V/H/S Beyond, on Shudder

Thanks to the collector market, they are making small-batch limited-runs of new VHS tapes again. That is good news for this franchise. In addition to the new appreciation of analog formats, there are also plenty of weird moldy old tapes to uncover out there. The really disturbing ones fuel the creation of urban legends and the Cadillac of found footage franchises. Aliens get into the act a little bit more this time, but all the V/H/S hallmarks remain present in V/H/S Beyond, which premieres this Friday on Shudder.

In a bit of a departure, the wrap-around segments, Jay Cheel’s “Abduction/Adduction” are a mockumentary, supposedly investigating alien encounters at a notorious California mansion. Some of the segments are so well done, it is disappointing to break away to a full chapter. Fittingly, Whitley Strieber gets a lot of deserved credit for establishing and popularizing (or whatever terms might be more fitting) the now familiar alien abduction tropes. Frankly, it would be fascinating to see Cheel (who helmed Shudder’s Cursed Films series) expand this into a full film.

By far, the scariest constituent film (or tape) is Jordan Downey’s “Stork,” intriguingly “based on artwork by Oleg Vdovenko.” The premise is simple, but lethally effective. An elite anti-crime police squad raids the squat house of a cult suspected of kidnapping infants. What they find is a horror show. This is the kind of found footage that is truly terrifying. The crack-house-style design makes viewers crave a tetanus booster and the camera work keeps you on high alert. Like many of Beyond’s instalments, “Stork” is not unlike several previous V/H/S contributions, but it sure works.

That is also true of Virat Pal’s “Dream Girl,” but to a lesser extent. Tara is a Bollywood idol, who shares a kinship with Hannah Fierman’s Lily the Demon from the original V/H/S (and a spin-off), as a group of paparazzi learn the hard way. In this case, the Bollywood setting helps distinguish it from its predecessors.

‘Live and Let Dive,” directed by Justin Martinez (the only returning V/H/S alumnus, from when he was part of the Radio Silence collaborative group) probably earns the honor of the film’s second best segment. In this case, a reluctant skydiver celebrates his birthday with his hard-partying friends, just as the aliens swope down from the skies to attack. The horrors start in the air and finish on the ground. Martinez fully capitalizes on the found footage genre’s potential for what-the-heckness, staging some wild alien attacks, that actually look great, thanks to the subgenres built-in low resolution requirements.

“Fur Babies” directed by Christian Long & Justin Long (the Apple commercial guy and his brother) is probably Beyond’s grossest, most disturbing component film. It also delivers the most satiric “bite,” skewering an annoying band of left-wing animal rights activists, plotting an undercover sting operation against home-based kennel. However, their hubris leads to horrific comeuppance. “Fur Babies” is rough, but it is the one fans will be talking about for years to come.

V/H/S/85, on Shudder

People did not overshare in the 1980s, except for characters in indie films, who liked to keep video diaries. You could argue the V/H/S found footage anthology franchise follows in that tradition. Recording your crimes is a very post-2000 smart-phone thing to do, but in the 1980s this kind of footage was the stuff of urban legend. Fans get another batch of supposedly underground video footage in V/H/S/85, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

So far, the V/H/S films produced for Shudder have not been as good as the initial trilogy, with the previous installment, V/H/S/99 representing an all-time series low. Happily, 85 recovers some lost ground, particularly with the first full segment, “No Wake,” written and directed by Mike P. Nelson. Ironically, this segment initially seems to repeat the sins of 99, serving up a lot of off-putting sadism, as a sniper on shore picks off a group of water-skiers. However, there is a massive twist that changes everything.

In fact, the twist will continue twisting when Nelson continues the two-part story later in the film in “Ambrosia,” which gives us a radically different perspective on the events. It is also very clever and cathartically satisfying.

Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “God of Death” pointedly depicts the petty rivalries and eccentricities of a low-budget CDMX news broadcast during the real-life earthquake of 1985. It leads to a colorful and dramatic revelation, but a lot of brutality before that seems unnecessarily nihilistic. This is a better film than 99, but it is still incredibly dark.

Natasha Kermani’s “TKNOGD” is a mildly amusing satire of Eighties hipsterism. Fittingly it takes place in the Public Theater, but it is a rather thin piece that proceeds in a straight, predictable line.

Scott Derrickson (who helmed The Black Phone) provides another highpoint for both 85 and the Shudder trilogy (at least thus far). Again, it starts out so brutally, more sensitive viewers might give up on it, but the premise is a killer. It turns out, the police have been getting video tapes of a series of grisly murderers almost a week before they happen. If Black Phone was Derrickson's tribute to the phone company, then this is his homage to the Post Office. The twist is dark, of course, but it is lethally effective.

