Welcome
horror fans, to Day 2 of the 31 DAYS OF
HORROR! We are back in our lead up to Halloween with an experimental
found-footage horror anthology film that takes a lot of risks and pays off with
some interesting horror shorts. We present to you...V/H/S. Enjoy!
V/H/S is a found-footage horror
anthology film that incorporates one part of connective tissue that includes
five smaller stories within. The main narrative (called Tape 56/frame narrative)
is directed by Adam Wingard. The sub-narratives are titled and directed as
follows: Amateur Night – David Bruckner; Second Honeymoon – Ti West; Tuesday
the 17th – Glenn McQuaid; The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When
She Was Younger – Joe Swanberg; and 10/31/98 – Radio Silence (Matt
Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, and Chad Villella). As a
whole, V/H/S is an interesting
experiment in horror storytelling that worked out in some respects even though
it definitely stumbled in many of them. This review will discuss the various
narratives in turn as it is hard to discuss the positives and negatives with
the film as a whole because of how disjunctive it is.
MAIN
NARRATIVE
The
main narrative in V/H/S follows a group of guys who film their exploits as they
commit a variety of crimes culminating in breaking into a house and trying to
find a particular V/H/S tape to steal. This serves as the mechanic for jumping
into the other stories although there is a horror-suspense element to the main
narrative as well. Adam Wingard directs this part of the film well. He finds
ways to build suspense and keep you intrigued even though you know you’re in
the periods between the anthology stories presented in the film. That said, the
story involved in this main narrative really isn’t that interesting, I had
trouble getting involved with the characters, and it really wasn’t the draw of
the film. It felt like it was there for the purpose it was there: to take us in
a narrative way from one horror short to another.
AMATEUR
NIGHT
Amateur
Night is a horror short that shows a bunch of guys who go out to a bar to pick
up girls to bring back and film them as they have sex. Certain things don’t
turn out as they expect and terror ensues. The real strength of this part is
the general tone of creepiness that runs through it. You feel the underbelly of
tension growing and when things start to happen it is powerfully frightening.
This has some really great scares and is a definitely gory and sexually graphic
segment. It really doesn’t hide away from anything which is admirable in a
sense. That said, this has some cheap jump scares and it ends extremely
strangely that left me feeling less scared than I should have left an otherwise
interesting story. The performances are also pretty over the top and
uninteresting for the most part.
SECOND
HONEYMOON
Second
Honeymoon is a horror short that follows a couple as they visit the Grand
Canyon and stay in a motel in rural Arizona. The two encounter a woman who asks
for some help and things quietly begin to enter the realm of horror. This short
is super quiet and a definite contrast to the first short that was much more
graphic and showy. The unnerving nature of this portion of the anthology is in
the almost mundaneness of everything that goes on in it. I thought the
performances by the couple (Joe Swanberg and Sophia Takal) were effective and believable
and I thought the use of quiet really made this short intriguing to watch. I
thought the shot composition in this could have been a lot better, however, and
I found it kind of slow in that it would fail if it occupied any more time than
it did in this film.
TUESDAY
THE 17TH
A
group of young adults go out to camp in the woods together when one of the
individuals casually mentions some horrible things that happened to friends of
hers in these woods. Horrific things begin to happen and people start to die
brutal deaths. This was a cool short because of how it used V/H/S filming and
tracking to reveal certain things. I also thought that it really evoked some of
that classic found-footage scares that forerunners like The Blair Witch Project developed and using some more modern
elements to develop a more overt type of scare. The real weakness in this short
were the performances and characters. They try to give them intrigue and back
story and relatability but a lot of it boils down to really wanting to have sex
and not much more. Moreover, none of them felt quite real. The performances
were kind of wooden and didn’t land as well as they might have. Overall, the
strength of the horror makes this short a positive viewing experience.
THE
SICK THING THAT HAPPENED TO EMILY WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER
This
short is shown as found-footage through video chat screens (much like the
recent film Unfriended). This shows a
girl talking to her boyfriend over video chat as she believes her college
apartment is being haunted. This short brings in certain elements that are unsettling
and overwhelmingly question raising. This kind of found-footage filmmaking is
pretty innovative and the story itself is intriguing. I felt really creeped out
at the end of this short and it did exactly what I thought it needed to do to
be effective. The performances were fairly drab however and I thought that this
had a lot of room to improve the quality of its scares with more due
consideration and overall filmmaking quality.
10/31/98
The
final short in this anthology follows a group of friends as they go to an
abandoned house they believed to be the location of a party where they run into
some frightening ritual. This plays on more supernatural horror and some really
good haunted house elements. I thought that the kind of explosiveness of this
conclusion really made this an excellent end cap to this anthology. Generally
the characterization was not well developed (although the decision-making under
the circumstances definitely was well developed). This, in most contexts, would
be a decent horror piece at best. It works really well in this context however
as it brings together a lot of great elements into one fairly satisfying
conclusion.
Overall,
V/H/S isn’t a masterpiece but it is
kind of a fun experimental piece with some interesting shorts comprising a lot
of horror elements throughout. If anything, this film is a good horror ride to
explore the genre through found-footage over a two-hour window. Just don’t go
in expecting greatness in any capacity.
Ryan’s Score: 5/10
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