Dirs. Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo
Sánchez, Timo Tjahjanto and Adam Wingard
Like a beautiful coincidence, I
cover the original
V/H/S (2012)
months earlier, and like this sequel's release in Britain, you get
V/H/S 2 the same year near Halloween.
How many franchises get both the prequel and sequel debuting in the UK in the
exact same year to each other? There is a
slight
caveat to the words "beautiful" though. The original
V/H/S wasn't a good anthology film. Set
around a mysterious series of VHS tapes found in a house, a Wunderkammer of
death or an atrocity exhibition, the first film in hindsight was the creation
of directors who clearly wanted to make dramas than horror shorts for the most
part, and barring one legitimately good segment, none of them were good at the
drama in their work either. They dangerously became films that symbolised some
kind of elite club of white, middle class, male twenty something horror fans
rather than horror shorts for everyone; if the grindhouse phenomenon has
(thankfully) died on its backside, its unfortunately been surpassed by a vocabulary
of mostly swearing, quasi-drama with no interest and power dimensions amongst
peers that really didn't need to have been fed by accident with
V/H/S 1. It was a nostalgia for a
format (VHS) without considering the potential mysteries of the object in
question, and with no real sense of atmosphere and tone, a bane on the genre's
existence that has frankly sabotaged it for decades long before I was even
born.
Harsh words, very harsh words, but while I have suddenly become enamoured
with this new era of anthology films, at the moment like giving bloodied candy
to a four year old, the first film was the one blot when its sequel and
The ABCs of Death (2012), for their
flaws, had been enjoyable in their fragments, and for both showing potential
new talent and even bringing back interest in directors I was cold to.
V/H/S 2 can still be criticised for
many things, and is as much as an all men's club frankly, in an era where one
would hope for more female horror directors to exist, but it's still a drastic
improvement on the original. No longer, thankfully, preoccupied with evil women
as the segments in the first did barring that one good one which skewered the
notion. While still wadding in violence, some sex and general misanthropy, it's
for more inventive and trying to do something generally interesting in all the
key segments. And, aside from returning contributors
Simon Wingard and
Simon
Barrett, you've got clear outsiders
with different ideas now to bring to the table. A Canadian
Jason Eisener, whose work with
Hobo
With A Shotgun (2011) and his short
Youngbuck
for
The ABCs of Death is that of
someone obsessed with visual style and bouncing off the walls in his anarchic
tendencies.
Eduardo Sánchez, co-directing
with
Gregg Hale in one of the two
contributions done by a duo, one of the directors of
The Blair Witch Project (1999), the beginning, legitimately, of the
found footage subgenre that this anthology is part of, the drastic shift from
that film to a decade or so later adding a potentially fascinating layer to
Sánchez's contribution. And finally,
expanding the film beyond North American soil, there is the pairing of
Indonesian director
Timo Tjahjanto
and British director
Gareth Evans, the
later significantly known for martial arts action cinema, not horror, and
bringing a drastically different perspective to the material because of this.
Tape 49 (Dir. Simon Barrett) - V/H/S
2 needs some suspension of disbelief to make it work fully. This is not a
criticism at all, as most films need one aspect, or a couple, that need to be
accepted as they are. That's the nature of fiction, and of cinema. But it has
to be bared in mind, all these occult and supernatural events put on
videotapes, with some of the events composed of more than one camera, all
existing in the same world as two private detectives search for a young man.
They instead find an abandoned house full of these tapes and one of them watch
them to figure out what's going on. It's fascinating to imaging whole worlds
within one bigger one, subjectively questioned by the film without it realising
it, all of which may have more disturbing effects on a viewer than showing mere
gristly demises. As the wraparound story that bookmarks the four key segments,
its vastly superior to the one in the first film because it actually makes
sense. The first one was a clusterfunk of bad pacing and editing, while this
actually has a pace. It's the weakest piece alongside Adam Wingard's, the directors alumni of the prequel pointedly, but
it at least fits the improved quality of this sequel by being interesting to
view. What brief titbits it has about the meaning of these tapes' existence is tantalising
this time as well; I hope if V/H/S 3
ever happens it suddenly turns into Videodrome
(1983) in the implications made here. Brian O'Blivion would be proud of the
idea this nudges towards, but just needs the final push if another sequel is
made.
