V/H/S:
What's it about?
Anthology horror in which a group of burglars search for a specific videotape inside a creepy house where a dead guy sits before a stack of televisions and VCRs. Various gruesome and chilling tales ensue.
Who would I recognise in it?
Erm...
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
The biggest problem with VHS is that the majority of the male characters are absolute arseholes at best, and flat-out misogynists at worst - within seconds we have no care whatsoever for the wraparound characters, so why should we give two hoots for their survival? Is the film itself misogynist though? No - while there is a propensity for female nudity, there's a fair amount of naked male flesh to boot, and the female characters tend to be smarter and wittier than their male counterparts.
What's also distracting is the whole VHS angle - this appears to be present day, and yet the wraparound gang of burglars use old VHS cameras to record their exploits (why not an everyday HD handycam, or even a mobile phone?) ... and what's more, why would a web chat end up recorded on a videotape? It's a bit distracting - but if you let that go, the grungy aesthetic works well - indeed, for aficionados of the VHS era, the familiar sounds of ejected tapes and VCR motors whirring provide a nostalgic thrill.
From a collection of directors - the biggest name of which is Ti West ("House of the Devil") - the quality of each vignette varies in terms of plot, dialogue, and presentation. There are moments of dunderheaded dialogue that come off as nothing short of amateurish and slap-dash, while at other times the characters feel entirely real (such as in Ti West's creepy 'Second Honeymoon' segment, or the final story in the movie concerning a merry band of partygoers experiencing a haunted house). At 112 minutes, it's probably one segment too-long - with the 'webcam' sequence being the one which is most awkwardly-placed ... it has inventive and chilling moments, but it stands out far too much from the rest of the film to feel cohesive.
All-in-all it's a mixed bag - there's some genuine chills, thrills, and creepy scares - but there's also some god-awful dialogue, wooden performances, and a somewhat clunky sense of pacing. The presentation is fantastic, as is the idea of a collective of horror filmmakers experimenting, and there are numerous about-turns that provide welcome surprises throughout ... far from perfect, but certainly memorable in spite of its flaws.
Good.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by Sammich
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