V/H/S Review

Found Footage Horror – Starring Calvin Reeder, Lane Huges, Adam Wingard, Hannah Fierman, Helen Rogers. Directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence (2012)

Synopsis

Four petty criminals break into a house to steal a VHS tape for an unknown third party. Looking for the mystery tape, they discover a dead body and some very disturbing video footage.

Review

I’m a fan of found footage horror films. I like the immediacy and the intimacy of sharing a character’s POV and the realism this brings. V/H/S offers a fresh take on this genre of horror with five separate stories by different directors/writers told inside one creepy central arc, entitled Tape 56. With its preference for hand-held camera work, the horror genre forces us to see from the killer’s or the victim’s POV, while found footage films push this further by making us see directly through the eyes of the victim. And in the first video that the unsuspecting criminals play, Amateur Night, this is never truer because what we see is filmed through a web cam inside the character’s glasses.

Tape 56

In Amateur Night, three friends set off on a night out with the intention of bringing girls back to their hotel room for sex. Instead they find the strange, bugged eyed Lily, played beautifully by Hannah Fierman. Lily’s over-swift movements and inability to say much more than a breathy, ‘I like you’ make her an intriguing character. The jerkiness of the camera work and the constant flickering images from the web cam’s POV can get a bit irritating and confusing, but, in its credit, it adds to the sense of disjointed and distorted reality within the narrative.

Amateur Night

Film two is Second Honeymoon, with a husband and wife on a road trip where they encounter a strange night time visitor. The third film, Tuesday the 17th is a monster-in-the-woods tale of a teenager who lies to her friends in order to get them to accompany her to the scene of some grisly murders.

Second Honeymoon

For me, film four, The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger is the scariest of the shorts. The film shows Emily (Helen Rogers) video chatting to her doctor-to-be boyfriend on her laptop while he is away studying. We are restricted to seeing only what boyfriend James can see on his computer screen, while Emily explains that she believes her apartment is haunted. There are some chilling and jumpy moments as Emily investigates the ‘presence’ that are reminiscent of 2007’s Paranormal Activity.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger

10/31/98 rounds off the movie with a tale of four friends who head to a deserted house for a Halloween party and instead find themselves having to play hero to save a tortured girl.

10/31/98

Each of the stories in V/H/S have the flash fiction feel of 2008’s Cloverfield and 2011’s Absentia, and they complement each other well within the setting of the main story. Music only comes from sources within the film, such as the car radio, or a stereo which adds to the sense of realism. There is gore, tension, mystery and eeriness, but at approximately 2 hours running time, I feel it is too long and perhaps could have worked better with four videos and a little more time spent on the central arc itself. On the whole V/H/S is a well acted and realistically portrayed set of shorts that if pruned back and with a little less distorted, camera-fault shots would have been brilliant.

Rating 4 out of 5

By Lisa Richardson


V/H/S gets a limited theatrical release on 5th October across the US and is available now on Video On Demand.