Jolt Country

I'm not sure how you spell the movies. VHS? VHS 2? V/H/S as it titles itself? Whatever.

I would never have watched either of these movies, except, half-asleep three nights ago, I happened to flip it on five seconds before the most intimately gruesome moment in either of the films (about halfway through the first movie). After that, I made sure to watch the first one all the way through the next night, and then last night, watched the second one.

I thought we were "done" with "found footage" movies. Through dozens of terrible Paranormal Activity and Rec sequels, I was hoping enough dirt had been piled on that mound of shit that we wouldn't have to smell it anymore.

Amazingly, VHS comes out of nowhere to use the "horror anthology" format to stunningly bring the format back to life with some really clever, creepy stories and, when effective, vats full of blood and gore.

Both movies are staged the same way, with a "wraparound" story that introduces the premise (always some douchebag and/or douchebags hunting around and finding a weird room with a bunch of old VHS tapes in it, then popping them in and watching them), and neither of these is very substantial, though the one in VHS 2 is less annoying.

It's when the peeping lookie-loos pop in the tapes that the meat of the movies begin, and we're treated to a handful (VHS has 5, VHS 2 has 4) of creepy-good horror vignettes that would have fit right in on Tales From the Darkside, if Darkside was on HBO or Showtime.

Much of the "found footage" in these movies is not actually recorded on VHS. Do you want to know how all this stuff got transferred to VHS and wound up in these crazy rooms? Don't bother. However, special care is taken in coming up with clever ways for the audience to not continually ask "why don't they put the camera down and run away", which is a nice touch, showing that the makers know the major pitfalls which tend to plague the genre.

The first movie is the most uneven, its stories ranging from "Crazy chick isn't what she seems" to "Skype conversation that goes relatively poorly" to "here's our version of kids at a camp with a killer" to things that go bump in the night. What's somewhat amazing, though, is that none of them are particularly terrible, and several succeed in that slow dread creepiness at which horror movies are at their best. At the end, you're left wanting more.

And you're in luck, because VHS 2, while only having four stories, is better (perhaps significantly) than the first! Of these four, the worst of them is good and clever and fun, and the best (the third segment) could have been made into a full-length horror film and would probably wind up in the all-time top ten of the genre, all while using up probably 90% of the gore budget of both films. And that's not even counting the last one, which had not the grand spectacle of the third, but which had the wit, fun, and audacity to end the movie on its most electric note.

Creepshow is my favorite horror anthology movie. The Blair Witch Project is my favorite found-footage movie.

The VHS series has now taken second place on both of those lists.

Watching the first one. This is really great.

Do you remember the Skype scene? There is a part where Emily lights up a room by using a flash camera. I put this same sort of thing in Cryptozookeeper. You had to "take picture" a couple times and then the monster appeared the third time.

I got it from the first Saw movie, though.

This, V/H/S, is really, really good.

Dammit, both of those used to be on crackle.com but I didn't take the chance to watch them (they change up the library a little every month). Just the same, I'd recommend people keep an eye on the site as they usually have a couple good movies and several surprisingly-ok movies at any given time.

I had mixed feelings about V/H/S as it had...

*Unsympathetic characters (everyone was a douche bags)
*Obvious setups for each of the scares
*Overuse of gore = terror

But it did have that creep show / unintended lesson vibe and a few clever scenes and concepts scattered around its five episodes.

Guess it was worth the watch, but the setups in V/H/S would have made better gang bangs than scares.

Did you try VHS2? It's (I hate to say "much", but much?) better.

The first story is kinda weak, but then, buckle the fuck up.

The zombie one is the greatest zombie treatment I've ever seen.

I just finished V/H/S 2 and ah... It is better, but lacks the kind of primal / creep show vibe and decent pacing of the first film and becomes formulaic almost out of the door.

*Every story had a "terrible thing happened / was given / they traveled somewhere" intro.
*Each ending was also completely outside the control of the main characters.
*Campy twists / camera perspective that sort of worked capped off each story.

Once again, they primarily tried to use gore, a feeling of helplessness, misguided characters and they expanded on the feeling of incompleteness (as you are seeing the traumatic beginning of a story that isn't documented) to create fear and tension.

It was OKAY and once again had a few clever devices (the Alien Abduction short did alot of things right), but couldn't breach the gap of being anything more than a parody of the stories they were trying to tell.

Somehow, if there was a movie called V/H/S I'd figure the sequel would be named D/V/D.

What I get from Wikipedia's entry on the film that it's basically a thrown-together horror flick with a bunch of different directors and nothing cohesive or aligning.

I mean, Pulp Fiction is shown non-linearly but you can still make sense of it.

Tdarcos wrote:Somehow, if there was a movie called V/H/S I'd figure the sequel would be named D/V/D.

What I get from Wikipedia's entry on the film that it's basically a thrown-together horror flick with a bunch of different directors and nothing cohesive or aligning.

I mean, Pulp Fiction is shown non-linearly but you can still make sense of it.

It's five completely different stories. "Shorts", you might call them. Nothing is cohesive because they are five completely different stories. How you did not get THAT from the Wikipe-- wait, you're looking for movie information on Wikipedia. I take it all back, that explains everything.