V/H/S/2
Checking
the credits and- YES! There’s no involvement from my arch-nemesis this
time around, so I can sit back and try to enjoy the latest in the
anthology series without worrying that Ty West will pop his head around
the corner to ruin my film watching experience. It’s a fun little
anthology premise and the story wrap-around seems to have a much more
cohesive narrative than the previous entry so let’s just keep our
fingers crossed, shall we?
The
wraparound features a pair of private detectives hired by the mother of
a missing teen to check on his welfare. They locate his house, stacked
high with video tapes and monitors and other equipment but no sign of
the teen. One of the detectives sits to watch the series of tapes, while
the other continues to check out the house for any additional clues.
The story is generally creepy and the tension builds with each
successive tape, and the handheld camera techniques are actually pretty
smooth without too much of the “shaky” cam effect so successfully
parodied by that one South Park episode. That one cracks me up… and this
story actually cracked me up. More on that later, though.
The
first story features a character receiving an implant replacement to
his left eye. The lead lost his eye is in an accident that never gets a
fully fleshed story. He’s seeing phantoms, though and these ghosts seem
to have gained the ability to interact with him through the implant as
well. It’s a pretty short piece and would have worked better with some
additional exposition, but the story in itself works very well. I’m not
so sure the high-tech eye implant really does much to further the “VHS”
themed narrative, but it was a good story either way.
The
second story is my favorite by far. A young man takes to a biking trail
for a morning ride only to be attacked by zombies. Yes, I know many
people are just going to dismiss this because they know my affinity for
zombies but that was actually the least interesting aspect of the story
in general. This film take the best advantage of the VHS theme by giving
our lead a helmet cam and establishing that he enjoys recording these
morning rides. It’s a digital recording but I can really forgive that,
because it’s the one video that seems to have the most legitimately
“filmed for home use” feel to it. As the lead character goes through his
ordeal, we establish who he is and we understand what is happening to
him and we are able to slide ourselves into his shoes for a long period
of time. There’s a sense of riding along in his head for long moments,
living through his experiences, and the end is ultimately the most
perfect one that could be imagined. This short made the whole movie
worth-while.
The
third story is longer- and maybe too long. A group of investigative
journalists are doing an in depth piece on a cult in some unnamed Asian
or Asian Pacific compound and- I don’t want to spoil anything, but the
whole thing sort of builds to a predictable climax and is both the most
entertaining and most fiercely annoying “short” in the film. Actually,
most of the movie is this short and it’s got the added promise of coming
to us from the team that brought us “The Blair Witch Project”… great
gory effects, some interesting concepts, but probably one of the single
doofiest monsters I’ve ever seen in the last revealing shot. I couldn’t
stop laughing and had to stop the film because of how moronically stupid
the monster looked. Still, there were momentary sequences and blips
throughout the story to give a person some decent nightmares through the
night.
The final
story is probably the weakest and most overblown. It establishes the
first person narrative to be coming from a “doggy-cam” attached to a
mini pooch that the family members use to spy on one another and play
pranks and all that kind of stuff. Some teens have a slumber party, the
dog wanders about with a couple of bits leading up to an alien invasion.
Yes, an alien invasion that features a bunch of grey-skinned, thin,
creeping “monsters” that pose elaborately as they approach whoever might
be dragging the dog along with an eruption of electro-bass audio looped
back on itself while too-bright lights flash in the background to frame
the aliens in shadowy outline. We get that same jump scare eruption of
sound at least five separate times.
My
final thoughts on the film are this: it’s not nearly as serious an
attempt as the last one. There were some serious scares in the previous
entry, an attempt to utilize the restrictive thematic structure to
create an interesting dynamic but this one seems to flout those limits
and dismiss them at a whim. There’s massive use of digital after-effects
in some of the shorts, they don’t tend to utilize an actual VHS
recorder in nearly any of the shorts, and nearly every film has some
sort of a “punchline” for its finale. They seem to be played for laughs
rather than for scares, which is well and good if that’s what you want
to sell or buy. It just didn’t seem to be following the narrative
established in the previous film in the anthology series. I recommend it
for a good Halloween fright flick this season, it’s fun, and there’s a
lot worse you could do. The “Ride in the Park” is probably worth the
time in and of itself, but it seems to go downhill from there. The
wraparound story itself followed the entire structure of the film… it
started off strong, it was building a decent tension, and then it
finished with what amounted to a punchline that fell a little flat for
me. There was a visual effect in this movie that seemed plastic and
fake, especially under the lights of the shakey-cam effect we were
seeing it.
4 out of 5.
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