{"id":8116,"date":"2022-10-19T15:44:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T15:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattshorroraddiction.com\/?p=8116"},"modified":"2023-09-26T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T14:47:10","slug":"spotlight-v-h-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattshorroraddiction.com\/?p=8116","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight: V\/H\/S"},"content":{"rendered":"
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V\/H\/S<\/strong> (2012)<\/em> 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<\/strong>+ <\/p>\n\n\n

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V\/H\/S\/2<\/strong> (2013)<\/em> In a sequel filled with surprises, V\/H\/S\/2<\/em> 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 S\u00e1nchez 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<\/em> offers the same story structure as V\/H\/S<\/em>, 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<\/strong>– <\/p>\n\n\n

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V\/H\/S: VIRAL<\/strong> (2014)<\/em> 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<\/em> 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<\/em> 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 Salmer\u00f3n), 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<\/em> feels more like a cheap rip-off than an actual sequel, especially coming on the heels of the excellent V\/H\/S\/2<\/em>. The second tale, “Parallel Monsters,” offers some interesting ideas and is the best directed of the lot (by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo, Timecrimes<\/em>), 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<\/strong>–<\/p>\n\n\n

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V\/H\/S\/94<\/strong> (2021)<\/em> A return to form, V\/H\/S\/94<\/em> brings back the scares and humor that were sorely missing from Viral<\/em>. 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<\/em>) 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<\/em> films, 94<\/em> is creepy, funny, gory, and brings a freshness to the found footage arena. B<\/strong>+ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, … <\/p>\n

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