Brooklyn Horror ‘22/Shudder: V/H/S/99

VHS won its format war in 1980 and it remained the dominant media until DVDs finally started outselling tapes in 2002. Frankly, it probably had a better run than DVDs, which have already become an old fogey medium. That means people were definitely still using VHS in 1999, right around the time of Y2K. It is a fitting time for horror, but the found footage is a bit spotty this time around in V/H/S/99, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder, after screening at the 2022 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

Sometimes the punk rock attitude is its own worst enemy, as is true for the awful teen garage band, in “Shredding,” written and directed by Maggie Levin. They hatch a scheme to jam and essentially desecrate the site where a promising punk band (sort of like the Go-Go’s before they went pop) was trampled to death by their own fans. This is a bad idea for the characters and nothing new in terms of film.

Johannes Roberts’ “Suicide Bid” is a vast improvement. The title refers to freshmen who only apply to a single Greek house. In this case, the sisters of a particularly nasty sorority haze poor Lily by forcing her to spend the night sealed in a coffin. You would think they had learned their lesson, since there is a creepy campus legend about the vengeful spirit of a pledge the sisters hazed to death several years ago. Regardless, Roberts quite cleverly combines the confined-space horror of Buried with good old fashioned supernatural horror.

Sadly, it is followed by the nearly unwatchable “Ozzy’s Dungeon,” from Flying Lotus, who previously helmed visual assault that was Kuso. This mean-spirited segment drags on interminably, even turning sympathetic characters into creepy psychopaths. Weirdly (and unintentionally) the sleazy host of a rigged Nickelodeon-style game show for kids becomes the most interesting character, as the “victim” of the deranged mother, whose daughter was permanently disfigured while appearing on the show. This is just a complete misfire.

Given how bad “Dungeon” is, Tyler McIntyre’s “The Gawkers” inevitably represents a big step up in quality. It is a fairly straightforward yarn wherein voyeurism is violently punished. It is very similar in tone to the “Amateur Night” segment in the original V/H/S, but the girl the teen boys lust after is never fleshed out to any extent, unlike “Lily the Demon,” who got her own movie, SiREN.

By far, Vanessa & Joseph Winter’s “To Hell and Back” is the best of the ’99 edition. The Millennium is about to turn, which makes it the perfect time for a satanic cult to summon its patron demon. Nate and Troy are there to record it for reality TV, because that kind of thing seemed like a good idea in 1999. However, when a minor demon crashes the party, they are both inadvertently swept up in its banishment back to Hell.

This might just be the most convincing depiction of Hell (or whatever) since Jigoku. Yet, the Winters also milk the situation for [pitch-black] humor. Archelaus Crisanto and Joseph Winter are terrific bickering and freaking out as the reality TV sad sacks. Plus, Melanie Stone is a showstopper as the demon Mabel.

V/H/S/94, on Shudder

Never take collectors lightly, because they know how to get what they want. That is especially true of old school VHS collectors. Indeed, the framing device truly puts the “cult” in cult film fanatics when the V/H/S franchise returns with V/H/S/94, which premieres today on Shudder.

In Jennifer Reeder’s wrap-arounds, “Holy Hell,” a SWAT team thinks they are executing a search warrant on a drug den, but the industrial warehouse actually houses what appears to be the video-head equivalent of the Heaven’s Gate cult. There are lots of dead bodies seated in front of video monitors, where naturally, we will watch the constituent stories unfold.

Chloe Okuno’s “Storm Drain” consists of the footage shot by Holly Marciano, a local Ohio TV reporter, and her cameraman, when they ventured down into the titular sewer in search of a weird rat creature. It is pretty straightforward, but nicely executed and it ends on an amusing kicker. Also, Anna Hopkins probably delivers the film’s most memorable performance as the shallow, soon-to-be freaked out Marciano.

Arguably, Simon Barrett’s “The Empty Wake” is the most effective and economical installment, in which, per a grieving family’s odd request, a mortuary worker must record an overnight wake, even though nobody comes to mourn—almost no one. It really is creepy, because it is so grounded in the lonely, late-night setting.

If you have the opportunity to see V/H/S/94 on a big-screen with audience, “The Subject” (directed by Timo Tjahjanto, one half of the Mo Brothers), might turn out to be the highlight instead, because it is so deliriously gory and unhinged. In this case an Indonesian SWAT (this is not a great film to elite squad cop in) raid a mad scientist’s lair in search of a kidnapped woman. What they find is a bit disturbing. Tjahjanto does his thing, but it plays better in a group. On your own, you might notice the thinness of the story, but the over-the-top splatter effects do their best to compensate.