Phase I Clinical Trials (Dir. Adam Wingard) - A man (the director
himself) is given a robotic eye transplant, with recording equipment inside it
for the creators to monitor its functions, only to find that he can see things
with malevolent tendencies he didn't see before. The reason this is the weakest
of the key segments is because its difficult to write a lot about it. It's a
supernatural story reminiscent of The
Eye (2002) but with a very short length, cutting it down to a basic
structure, and a gimmick of being recorded from an eye in a quasi-Enter The Void (2009) first person. But
it's still a higher quality work than almost all the shorts from the first
film. It raises the interesting question of how someone got hold of the footage
in the first place, an enticing what-if rather than a logical flaw. It's
fascinating for a film in this anthology to be seen through a person's eye. It
also starts the greatest virtue of V/H/S
2 - that it takes advantage of two key aspects of the found footage genre
and uses both well. That they're filmed on various video recording devices, and
that, when done properly, it's very kinetic and all about movement. None of the
segments are mindless shaky camera, with even the chaotic moments where the
image is incomprehensible being appropriate for the moment. It's far from
perfect, and you will raise your eyebrows at the sex scene that suddenly
happens, verging close to the same questionable, laddish mentality of the first
V/H/S film your dread even if you
would find it titillating in a perverse way, any potential eroticism undercut
by the fact that, frankly, it's an excuse for nudity without just admitting its
an erotic moment and objectifying the actress for no justifiable excuse in the
context. But it's a good start to lead to better shorts, ending well in a
panicked state, with an interesting idea, leading on to segments which are
superior with running with these ideas that can top it easily.
A Ride In The Park (Dirs. Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale) - A male
mountain biking aficionado straps a head-mounted camera on and goes to record a
morning bike trek in the local woodland park. Unfortunately he rides into a
zombie outbreak. What happens is a really clever take on such a tired subgenre,
the zombie film, as he is bitten and becomes a member of the undead, shown
through improv zombie-cam. It's great to see one of the founders of the found
footage subgenre, and a producer of said original film, bringing something very
interesting here in such a simple thought, one that someone would come up with
while drinking one night and be amused by it. In fact it may actually be superior to the
more acclaimed segment Safe Haven
for the amount of emotions that the premise suddenly holds when its presented
as well as it is here. How curiously charming it is to see the world from the
shuffling dead, almost like flesh eating newborns who, in a nice touch, will
chew on anything before they figure out what they're supposed to sustain
themselves on. How a victim, as they're being eaten, will suddenly become
undead and the attackers suddenly stop and welcome them in the horde, wandering
off together. How hilarious the film gets in a sick way even when the zombies
get to a birthday party, the use of various camera, while a leap in logic too,
helping the film significantly in tension. And also how deeply sad by the
climax the story becomes and how it plays out. All these emotions co-exist in
the same minute within the film too, forcing you to feel them all together for
maximum effect. It's short, its succinct, but brilliant for it.
Safe Haven (Dirs. Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans)- The biggie. The
short everyone talks about in this anthology. The centrepiece in its longer
length and bombast. Set in Indonesia, a group of filmmakers manage to get
inside the home of a controversial cult to interview their leader, dubbed only
as Father, and let him speak on his own terms about their beliefs without
opposition. In the middle of the interview, a bell rings and Hell on Earth
tales place. It's the most maniac, insane, and downright violent of all the
segments, but it's also incredibly complicated in structure. It has numerous
camera the footage is recorded from, all that needs to be co-ordinated so the
viewer gets what it going on, and doesn't get to know everything at the same
time, before and during the chaos; and for all the madness that takes place, it's
also as much a story about the filmmakers too, while simplistic, where there's conflict
and a strained relationship in their camp which turns the final act into more
darker implications. I have seen only one film from each director who made
this, and while I am very open to them now, those two works weren't good. Evans is famous for The Raid (2011), but for its visceral fight scenes and their craft,
its completely bland in the ideas it actually has. Tjahjanto I know of only from his few minutes long contribution to The ABCs of Death, L Is For Libido, a potentially interesting piece, very well made,
that becomes pointlessly shocking for the sake of shock value, almost becoming
silly when it tries to cram as many taboos as it can into its short length. There
is a possibility, on another viewing, that this ridiculousness was actually a
really clever, unexpected moment of self consciousness from Tjahjanto as a horror director who
realises the perversity of upping the disgusting sakes for viewers mentally
masturbating over it, but it'll have to wait until rewatching that piece to see
if I change my mind on it. As a duo thought, I want to wager they cancelled out
the other's flaws. Evans pulling Tjahjanto back from pointless gruel, but
Tjahjanto getting Evans to try to create something very
interesting. It's been seen before in terms of the ideas of the short, and may
be pointlessly twisted at times, but Safe
Haven is a gem because it's clear in its goal, and baring some disappointingly
obvious CGI, works. It could be off-putting in content or how it uses very well
used clichés in horror cinema, but it never feels pointlessly sick or insipid,
and ends on such a high note that, honestly, this should have been the final
segment of the four that leads to the wraparound story's own conclusion. And
while I am open to these directors now, I think the two should work together
more, likely to boost Indonesian genre cinema up again as a pair combining
styles.
