Earlier this year, word began to spread about another so-called “scariest movie ever”, which, unconditionally, attracts my attention to an obsessive degree. About ten grueling months later, the movie finally achieved a national release and I excitedly rushed out and got my hands on V/H/S, despite lukewarm critical reception. While I was kept thoroughly entertained through the duration of V/H/S and will likely watch it again, its inconsistency in quality and sometimes far-fetched concept place this film just a notch above “guilty pleasure”.
The movie is an anthology of “found footage” which is discovered when a group of criminals is sent to retrieve a v/h/s tape from an apparently empty house. The overarching story is pieced together between the mini-movies and involves the group of criminals dividing into separate locations in the house to search for the tape more effectively. Meanwhile, the body of a man is found in front of a powered-on television with a v/h/s tape already in it, which the criminal decides to sit back and enjoy. We then see five short horror films, each attached to different directors, which may be the reason for the lack of consistency in the quality of the film as a whole.
Once part one ended, I was pleasantly surprised and had high hopes for the remainder of the film. It was fun, fast-paced, cleverly directed and best of all, scary as hell. However, I’m still wondering if my enjoyment at all was encouraged by the fact that I hated every one of the characters with a deep and fiery passion. It’s always a bad sign when you’re not really sure who you want to win; the evil, flesh-eating monster or the college kids who like to go around ripping shirts of women in public and tearing apart abandoned houses.
V/H/S never fails to amuse, but the effectiveness of the anthology diminishes significantly after part one, and never seems to recover. However, each short film is unique and the concept is truly successful in keeping the audience’s attention, as it’s kind of difficult to become bored when an entirely new story begins every twenty minutes.
I was left hoping for more cohesiveness between the different stories. It was very apparent that they were each fronted by a different personality. For example, the question “why is this being recorded?” was satisfyingly answered in part one by use of the hidden camera eye glasses which were worn to capture women having sex. Again, the implementation of Skype in part 4 to give reason for the footage we are watching was acceptable. But the rest of the time, I was left completely disconnected from the experience because no one in their right mind would continue recording themselves being chased around by a possessed exorcist.
I won’t delve too much further into the plots of each individual story and I’ve attempted to reserve such mysteries for my reader’s enjoyment, because there really is a lot to enjoy. The bad guys (and girls) are scary, the pacing is brisk but suspenseful, and it’s still rare to find a horror movie with a rating above 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s worth checking out. It’s only a shame that they couldn’t have tied together the anthology any more cleverly and kept the audience from wanting to kill the victims themselves.
3/5
The Crimson Roast 