V/H/S: Viral—Maintaining the Gold Standard of Found Footage Horror

If some form of uncanny mass hysteria broke out in Los Angeles, would anyone notice? At least, there would be no shortage of handheld devices to record the phenomenon. The reigning champion of found footage horror franchises gets a spruced up framing device, taking it to the streets for its third installment, V/H/S: Viral (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

“Viral” is definitely the key word for Kev, the amateur videographer dreaming of youtube glory in Marcel Sarmiento’s interstitial Vicious Circles. However, it takes on multiple meanings when outbreaks of mob violence follow the wake of the evil clown ice-cream truck pursued by nearly all of LA's Finest. Somehow, the clown-mobile also managed to abduct his long-suffering girlfriend, making the hot pursuit distinctly personal for Kev. The early segments of Circles really capture a vivid sense of the city’s mean streets, where the everyday is just as scary as the horror movie elements. Unfortunately, the conclusion makes little sense and is even less satisfying.

Overall, the discrete constituent films are much stronger and scarier. While Gregg Bishop’s Dante the Great largely plays like a well-executed Twilight Zone episode, it has some nice flashes of macabre humor. The titular Dante was a poor aspiring illusionist with little prospects until he got his hands on a mysterious cape. Reportedly, it was once owned by Houdini, but he was so freaked out by it, he deliberately shed it somehow. Right, you’re already getting the picture and his new assistant Scarlett soon will too. Frankly, Dante often seems to “cheat” on the found footage format, but since it has some pretty cool scenes of magical mayhem, so be it.

Arguably, the most inventive segment of Viral is Nacho Vigalondo’s Parallel Monsters. Alfonso is an eccentric inventor who has created a portal to an alternate dimension, as has his counterpart on the other side of the hatch. They switch places to briefly explore each other’s worlds, but our Alfonso soon discovers he is in the one parallel universe they never explored in Star Trek. Let’s just say it belongs in a horror anthology like this. The way Vigalondo slowly reveals details on this other dark world is quite clever and massively creepy.

Frankly, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead’s Bonestorm is not much for character development, but it is tough to beat for sheer adrenaline charged lunacy. Basically, a group of knuckleheaded thrill-seekers head down to Tijuana to film a skateboarding video, but they inadvertently crash some sort of demonic zombie party. Madness ensues—spectacularly. When it comes to energy and attitude, Bonestorm is a gory three-ring circus, while remaining fully found footage-compliant. You just need to pop a few Dramamine and see it for yourself.

Few horror franchises still perform as consistently the third time around as the V/H/S series. While the first film maintained a more uniform atmosphere of dread and the second hits higher peaks with Gareth Huw Evans & Timo Tjahjanto’s Safe Haven and Jason Eisener’s Alien Abduction Slumber Party, Viral has fewer weak links overall. Diabolically fun, V/H/S Viral is enthusiastically recommended for the full spectrum of horror fans when it opens tomorrow (11/21) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Sundance ’13: S-VHS

Have you ever watched something so disturbing you wish you could un-see it?  Like maybe A Serbian Film or Barbra Streisand’s Guilt Trip?  That is sort of the premise behind the follow-up to last year’s horror anthology V/H/S.  While S-VHS is very definitely a film for horror diehards, it is not a similarly soul-shredding experience (trailer here).  In fact, it should be a heck of a fan-pleaser during its midnight screenings at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

The only place S-VHS repeats V/H/S is during Simon Barrett’s interstitial framing arc, Tape 47.  Once again, strangers have broken into a sketchy looking house, finding a mysterious assortment of VHS tapes.  This time around, a detective and his assistant Ayesha are looking for a missing college student, who evidently became obsessed with his collection of macabre found footage.  It seems he believed the cumulative effect of watching certain tapes consecutively would have a transformative effect on the viewer.  Naturally, Ayesha does exactly that, utilizing the monitors conveniently provided.

Adam Wingard’s Clinical Trials might be the most conventional of four tapes the intruders watch, but it still delivers plenty of creeps and jolts.  After an accident, a man has received a bionic optical implant to replace a lost eye.  The experimental treatment is free, but his initial experiences will be recorded for analysis.  (How such advanced technology was transferred to an obsolete VHS tape is not a question worth asking.)  With his artificially boosted vision, the man starts seeing things he never could before, like the dead people haunting his home.

In a bit of a departure, Edúardo Sanchez & Gregg Hale’s A Ride in the Park aims more for gross-outs than edge-of-the-seat scares, but it delivers accordingly.  Recorded through the protagonist’s bike helmet-cam, it could be described as the “zombie vomit” installment.  What more do you need to know?

