V/H/S

V/H/S Movie Review

A group of irritating guys who make their money by filming themselves vandalizing property and attacking women are offered a large sum of money to break into a house and steal a special VHS tape (Google it later, younger readers). Once in the house, they find a lot of the tapes, and a dead old man. They watch horrors unfold on the VHS (we, the viewers, see these as the segments of the movie) and that is the wrap-around story of this 2012 anthology film. The wrap-around (titled Tape 56) is a good enough concept, and when the group finally arrives in the home, it is visually creepy, but the acting is awful, the characters interchangeable, and it seems to take FOREVER for them to finally arrive there.

So many VHS tapes

The first story we see is titled Amateur Night, and in it, a few frat boy types, one of whom is wearing glasses with a hidden camera (this is how we see the story unfold), go to a bar, pick up a couple girls, and take them back to their hotel. One passes out quickly, and the other one, an odd gal named Lily, turns out to be more than they bargained for. This opening segment crawls, and most of the characters are dreadful, but the payoff at the end is tremendous. Hannah Fierman is phenomenal in the role of Lily—after you watch this segment, go back and watch her performance again to truly appreciate what she does. This segment produced a spin-off film titled Siren—I have yet to watch that one, but knowing Fierman reprises her role is enough for me to put it on my list!

That's quite a line on your forehead

Our second segment is Second Honeymoon. In this one, we follow a young couple through the desert. Somebody breaks into their hotel room, stealing money, before breaking in the next night...with deadlier ambitions. The strength of this segment is not in the scares, but in the characters—Joe Swanberg and Sophia Takal both do a convincing job and they seem like a real couple. The death scene is bloody and brutal, while the twist ending feels a bit forced.

This guy is cool too

Next up is Tuesday the 17th. Here, a young woman takes three friends into the woods where her other friends were killed years earlier. Not long after, we see a mysterious creature hunting the four yutes. As is the case with Amateur Night, this one takes a while to get going and you have to sit through some rather annoying characters, but your patience is rewarded. There is a genuinely creepy feel to this creature, and the death scenes are gruesome, though the final kill leaves a bit to be desired.

Adjust the tracking!

The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger is the long-winded title of our fourth segment. Unlike the rest of the stories, this one is not captured with a video camera but instead plays out entirely on computer monitors. A man and woman are chatting, and the woman develops a sore/growth on her arm that leads to...well, something quite unexpected. While this segment does have an interesting ending, it is probably the least entertaining of the segments. And how, exactly, did this get on VHS?

Here's how this segment looks

10/31/98 wraps things up for us. A group of young men go to a Halloween party, but end up in the attic of the wrong house--here, they witness an exorcism, and when they realize this is not a part of the party, they attempt to save the woman. As they drive away, the men discover that maybe there was a reason this was all happening, and pay for their decision. There are some spooky visuals in this one when the group is in the attic, but otherwise, this is a rather forgetful story.

Somebody wants to lend a hand

As with most anthologies, this film ends with the conclusion of the wrap-around story, and we get what we expect there. V/H/S is a nice horror flick--it combines some interesting stories with twist endings, and throws in some genuine scares to boot. Where the movies fails is in falling into some traps we tend to see with found footage films. Why is this person still recording when he is running from a demon? If you are prone to motion sickness, films like this can be a literal nightmare. The biggest trap for me personally is in the writing of these. Can we please get some better dialogue when the characters are scared? It seems that with practically all these movies, what we get is everybody screaming as they drop F bombs. I call upon directors to please get more creative here. Also, why is it almost always annoying late teens/early twenties people behind the camera and in the group? I understand that this has almost always been the age group of our victims in horror films, but my God, if you are going to have them, at least attempt to give them character and make them somewhat likable. You could take the characters (especially the men) from Tape 56, Amateur Night, Tuesday the 17th, and 10/31/98 and switch them up any way you wanted to and it would make no difference--they are all essentially the exact same person!

Lily is just realizing this

This movie runs a bit long at almost two hours--shortening Tape 56 or eliminating one of the last two segments would have done wonders for this project. Still, even with all this, V/H/S is a slick, fun horror anthology film that I've watched a few times and will likely watch again.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

V/H/S Movie Trailer