Long-time readers of this blog will remember my review of the first V/H/S movie last year, wherein I raved about the clever little indie-anthology-found footage film for almost the entire time. So it's going to come as no surprise to anyone that I feel much the same way about the sequel, V/H/S/2. Well, not quite the same. V/H/S/2 is actually better.
The format of the movie is still the same - there's a wraparound segment that very loosely holds the film together, and the individual segments themselves as video tapes watched during the wraparound. This time around the wraparound segment concerns two rather sleazy and more than a little corrupt private detectives who are looking for a missing student. Said student had gotten involved in the world of the VHS tapes from the first movie, and as things progress we get a little more of the mythology surrounding them filled in. As with the first movie, the wraparound is the weakest of all the segments, complete with a particularly dumb ending that I've seen described elsewhere as "Hello, I'm Johnny Chinless for Jackass." (and thank you Something Awful's horror thread for that)
So onto the "proper" films themselves. First up we have "Phase I Clinical Trials", by Adam Wingard (of You're Next fame, among others), which features a man partially blinded in a car accident who gets a new bionic eye... which also allows him to see ghosts. And the ghosts are angry at him. "A Ride in the Park" is from Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale (whose previous work you might have heard of; it was a little film called The Blair Witch Project) and is about a zombie attack from the point-of-view of one of the zombies involved (by way of a Go Pro camera on a cycle helmet that the zombie wears throughout). "Safe Haven" is by Gareth Huw Evans and Timo Tjahjanto, and is about a documentary crew visiting the compound of a suspicious cult on the same day that the cult's prophecised apocalypse begins. Finally, "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" is by Jason Eisener, and is, quite basically, about a slumber party interrupted by aliens who want to abduct everyone there. It's also filmed via dog-cam.
So, which of them are any good this time around? Well, all of them are pretty good, although far and away the best of the segments is "Safe Haven", which can best be described as "batshit crazy awesome". Its final 10 seconds do let it down by going a bit too goofy, but that's hardly an issue when the rest of it just starts off at 11 and keeps cranking it up from there. Going into any more detail would spoil things completely, so just believe me when I say that "Safe Haven" is worth seeing V/H/S/2 on its own.
Of the other three... I personally really liked "A Ride in the Park" for being an original take on a zombie movie, although my other half with his hatred of all things zombie that aren't Shawn of the Dead merely rated it as "okay". His second-favourite segment was actually "Phase I Clinical Trials", which he found to be particularly creepy and unnerving, as well as an original idea as to why some people see ghosts and others don't. It also put a new spin on the old myths about transplanted organs. Both of us enjoyed "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" as well, which was just a high-energy, fun segment to end things with - marred only by a slightly mean-spirited ending.
As with the first movie, there's an underlying theme running through all of the segments in V/H/S/2, and this time it's more or less "responsibilities and consequences". As I said earlier, there's also some further explanation of the whole mythology of these tapes, which is... interesting, but a little bewildering at the same time (although the shout-outs to the first movie in the wraparound segment, complete with portraits of the Creepy Dead Guy in the chair from the first movie, are very appreciated).
So, V/H/S/2 manages to be one of those rare sequels that can be considered as good as - or even better - than its predecessor. Of course, the third movie in the series, V/H/S: Viral has since come out and so at some point in the future I shall be reviewing that as well, but let's just say that, for now, V/H/S/2 has the series on a high point.
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