Dirs. Various [Each One Stated
For Each Segment of Film]
USA
Tape 56 (Dir. Adam Wingard)
[Beginning Act]
V/H/S offers a fascinating concept with its synopsis. The found
footage sub-genre inherently plays with subjective reality, so splicing it with
the anthology sub-genre, found material intercut into a piece of found material
bookending it all, creates reality bubbles that maybe even the producers of the
film didn’t realise would be caused. A group of young men break into an old
man’s house to steal a videotape worth a lot of money to the person who’s sent
them there, only to find a dead body slumped in an armchair and numerous tapes
that they start sorting through. On each tape is a story of folly and the worst
that could happen while everything is not what it seems in the house they’ve
broken into more than it was already. In the first scene, these characters are
vile, obnoxious examples of corrupted masculinity taken to a further level by
the opening scene, but films allow us to be placed into the world of people who
are appalling and force us to follow them. A found footage film allows this to
happen more easily. Once in the house, one of them sits down and puts a tape in
while everyone else, split into groups followed by two cameras, investigate for
the tape, leading us to the segments one at a time with the activity in the
house intercutting it.
There was hesitance going into V/H/S after a few opinions I had heard,
but I was optimistic. I have to put a SPOILER
warning here for the rest of the review, but for each segment it will vary
so please read the tag before each part. It’s a messy procedure, but it’s
fitting for the anthology film at hand and hopefully you will get some of the
review left to read even if you haven’t seen V/H/S.
Amateur Night (Dir. David
Brucker) [Slight Spoiler]
Regardless of any other thoughts,
I will be grateful for this segment as there is a lot to defend in it against
the others. It falls into the same area of many of the others of men crossing
with women of a dubious nature, an issue which some have had with V/H/S, but here the story complicates
it in an interesting way I hoped continued in the other segments. The men are
also obnoxious jocks, another reoccurring aspect in these segments, but there
is nothing wrong with either one or two of the pieces following these types of
characters, especially when they are fleshed out in such an short length of
time. They are hateable people, planning to secretly film a porno and cruising
for women, but not only should the viewer be forced to ask whether they are
just as bad as them mentally by following through their leering eyes, but what
happens to them (violently) makes you realise they are human beings regardless.
And the dangerous woman is as complex as well and sympathetic even after what
happens. It is all because of the actress Hannah
Fierman, whose performance is the one in V/H/S that is legitimately good and whose physical appearance,
having the biggest eyes I have ever seen for an actor or actress onscreen,
instantly captivated me to her, especially when the twist is followed by an
unexpected emotional note after the brutality that takes place. I really, really
hope someone has the right idea and casts her in more films.
Amateur Night also snuffs out one of the biggest leaps of logic
that this sub-genre has to deal with – “Why would you keep filming?!” – by
having the story viewed through camera glasses. Ludicrous yes, but as leaps of
logic go I could work with it, especially as the effect adds an exceptional
level of tension and panic when the worst takes place. The segment promised so
much for the whole of V/H/S.
Second Honeymoon (Dir. Ti
West) [Slight Spoiler]
Unfortunately with Ti West’s segment the rest of V/H/S starts to slowly die onscreen.
Beyond its premise it was supposed to show the best of American filmmaking in
genre cinema, but barring David Bruckner
with Amateur Night, only a few
bright spots are provided by the others. Second
Honeymoon could have worked, a male and female couple taking a vacation in
Americana only to get the attention of a mysterious woman, but it quickly falls
into tedious drama scripting. Its horror story is uninteresting – avoiding the
jock characters for a male and female character of some sympathy, but with
another ominous female outsider – and has a really dumb twist even if clues are
laid down beforehand. The jury in my head is out on Ti West. Cabin Fever 2:
Spring Fever (2009) is average, and he botched the perfect first three quarters
of The House of the Devil (2009)
with an abruptness that can justifiable compared to premature ejaculation
despite how tasteless that metaphor is. For a great new horror director, he has
not presented something that is standout. Far from dismissing the anthology
completely from this point on, Second
Honeymoon should have been the one misfire before the others brought the
film back up in quality.
