LogFAQs > #965054225

Inviso - Right off the bat, this movie does a poor job of making itself look even remotely appealing. I get that its a found footage film, and I get the appeal of found footage horror. Hell, I ranked Cloverfield third when we did 2000s horror. But with this? The whole film just looked ugly. It didnt look like a found footage film produced by competent filmmakers, but rather a janky, jittery mess. Some of the vignettes wound up better-filmed than others, but the opening is terrible, and its based around a group of nameless scumbags who take WAY too long to die, and the logic behind their presence in the movie is flimsy at best.

Beyond that, the road trip vignette was terribly boring, culminating in a completely forgettable ending. The Skype alien possession was just weird and a bit too long for what it was. The weird glitch slasher film felt too short for its concept. The ending haunted house had some potential, but the characters werent fleshed out enough. And the succubus was probably the most interesting, but again, it wasnt long enough to demonstrate quality. Thats the main problem. None of the vignettes are short enough to be fun little movie clips, but theyre also not long enough to feel fleshed out into solid stories. The whole movie is like that, and there are FIVE of them, on top of the bizarre steal a video tape from this house overarching narrative. Its just too drawn out for its own good.

Plasmabeam - Cool concept, but the execution is shoddy for the most part. The standout story from this collection was the video chat one where we learn that Emily is being manipulated by her boyfriend. I also liked the succubus story, but the rest of this collection was forgettable at best, and the frame tale was garbage.

Snake - Now, if you've been following any of my write-ups in past series, you will know I love anthology films, usually no matter how bad it is. However, I don't love V/H/S. There was a time I did - about 10 years ago, when I was 16 and really digging anything that felt real, gory, and subversive. Mumblegore was just about my favorite sub-genre in horror. However, with those same 10 years now past, I see V/H/S in a different light. Now, its shorts feel more hollow. Every short practically has the same format - a group of annoying college-age douches, who are perverted, loud & obnoxious, and say base-level, cardboard dialogue until they're killed off in unsatisfactory, shaky-cam headache inducing ways. Even the shorts that don't follow this format are subject to the same themes of perversion and promiscuity. These shorts are what teenagers consider shocking - it's no wonder I loved it back then. It's a shame too, because these are some extremely talented people who wrote and directed these shorts. For such an authored experience, these shorts feel surprisingly studio-mandated, full of clich characters and non-endings that are made for group cheering and as less thinking as possible. Shovel in your popcorn and laugh and cheer at the gore and CollegeHumor tier sex jokes, as electronic music blares over a repeated clip of a woman getting her breasts exposed or as this total geekwad tries to perv on one of his female friends. It's some real lowest common denominator stuff and it would be fine if it had anything to say about it but none of the shorts do so the whole things is just a waste of time to me.

Tape 56 - The frame story. It's dark, it's clunky, it's boring, it only serves to bring cohesion to the shorts. All the characters suck, which is the point, and then they exist to die off to a random zombie guy. Person who can't go down stairs without tripping counter: 1

Amateur Night - Two jocks make their token geek friend put on spy glasses to film - something...? There's no point for most of the runtime, until the pretty well-done climax where Lily goes full on bat-vampire-lady and destroys the sort-of-pervy frat boys. The gore and make-up effects are really well done and the characters exhibit a palpable sense of panic. It's decent enough.

Person who can't go down stairs without tripping counter: 2

Second Honeymoon - Two lovers on their honeymoon film boring vacation footage and then the husband dies and his wife runs away with her real lover. The scenes where the intruder films the couple sleeping in bed is chilling - a true nightmare for anyone I would imagine. Meh, I never really got the wife's motivation to do this besides one time when her husband snapped at her a little for maybe stealing money from him. And of course it ends before anything is really explained.

Tuesday the 17th - More annoying characters wander around a forest, die, and then some weird glitchy slasher killer gets trapped or maybe kills Wendy or something. Besides the pretty unique idea of the killer, there's not much here.

The Sick Thing - Probably my favorite short here. It's actually pretty hard to see the ending coming, and James' gaslighting and the reveal he does this to more women is perfectly creepy and makes the typical perversion of V/H/S actually have a point for once. There's some solid jumpscares and it's actually the most well-shot despite its filming method.

10/31/98 - Even MORE annoying characters think they go to a haunted house and find out it's actually for REAL haunted. I actually laughed out loud when the friends joined in on the chanting when the group were trying to exorcise the woman. Other than that, it's bog standard.