When I first heard about V/H/S I was in two minds about it. On the one hand it was found footage, which has long been a fascination/guilty pleasure of mine... but on the other hand it was also anthology horror, and I've never been too fond of anthologies. In the end though I decided to give it a chance, and I'm glad I did because V/H/S is one of the best and most original horror films I've seen in the past few years.
So the setup and framing device for V/H/S is a pretty simple one. A group of teenage hooligans who like to video the crimes they commit - such as vandalism, sexual assault and the like - are hired by a mysterious person to break into a house and steal a video tape. When they get there, however, they discover rooms full of junk and, in one room in particular, a dead man seated facing a bank of TVs and unmarked video tapes. Trying to find out which tape they're meant to be stealing, they start to watch the tapes, and that's where the anthology portion properly kicks in.
There are five videos that make up the bulk of the anthology, each by a different up and coming director. The first is Amateur Night, by David Bruckner. Shot using a hidden-glasses cam, it shows a trio of thoroughly obnoxious college students out to take advantage of some drunk girls, and what happens when they pick up the wrong girl. Second Honeymoon is by Ti West and features a couple on a holiday through the Grand Canyon who are being stalked by a mysterious masked figure. Tuesday the 17th is by Glenn McQuaid and is about a group of college students going on a camping trip to some woods where something terrible happened in the past. The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger is by Joe Swanberg and is done entirely by Skype video calls between a long-distance couple, the female of which believes her house is haunted. Finally 10/31/98 is by the collective Radio Silence and is about a group of guys going to a Halloween fancy dress party who go to the wrong house by mistake.
Let's get one thing out of the way now - if you get motion sickness from watching found-footage films, then you are not going to enjoy watching V/H/S. The cameras shake, stutter and generally aren't very stable at all, and so they end up being pretty nausea-inducing for anyone prone to that.
As for the segments themselves, what with it being an anthology means that everyone is going to have their favourites. I personally liked Amateur Night and 10/31/98 the best, while my other half (in a rare moment of watching one of my films with me) preferred Second Honeymoon and The Sick Thing... The general consensus from people I've talked to seems to be that Tuesday the 17th is the weakest of the segments (aside from the framing story, which suffers from the problem of being the framing story which never work out too well), although I have warmed too it slightly after reading an alternate take on it (without giving too much away, count backwards from the title date a few days and see where that gets you). In the end of course though, everyone is going to have their own personal favourites and so my opinion can only count for so much.
There is an underlying theme running through all the stories (as well as the mythology of the tapes themselves, but that's something that's covered in greater detail in the sequel, V/H/S/2 and, I assume, the upcoming V/H/S: Viral); it's one part the dark side of the male gaze and one part women as predator/prey. If that's making you worry about it having some sory of angry feminism or anti-men message though, don't worry. After all, it is horror, and in horror there always have to be people who deserve killing and people who don't, and subverting expectations is always a good thing in film. Also, in the end it's really just a set of found-footage horror shorts, and very enjoyable ones at that. Finally, V/H/S managed to change my opinions of anthology horror, and that's also a good thing.
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