So far over the past couple of years it seems Hollywood has totally latched onto the cheap method of making horror films since ParanormalActivity. Since then they have scoured the all the possible ways to do make movie with supernatural ghosts and demons it seems the young filmmakers have to new ways to use the style. With American pop culture reaching a point nineties nostalgia it seems the Producers decided to do something that can tap into that with this movie V/H/S. V/H/S an anthology film is crafted like of a movie version of Tales from the Crypt or Tales from the Dark Side or other anthology horror television shows of the late eighties to nineties.
While watching this
it felt like a Bro version of Tales of the Crypt. The movie starts you out with
some young white guys causing havoc and taping the whole thing, for some reason
on VHS tape…shrug. They assault a young woman with her boyfriend to see her
breasts. They then destroy some property for no reason. They then decide to do
a breaking and entering to steal a VHS tape from some house owned by an older
man. This is framing story from that point the movie jumps into other stories,
you never know why or how but it does.
So the movie is broke up into six different stories, one
that is a framing tale and four others that are interspliced throughout the
framing story. The last story is just that, a last story that feels tacked on
the end because they wanted to make this movie two hours long. Instead of the set
up of the film’s plot itself here is the set up for each of the stories
presented throughout the whole movie.
Amateur Night: Three young men get new spyglasses camera and attempt to make night they’d never forget but they get more than they bargain for.
Second Honeymoon:
A nice young couple goes on a road trip together but things get interesting
once a mysterious girl asks them for a ride.
Tuesday the 17: Four
friends go to a lake house in the woods for a nice weekend, pshaw you know what
happens but with a twist. REVENGE!!!
The Sick Thing That
Happened To Emily When She Was Younger: Emily tells her long distance
boyfriend that she thinks that there are ghosts haunting her apartment.
10/31/98: Four
young men get ready to go to a Halloween party but end up going to something more
sinister.
This whole set up actually would have made for a better
television series like an updated version of nineties syndicated anthologies like Tales from the Dark Side, Monsters or Tales from the Crypt on HBO which could’ve given each story a bit longer to breath. Since here their lengths
are so short in the end what we get are unlikable characters, some evil girl, some breasts, a horrific act, followed by corn syrup blood ending in tape static.
Don’t forget to get things like tracking artifacts or a lot of data moshing effects.
And speaking of Data moshing that effect in the movie makes no sense because
data moshing is digital and VHS tapes, were analogue. That might seem like a
nitpick but it’s those little things that take you out of it. Some of those
little disregard for the base concept makes you ask why is this not called
called D/V/D?
For most of this thing the movie feels like kind of a waste
of time with some of the stories having a nice twist. The Emily one and the Tuesday one fit that
bill but most of them are very lacking. This is something that might be fun to
watch on DVD or Blu ray in a party setting and if this was the filmmakers’ goal
then they succeeded. But as something to go and see in the theater or watch
early on VOD for ten bucks then they tripped up on the proverbial tree root to
their doom.