Slumber Party Alien Abduction (Dir. Jason Eisener) - It's
unfortunate that Eisener had to
follow Safe Haven. His short - the
name on the tin says it all, but with a large part of it recorded on a camera
attached on a dog's back - should have been between the zombies and Indonesian
cults. Its flawed, the second weakest of the key segments, but I admit I have
hope for the director. As someone who likes putting works as one single, giant
creation of its creator(s), I wish Eisener
gets better and better. Hobo With A
Shotgun has an ending the annoyingly peters out, but the energy of the
first three quarters was so infectious and legitimately daring than tedious in
tone like so many neo-grindhouse films. His segment for The ABCs of Death was structured like a politically incorrect music
video, which he pulled off perfectly. If there's another flaw with V/H/S 2, all the segments are
structured around chaos suddenly taking place. For the most part it failed, but
at least the first film has a varied choice of plot structures. But this
short's still fun. Still scary when it gets hectic, with strange aliens that
clearly hung around a Edvard Munch
painting or two, and the premise of making most of the film shot from a dog's perspective,
aside from some hijinks early on from the young cast, again takes the kind of
premise joked about in a night's trip to the pub but makes it interesting. From
the "eyes" of a small dog, looking up at the world, or crawling in
the undergrowth outside, you are truly lost in what is going on, which makes it
very interesting as a concept short. The result is still impressive even if it's
in the wrong place in ordering the segments together.
Altogether, there are flaws, but
this still raising the bar higher than per usual horror films of now. With this
and The ABCs of Death, as I've
already stated, there is a potentially wonderful phenomenon approaching of
genre anthologies like this becoming a subgenre of interest. I still have some
reservations admittedly, when directors coasts, or that they spend their time
making entries for these anthologies than actually making feature films. But in
the subgenre's favour, you cannot rest back on the worst aspects of genre
filmmaking - padded plots, workmanlike aesthetics, tired clichéd structures - in
such a restricted short length and small budget unless you want to be the one
the viewers dub the bad entry in said anthology. It can potentially cut the chaff
from these directors so they can improve, and as this film and the upcoming ABCs of Death 2 show, the combination
of so many unconventional choices of directors from various generations,
nationalities, even not known for making horror films, could make for some
interesting combinations. What needs to be done with the subgenre if they're
now in vogue, funded by theatre chains, DVD labels, or in this case Bloody Disgusting, creating an
interesting ouroboros in horror films and their audiences, is to prevent it
from what unfortunately happened with the first V/H/S, a small club whose language is befitting a small clique that
bars outsiders and the new perspectives from it. Here at least there were four different
nationalities in the director chairs, and even the plot structures are similar,
you have people of various areas, including one from outside of horror,
nonetheless making a film with a very consistent tone. Leaner with less
segments, clearer but replacing the vagueness with material that adds layers to
the segments, and a kinetic grace to all the segments in using the cameras
mixed with experimentation. It's a shame it has to replicate the obnoxious end
credits style of the first film - abrasive music, and a barrage of sex and gore
scenes more closer to a thirteen year old boy or two writing the project. The
film that preceded it, while still schlocky, was far more interesting than
this.
During this week I'm going to clear through the Videotape Swapshop reviews that have not had links posted up on my personal blog. I'll start with one of two films I choose for the site's "Threequels" series, the second sequel to a cult favorite. There's not much to say this time because my thoughts were pretty much written down in the review.
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