V/H/S: The Hughes Verdict!

Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way To Die), directs the overall segment entitled Tape Fifty-Six and its as ugly as the film that made his name, these criminals who after having endless of fun being a bunch of wankers are hired to retrieve a videotape for a mysterious client. The house they enter is eerily quiet and they discover a dead man’s body in a chair who looked as if he had died from watching to much Telly, or better still, may have died from boredom from watching V/H/S. In front of the dead man is a TV and loads of blank VHS tapes and while the rest of the gang search the house, one of the members stays in the room and decides to see what is on the blank tapes. So what he see’s, we the viewer do also and so begins the tales of terror

We do start off pretty good though. Amateur Night, by David Bruckner (The Signal), is a tasty little tale about the terror of picking up a random girl in a party. Three college guys out for a night of booze and sex, pick up two girls where one of them is quiet and quite strange.

As the much louder girl passes out due too extreme alcohol, the boys turn their attention to the timid girl whose only words “I like you!” and the odd sniff of her noise should put alarm bells in most guy’s minds. What follows is a brilliant piece of horror that sweeps you in and makes you pine for more. Its a brilliant tale by Bruckner, full of gore and suspense, with a final shot that made me want to see more and from then on I was hoping despite the start, V/H/S may save itself thanks to these short stories.

Sadly the in-between tales are more miss than hit.

Second Honeymoon, which is directed by West is a tale about a young couple’s road trip that goes very wrong indeed. Its not very good, builds up too nothing of note and is very disappointing, especially with the name behind the camera.

The Strange Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, directed by Joe Swanberg and Simon Barrett; is nothing more than a Paranormal Activity kind of rip off that would have been good a few years back if it weren’t for all the Activity sequels that has made scares like already feel old hat.

Tuesday the 17th byGlenn McQuaid (I Sell the Dead), is of course a homage to the Jason legacy but after the much better The Hills Run Red from a few years back, the film is poorly acted and has one of the worst slasher creations I have seen in a long time!

V/H/S does finish with cracking story by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin. Entitled 10/31/98, four guys going to a Halloween party end up going to the wrong house and what they find is odd and quite surreal. A group of men are torturing a young woman in the attic and when they try to play the hero, they discover its best at times not to do the right thing as what follows is totally freaky and down right disturbing, This story is the best of the entire lot and I would say its probably worth watching the film just for this segment.

In-between these tales, we cut back to the criminals and see what they are doing, but like I said, this story did nothing for me and I hope the planned sequel does a better tale in how we the audience get to see this footage.

Grainy and amateurish, V/H/S has good intentions to the found footage genre and I had to admire the attempt to bring something new to the genre. But anthology tales live and die by how good they are and two good stories out of Five, shows that despite the best attempts of those involved, V/H/S leaves nothing more than a feeling of disappointment.

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