Not surprisingly, the strongest constituent film comes from Gareth Huw Evans, who helmed the spectacular martial arts shoot-out The Raid.  Also set in Indonesia (a refreshing change of pace for the franchise), Safe Haven, co-directed with Timo Tjahjanto, consists of the footage shot by a documentary film crew visiting the compound of a reputed cult leader.  Initially, the well-spoken guru cooperates in the apparent hope of counteracting some of his bad PR.  However, their presence seems to ignite something evil.

Evans and Tjahjanto sure understand how to pace a film.  Steadily escalating the degree of wtf-ness, they throw in just about everything but the kitchen sink, culminating with one of the best composed closing shots you could ever hope to see in a genre film.  The ensemble cast is also first rate, from top to bottom.

While not quite as inspired as Haven, Jason Eisener’s Alien Abduction Slumber Party still ends S-VHS on a high note.  This is truly a descriptive title.  However, the dialogue and relationship dynamics are cleverly written, without sounding like an attempted Scream rip-off.  It is also a good example of how brief, blurry images seen out of the corner of one’s eye can be far more unsettling than front-and-center special effects shots.

Like its predecessor, S-VHS is pretty scary stuff, but by offering more humor and gleeful gore, it happens to be more fun.  A rare case of a sequel surpassing the original, S-VHS is enthusiastically recommended for midnight movie veterans (perhaps exclusively).  It screens again Tuesday (1/22) and Thursday (1/24) in Park City and Sunday (1/26) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’12: V/H/S

Pretty soon, VHS tapes will be nothing more than odd curios. A group of lowlife thugs is out to steal one that is particularly collectible. Supposedly, they will know it when they see it. If that sounds ominous, it should, because they are about to stumble across some deeply disturbing found videos in the anthology horror film V/H/S, which has generated monster viral buzz at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Adam Wingard’s framing device characters are an ugly lot, who enjoy videotaping their violent crimes. Upon breaking into their target home, they find the owner long dead amid a pile of sketchy looking VHS tapes. Each one they screen tells a twisted tale.

David Bruckner’s opening Amateur Night follows a trio of unenlightened young men as they set out the bed drunk women and record their conquests through the geeky one’s spy camera. They somehow bring two women back to their hotel room, but one promptly passes out and the other is a bit twitchy. While we have a good idea where this is headed from the outset, Hannah Fierman’s penetrating eyes are spooky as all get out. As the mystery woman, she is simultaneously alluring and unnerving.

It is road trip time in Ti (House of the Devil) West’s Second Honeymoon, duly documented by the vacationing couple on their camcorder. Unfortunately, they are having trouble shaking this strange vagrant woman. While it might be the most traditional in its approach, West’s contribution arguably boasts the film’s single freakiest scene.

However, the best chapter is easily Glenn McQuaid’s Tuesday the 17th, which gives the horny teens in the woods subgenre a wicked twist. Whatever it is out there stalking them, it has a distorting power over the camera, greatly affecting our perceptions of events, which makes what goes down quite nerve-racking. Within the horror genre, it is light-years away from McQuaid’s strangely underappreciated I Sell the Dead.

Perhaps the weakest link is Joe “Mumblecore” Swanberg’s The Strange Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, which purports to be the recorded Skype chats between a woman with a haunted apartment and her long distance boyfriend—on a moldy old VHS tape. Really? Digital to analog, how did that work exactly? Maybe similar objections could be raised regarding Amateur Night’s spy glasses, but it is not so glaringly anachronistic. Still, there is definitely some weird stuff happening in the corner of the screen.

It is back to old fashioned camcorders for the youtube tag-team Radio Silence’s 10/31/98, a story of carousing youth looking for a Halloween party and finding a house full of evil instead. The quartet clearly understands how to milk tension out of empty hallways and unsettling knick-knacks, before letting loose complete chaos.

Regardless of the hype surrounding audience members passing out and getting nauseous during a screening at Sundance, this is a legitimately scary movie, exponentially more frightening than the Blair Witch Project. Frankly, shaky cams work better for horror than any other genre. It is always what we don’t see that scares us, so those what-the-hack-was-that moments are quite effective (whereas they are simply annoying in action films). However, the reliance on the hand-held found footage motif levels out the filmmakers’ differences of style, providing the film with a largely consistent look, aside from Swanberg’s internet ringer.

This is easily the scariest film in years. It can be bloody and it depicts some casual cruelty in the introduction that is not a lot of fun to watch, but once Bruckner’s story builds up some steam, V/H/S really buries its hooks into viewers. Recommended for bold genre fans not suffering from altitude sickness, it screens again this Saturday (1/28) during this year’s Sundance in Park City.