V/H/S (2012) The first of the low-fi found footage anthology series offers five unsettling tales of terror from a handful of filmmakers, including Ti West and Adam Wingard. A group of petty criminals are hired to break into a remote house and steal a VHS tape, the contents of which are unknown. In doing so, they uncover a stash of tapes and watch several. Tape 1 (“Amateur Night”) offers the best segment, in which a trio of partying bro-types pick-up a mysterious woman at a bar and bring her back to their hotel room for sex only to discover that she’s an inhuman creature. Tape 2 (“Second Honeymoon”) is a slow burn featuring a couple encountering a strange woman while on a road trip, while Tape 3 (“Tuesday the 17th”) offers up old school slicing and dicing as some horny teens are stalked by a supernatural killer. The goosebump-inducing Tape 4 (“The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger”) presents a clever webcam tale where a young woman seeks advice from her med school boyfriend while being bombarded by ghostly activity. The fun final segment (“10/31/98”) has a quartet of friends invited to a Halloween party where they stumble upon a Satanic ritual. Although not all of the tales are perfect – West’s second chapter could have benefited from a more satisfying outcome – they are entertaining and never dull. The filmmakers also understand how to use the found footage gimmick to their advantage by creating genuinely chilling moments of dread mixed with real-world scenarios. B+
V/H/S/2 (2013) In a sequel filled with surprises, V/H/S/2 has the distinction of being a rare follow-up that’s actually better than the original. A slimy P.I. looking for a missing college student discovers a collection of VHS tapes in the student’s house and watches them. “Phase I Clinical Trials” presents old school haunted house chills, with a man (director Adam Wingard) seeing ghostly visitors at his home after undergoing an experimental eye transplant. A bicyclist inadvertently rides into a zombie invasion in the gory and funny “A Ride in the Park,” directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale. A documentary crew doing a film on a secretive Indonesian cult step into literal hell in Gareth Evan’s and Timo Tjahjanto’s thrilling “Safe Haven.” A group of teens are terrorized by an alien attack during a sleepover in the terrific wrap-up, “Slumber Party Alien Abduction,” a small piece of brilliant found footage perfection by Jason Eisener. Tighter-paced and jam-packed with visual details and humor, V/H/S/2 offers the same story structure as V/H/S, but as with the best of sequels it respects the format while offering fresh ideas and highly inventive gags. All of the tales work, but the standout is “Safe Haven,” a gory, intense knockout which deserves its own movie. The best in the series so far. A–
V/H/S: VIRAL (2014) A mysterious ice cream truck broadcasting an unknown cell transmission, which causes people to act violently, is the framing story for the third V/H/S outing, an unfortunate downgrade in quality. The stories (shortened to three segments) don’t seem to connect to the wrap-around at all, creating a lack in structural rhythm that the first two V/H/S films had. A white trash magician (Justin Welborn) discovers a demonic cloak that grants him the ability to create real magic, but at a sinister cost. A scientist (Gustavo Salmerón), who creates a doorway to a parallel universe, swaps places with himself and finds out the other side is not exactly the same. A group of annoying skater punks fight for their lives against a swarm of undead cultists in the final video. Lacking scares and any shred of suspense, Viral feels more like a cheap rip-off than an actual sequel, especially coming on the heels of the excellent V/H/S/2. The second tale, “Parallel Monsters,” offers some interesting ideas and is the best directed of the lot (by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo, Timecrimes), while the last, “Bonestorm,” is lazy and overstays its welcome. The first story, “Dante the Great,” uses several scenes of non-POV framing, putting a serious dent in the whole found footage packaging. Did the director (Gregg Bishop) forget the point of the movie’s title? C–
V/H/S/94 (2021) A return to form, V/H/S/94 brings back the scares and humor that were sorely missing from Viral. Believing they’re participating in a drug raid, a S.W.A.T. team instead discovers a large warehouse filled with the corpses of what appears to have been the mass murder site of a cult-like group that worshipped violent videocassettes. “Storm Drain” is a terrific way to open the movie, with news footage of a journalist (Anna Hopkins) whose investigation of a local urban legend called the Rat Man takes her too close to the gruesome truth. The creepy “The Empty Wake” is a video of a young woman (Kyal Legend) hired to host the wake for a man who isn’t as dead as she’s been told. “The Subject” presents more bloody mayhem by director Timo Tjahjanto (“Safe Haven” from V/H/S/2) as a deranged surgeon (Budi Ross) performs diabolical human experiments in order to create the perfect robot/human killing machine. The last story, “Terror,” is the strongest in the movie and best utilizes the found footage style the series is built on: a backwoods terrorist group plan on using their vampire prisoner, whose blood violently explodes in direct sunlight, as a weapon to blow up a government building. As with the best of the V/H/S films, 94 is creepy, funny, gory, and brings a freshness to the found footage arena. B+