V.H.S



 

V/H/S
 

 

Directors : Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Quartet
Year : 2012
Genre : Horror
Rating : **

Directed by some of the biggest names in the industry at the moment, 'V/H/S' is an anthology horror movie which tries to revive the video aesthetics and tropes that made notorious films such as 'Cannibal Holocaust', 'I Spit On Your Grave' and 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' seem so dangerous and risky to watch during the video nasty scare of the 1980's. However, while 'V/H/S' is well made and the filmmakers clearly show their love for the genre, the movie copies the same conventions and boring cliches that made the slashers and video nasties of the decade so boring to watch in the first place. With an overuse of generic horror set ups, choppy and messy editing and overtly, offensive mysogyny, 'V/H/S' quickly becomes tired, disjointed and repetitive in a really unimpressionable way.

 

'V/H/S' begins with a group of yobbish teenagers and young adults filming themselves breaking into a seemingly abandoned house to steal a mysterious tape for a large amount of money. Upon entering the house, they discover the body of the owner, who has died while watching a large amount of video tapes on multiples television sets. One by one, the group watch the tapes in the machines and the stories are shown as short movies.

 

The anthology or 'port manteau' horror movie has been around for many decades, beginning in the 1940's with films such as 'Dead Of Night' and 'The Illustrated Man'. The success of these movies led the great British horror producer Amicus to make a large amount of anthology films in the 60's and 70's such as 'Dr. Terror's House Of Horror's', 'The House That Dripped Blood'  and 'The Monster Club'. Bringing in stars from the famous and successful Hammer production company such as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Amicus' port manteaus became a staple of 1960's British horror. George Romero and Stephen King would revive the anthology horror movie in 1982 with the highly entertaining 'Creepshow' which took it's inspiration from the E.C comics of the 1950's that both Romero and King grew up with and which led them into the horror genre. While more recent horror films have tried to revive the now dead port manteau format such as 'Bodybags', 'Necronomicon' and 'Trick 'r Treat', I think that it is safe to say that the subgenre is definetly gone and 'V/H/S' has done nothing to remedy this in anyway shape or form.

 

Like most other anthology horror films, 'V/H/S' has a fairly equal share of both interesting and boring short stories. Due to the reputation of the multiple directors and the varying degrees of skill shown, some of the shorts are better made than others. The main plot involving the thieves is directed by Adam Wingard, who is best known for his 2010 thriller 'A Horrible Way To Die' and many of the same generic slasher conventions seen in 'A Horrible Way To Die' such as quick cut editing and jump scares can be seen throughout these sections of 'V/H/S'. These cliches make the main bulk of the movie extremely tiresome and the found footage nature of these sections just add to the coventional nature of the film. Another problem with the main part of the movie is that the central characters are extremely dislikable, portrayed as mysogynistic, easily led, theiving lowlifes so that when any sense of threat or danger presents itself, we just don't care what happens. They deserve everything that is coming to them and when you are rooting for something bad to happen to the central characters in a horror film, something is seriously awry as no sense of suspense or dread can be felt towards anyone in the movie at all.

 

The short stories are directed by some of the biggest names in horror at the moment including Ti West, who is best known for 'The House Of The Devil' and the unbearably dull 'The Innkeepers'. While West's section named 'Second Honeymoon' is by far the most interesting thing about 'V/H/S', creating a fair amount of creepiness and horror with very little, a large majority of the other shorts are horribly dull, falling into the trappings of both the slasher movie and the found footage movie that we have all grown so bored of. Quick cut editing and long scenes of characters running really slow the film down to an almost perfunctory level and make 'V/H/S' seem unbearably long. While there is a fair use of visual invention and nifty camera work in almost all of the short films, 'V/H/S' doesn't add up to much more than a bunch of boring slasher movies tied together in a really unconvincing and generic way.

 

For fans of the video nasties and gruesome horror movies, 'V/H/S' does offer a smorgasbourd of guts and gore which can be quite repellant at times. But for fans of more subtle, thoughtful horror, 'V/H/S' will definetly not be for you. It is mindlessly generic and conventional and brings nothing new to the table. Just another nail in the coffin of the dying horror genre, which is now just full of useless remakes, re-imaginings and overplayed stereotypes and conventions.

 

 

You will like this if you like : The Last Exorcism, The Innkeepers