V/H/S (2012)

If Creepshow‘s 40-plus-year-old version of a horror anthology feels too dated for your Halloween party, you might be tempted to try 2012’s V/H/S. This more up-to-date collection of six stories uses a found-footage angle to put a unique spin on the genre.

The introductory story, “Tape 56,” concerns a gang of men who videotape themselves committing crimes and then selling the footage for money. One of the men proposes that they ditch the small-time crime and make some real money. He says he’s been hired to break into a house and steal a single videotape. If they succeed, the payment will be considerably more than they make filming themselves breaking windows and sexually assaulting women in parking lots.

Once inside the house, they discover a corpse sitting in front of a collection of televisions connected to VCRs. Leaving one of the gang members in the room with the body, the rest scatter to look through the rest of the house. The man left behind begins to watch one of the tapes left in a VCR.

And, so begins “Amateur Night,” the first of the stand-alone stories. A group of horny college guys decides to get their nerdiest member, Clint (Drew Sawyer,) to wear a pair of glasses equipped with a hidden video camera. Their brilliant idea is to pick up women at a bar and take them back to a hotel to film themselves having sex without the women’s knowledge. One of the women turns out to have a secret that will change the evening for the worse.

Between each of the stories, the focus reverts back to the “Tape 56” narrative. As various members of the gang watch other tapes, strange things occur in the house as they search for the tape they’ve been hired to find.

The next tape contains the story, “Second Honeymoon,” which centers around a couple traveling near the Grand Canyon. As is the case with each of these stories, the protagonists are recording nearly every event that takes place on a video camera. The couple encounter a stranger who knocks on their motel room door to ask for a ride the following morning. When she is refused, the couple think they’ve seen the last of her. They haven’t.

“Tuesday the 17th” follows a group of vacationing young people as they travel to a secluded spot near a lake. Wendy (Norma C. Quinones,) the group’s driver, reveals that she travels to the lake every year because of its isolated nature. The real reason for her annual trips reveals itself after she tells the others of the lake’s brutal past.

The fifth story, “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger,” concerns a long-distance relationship where Emily (Helen Rogers) communicates to her boyfriend, James (Daniel Kaufman,) via Facetime. Emily is convinced her apartment is haunted and asks James if he sees what she’s experiencing. Her ever-increasing obsession with a wound on her arm causes James to worry. Or so it seems.

The final segment, “10/31/98,” revolves around a group of friends arriving at a house for a Halloween party before anyone else arrives. As they explore the party house, they encounter strange phenomena. Convinced that what they’re experiencing is related to the party, they continue to look around. What they find in the attic is definitely not part of the festivities.

Anthology horror films usually have a sense of fun or at least present interesting characters in weird situations. Most of the segments in V/H/S feel mean-spirited and full of repulsive characters. In particular, the protagonists of “Tape 56” and “Amateur Night” are misogynistic, frat-boy types that I was all too happy to see meet a grisly end. To a lesser extent, the leading male of “Second Honeymoon” exhibits some thinly-veiled abusive traits. The four twenty-somethings in “Tuesday the 17th” are all presented as genuinely unlikable and self-centered.

I don’t expect a lot of character development in an anthology. But, because V/H/S is populated with people that are immediately hard to care about — much less hope to survive — I didn’t find myself all that affected by what happened to them. Only the four male friends of “10/31/98” feel like people who wouldn’t push each other in front of a bus for a cheap laugh. As a result, that segment is, by far, the best because I was invested in seeing how they’d resolve their particular situation. One engrossing story out of six isn’t a great track record for an anthology.

From a technical perspective, each of the segments is well-made and the special effects are impressive. Some of the directors, like Ti West (X) and Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs Kong,) clearly went on to bigger and (much) better things. But, overall, V/H/S feels like an exercise of style over substance. And, if shaky camera action makes you queasy, this film will make you vomit for all the wrong reasons.