as having them interact with Emily, maybe just have glimpses of them, like they’re spying on her, but hey, maybe they just want to play?
10/31/98
The special effects in this one were really fun, particularly as the group are escaping from the house and all sorts of things are happening, it actually put me in mind of the Blumhouse intro which plays on some films with the floating chair etc… The hand prints on the wall were particularly great.
It did feel a bit unfair to me at the end that these guys rescued the girl but she kills them all, that’s gratitude for you! I guess she’s supposed to be evil but honestly I didn’t want these guys to die. There is in fact a great alternative ending where they make it out and laugh about the crazy night they had, it’s brilliant!
Time to eject this tape.
Summerisle 