V/H/S rocked the horror world and delivered plenty of shocking scares to its audiences when it premiered at Sundance back in January 2012. The gruesome horror anthology did so well that a second one was given the green light and was able to attach some of the original directors along with some new ones for the second installment titled V/H/S/2.
Simon Barrett directed the framing narrative, titled Tape 49, which starts, ends and connects the film to the VHS tapes played throughout. The film is then followed by Adam Wingard’s Clinical Trials, Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez’s A Ride in the Park, then Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s Safe Haven and lastly Jason Eisner’s Alien Abduction Slumber Party.
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the original film, I walked into V/H/S/2 with an open mind as I had heard this film was supposedly better. After sitting through my screening it’s easy to tell that these are two very different films. Much like many horrors and their sequels, tonally, the first film is very serious and very intent on scaring the crap out of its audience. The sequel doesn’t necessarily take the same approach; instead, there is a lot of humor used throughout the film to counteract the suspense of the horror elements intended to freak us out.
I’ll break each segment down further but, to describe them simply, Barrett’s chopped up film was blah, Wingard’s film was probably the creepiest, Eisner’s film was the funniest, the Evans/Tjahjanto short was the most disturbing and the Hale/Sanchez bit was the cleverest.
Hale and Sanchez, the duo behind The Blair Witch Project, had the most interesting short, conceptually speaking, of them all and one of the two that I will likely never forget when it comes to horror shorts. Their segment was a first person short about a bike rider who eventually gets bitten by a zombie and we experience the human/zombie transformation from his perspective and then see what it’s like to be a zombie from his P.O.V. It wasn’t a scary short by any means, just gory, clever and very funny (the zombie sounded like Gollum from Lord of the Rings when he’s angry and coughing). It was a really fun short and I was thankful it wasn’t first in the order.
The other memorable short for a variety of reasons was the Gareth Evans (The Raid)/ Timo Tjahjanto short. Their bit focused on a group of documentary filmmakers entering the compound of a cult to interview their founder/religious nut and offer an unbiased view of their beliefs. What starts out innocent enough takes a sharp turn towards hell when mass suicide begins to occur around the filmmakers and their lives become in jeopardy as hell breaches the earth’s surface in the most insane and mind blowing way possible. I don’t want to spoil anything but this one goes from zero to 60 when the first piece of explosive shit hits the fan, from there it gets weird and very bloody real fast and ends with a funny looking nine foot demon goat.
All I’ll say about Jason Eisner’s (Hobo with a Shotgun) short is that it’s really funny but the horror element, i.e. the aliens, is pretty laughable. They looked like grey aliens that I or any kid under the age of 12 would draw and didn’t do much to scare you once they began taking people. What made the short ludicrous/kind of awesome was
that we got to experience the abductions from the dog-cam (i.e. a camera attached to the dog); the ludicrous part was that the teenage daughter wanted to save the dog over herself, seriously. It was hilarious even when it seemed like the abduction was supposed to be the serious part.
Adam Wingard’s (You’re Next) piece was about a guy who had a bionic eye put into his head so that he could get his sight back after an accident. What starts out great turns very creepy when he starts to see visions of the dead and he has to hide in his bathroom to avoid said dead visions. Wingard’s short was probably the most realistic of them all with a lot of average guy-like humor injected into it. It was a good short to start with as it wasn’t the strongest but it did deliver the creepiest scares with a few dashes of humor that set tone for the rest of the movie.
The only thing that doesn’t really work in the film is that while the two leads in Barrett’s sit around VHS tapes, they watch the films on a computer where all of the content is displayed using HD cameras so the theme of VHS is actually really irrelevant. Sure, it might add a little old school horror vibe to the found film premise but I think they should just start calling it DVD or HARD DRIVE or something like that since these tapes couldn’t display content like this. I might be nitpicking but you know I’m right on a basic level.
On the whole, V/H/S/2 is a better film than its predecessor and much more entertaining. It takes a completely different approach than the original, injecting a significant amount of intentional comedy to coincide with the gore, but there aren’t actually any really scary moments and only a few cases of shocking moments. That being said, V/H/S/2 is a really fun horror comedy and a great film to get a gang of friends together to watch and bond over the insanity that unfolds within its 95 minute duration.
Rating: A clever horror (comedy) whose directors ask you to join them on their wild and crazy ride (7/10)
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