V/H/S Review
I, like most horror fans, have been trying to find the next truly original, mind blowing horror film on par with classics like The Exorcist and The Shining. There has been a lot of hype surrounding V/H/S on the indie circuit with some people claiming it to be a revert back to true horror films, with that in mind I decided to give it a watch on Netflix last week. So the question is does this film live up to those expectations? The short answer: no.
The film is a selection of 6 short films, directed by a variety of different people including the notable Ti West who directed the incredible 'The House of the Devil'. The over-reaching story arc is about a group of young rebellious 'youths' who break into a house and find a stach of video tapes, these video tapes then serve as each of the 6 short stories. The quality of the shorts is mixed, ranging from intelligent and creepy to hideously gory and downright stupid. Each story is shot using a handy cam style similar to that of The Blair Witch Project or the Paranormal Activity franchise and appears to use similar traits of that genre.
Some of the shorts were genuinely creepy like the Skype chat based "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger" and the clever "The Second Honeymoon". While a couple of the films were creepy, usually the scares came from the excessive use of gore and shock imagery, disturbing images that catch you by surprise play a vital role in the film's scare tactics making some of the films seem a little cheaply thought out. From watching it from an analytical point of view, it seemed to me that each story was making some sort of reference to either castration or the male gaze, two topics rooted in feminist film theory. These kinds of things are like crack to horror film nerds and made the films a little more bareable to watch, as some of them were pretty hard to sit through due to the gore.
On the acting side, the talent was varied, with some great performances like in "The Second Honeymoon" and some terrible ones, most of them in the slasher inspired "Tuesday the 17th". The bad acting in some of the films made the found footage style of the shorts much less belivable and making some of them comedic rather than scary. The camera work is standard found footage, its nausiating, yet an effective way to generate some creepy 'blink and you'll miss it' moments.
If you are looking for the next big Horror film classic in V/H/S don't get your hopes up, its a varied selection of shorts which are big on gore and jump scares and less about intelligent horror design. Some of the shorts however can be fun to watch and pick apart, and the overall production qualities are solid. If you're bored tonight its worth a watch on Netflix US.
7/10
7/10
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