Tuesday The 17th
(Dir. Glenn McQuaid) [Spoiler]
In this segment’s sole defence,
the idea of what its evil force appears to be is ingenious. Using the found
footage medium to its advantage, the tropes it is playing with, just by
guessing what the title is a reference to, are pushed to where even the
recorded reality is easy to manipulate and distort by a prescience more
powerful that even the outside force that records the events that befall a
group of young adults who go to the woodlands to smoke pot and fornicate. It
becomes clear however, again with this segment, that most of the directors are
not pushing themselves to a high level of quality. It follows the stereotypical
college student group you find in slasher films, from the same mould as the
jocks of three of the other segments even if they are unisex, whose dialogue as
with most of the vignettes consist of saying “fuck” in surprise at what is
happening to them and their desire to drink and have sex as if there is nothing
else in their existence. V/H/S could
have been a message of the folly of this attitude to life, especially with the
segments about all male groups, but it fails here as in most of them because
none of the characters are interesting. They’re generic and it’s another
dangerous woman character that appears in this segment even if the actual evil
is something much more unhuman. Like most cinema, it commits the sin of wasting
such potentially good ideas with a bad script around them.
The Sick Thing That Happened
To Emily When She Was Younger (Dir. Joe Swanberg) [No Spoiler]
The issue of a Skype conversation
recorded on VHS tape is pointless to worry about as the idea, like many others
in the anthology, had potential. Complicated by the two people being far away physically
yet able to see each other, the dangers that threaten one and the helplessness
of the other would create a frightening proposition. A young woman named Emily
is troubled by both a strange pain in her arm and the possibility that her
rented apartment is haunted, a series of Skype calls between her and her
boyfriend unfolding as she becomes more isolated. Unlike the other segments
except Amateur Night, even if it
continues the nudity of the others, it has a female character who is
sympathetic inherently and has a heartbreaking (and stomach churning)
resolution behind it all. It also has the other memorable aspect of the
anthology outside of Amateur Night
with a jump scare involving a door that is surprising in how calm and
matter-of-fact it is depicted, as if it’s accidentally crossing a whimsical
moment with the utterly freakish. Sadly the writing is completely undercooked
and with its twist ending has garbled plotting. This is surprising since the
director of this is Joe Swanberg,
who, having not seen any of his other work, is supposed to one of the best
hidden secrets of current American cinema with his contributions to indie and
mumblecore cinema. I hope that this is just a blip before I get to films like Hannah Takes The Stairs (2007), as this
is not good enough to justify being more than average or poor.
Tape 56 [Resolution] (Dir.
Adam Wingard) [No Spoiler]
The entirety of V/H/S as a project is botched by its
end because of the fact mentioned that little of it is good enough in
terms of writing or appearance for a group of directors said to be the new
Kings of Western horror cinema. The bookmarking film Tape 56 leads to nothing, a scare ending that is completely
pointless. It doesn’t weave together the potency of the vast collection of
taped recordings of horrors in a way that reminds one of an atrocity exhibition
for voyeurs and retro geeks, neither making videotape scary again long after
the original Ringu (1998) did so or given
you a well set-up punch line. In fact, this is not even the end of the
anthology...
10/31/98 (Dirs. Radio Silence)
[Massive Spoiler]
Again another good premise like
the others – on Halloween you would probably view a supernatural occurrence as
smoke machines and wires – but it doesn’t succeed. It even tries to make its
own group of rowdy men vaguely likable, and finds a way of dealing with the
logic with the camera by having it part of a character’s bear suit, Nicolas Cage crossed with Andrea
Scarface from Pedro Almodomar’s Kika (1993), but it shows again the
ultimate failure of V/H/S, like a
lot of current genre cinema, of offering the incredibly redundant from good
ideas as if they are works of genius. Radio
Silence’s entry becomes as average haunted house film with obvious CGI
heavy effects and another ending where it’s a woman you should run the opposite
way from if you’re male. This reoccurring trend in the segments, aside from Amateur Night where it’s played with
thoughtfully, is not inherently misogynistic but something more sadder; a
dwindled pool of ideas shared by the creators that unfortunately leads to most
of them going with a twist about women backstabbing the male characters in the
back by complete accident. With a flat
anticlimax to the whole film, it leaves on a terrible note.
Conclusion [No Spoiler]
Said film is a completely failed
project for consistency and as a single entity. The white elephant that makes V/H/S even more pointless, that Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers (2009) exists at all, does not help things either for
a film named after the home format and all the elicit fears and enticements a
medium like it, despite being a pain in the arse to rewind and liable to be
destroyed by magnets, could generate. It should evoke an unmarked tape found
hidden somewhere secret that could show you some truly horrifying and liable to
change reality itself. V/H/S’s
greatest failure is that it never evokes this sense of dread of a scratchy
recorded home movie and how even the tracking failing, that one of the shorts
does try to use for tension building admittedly, could bring the hairs up on
your neck.
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