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/San 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.
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