V/H/S

What we have in V/H/S are a bunch of prolonged horror moments that in usual cases would be the climax to any average horror movie. The movie manages to throw 5 of these 'money shots' at the viewer without the need to tell any real story, build any of the characters or introduce their personality's to the audience. Whether this is a stroke of genius originality or just laziness is the question. You'd be forgiven for thinking that V/H/S is the result a brain storming session where five writers pitched five stories, with one 'Eureka' moment of making a movie of the ending of all five. What they seemingly failed to spend any real time on though was the glue to bind the five stories together. It is completely irrelevant, in fact I would go as far as to say the movie would be better without it, a "Here are five tapes that were found, now watch them" instead. I have to say I am a fan of 'found footage movies'. To me they achieve the desired effect and can, at times, create some truly chilling moments. This movie does have it's moments but after a while it all gets too much, the 'found footage' angle is somehow lost with the constant change of story. You are never really allowed to reach the same level of suspense as with other films in this genre. 6/10. It passed the time but I eventually found myself wanting it to end and asking myself "How many stories to go?"

Listen, the only way to truly enjoy a horror film is in a large, pitch black room with deafening surround sound and a group of people just as scared as you are. Other times, a laptop works too. But I, and a group of about 100 others were privileged to catch the first Canadian premiere of V/H/S presented by the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. Enough plugs, onto the film right? My review. See it! If you love horror, if you hate horror, if you think you might like it and wanna try it out, just see it! Without spoiling anything I will say that there are about 5 or 6 anthology stories tied around a main story in which four guys break into a house to look for a specific video tape. They find a lot more, let me tell you. Some of the segments are better than others (trust me, you'll know which ones) but overall, V/H/S is one of the most imaginative, jolting, riveting, heart-beating-outside-of-your-chest-because-its-so-intense horror films of recent time. Fans of Creepshow 1 and 2, Tales From the Darkside, Twilight Zone (the movie) and even Stephen King, if you get the chance to watch V/H/S, do it! It's bloody, it's scary, it's haunting, and if you're anything like me, you'll know it scared you when it's 1:43 in the morning and the only thing you can do to make yourself fall asleep, is to review the film on IMDb.

What's your initial reaction to "Found footage Anthology" or found footage in general? That should give you a bit of a clue, if you should watch this or not. One thing is for sure, if an Anthology movie is only as good as it's weakest link/story, than this would be really bad (the story covering the whole thing is tedious, boring and annoying at best)! But I don't think that it would do the short movies justice that accompany the movie.

I actually enjoyed most of them. They don't make sense as usual when it comes to Found Footage (why would they film that again? The who cut/edited them is either easy to answer or makes even less sense, depending on the way you look at it), but the stories themselves are mostly decent. Acting is good to OK (apart from the "covering" overall story as mentioned) and the scares are decent too. I still don't get the fascination with Found footage and I sure can't tell you why this spawned a sequel ...

Released early on demand, after it's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, "V/H/S" is a horror movie told through the "already tired" aspect of found-footage material, shown from the perspective of a hand-held camera. A group of hoodlums has been strangely assigned to break into an abandoned haunted house, and steal a particular V/H/S tape. But once making it to the house, they start to find a wide collection of plenty of V/H/S tapes, and we are introduced to a series of "found-footage" shorts, as the group starts to watch each tape at a time, as if the audience is in the room, with these guys, watching the tapes. Each tape has a different particular horror story, some work, and some doesn't. Let's recap each one! 1. A group of guys start to become haunted by a strange woman during a "guys night out" (Works), 2. A married couple on their second honeymoon, whom doesn't realize that a certain someone has been sneaking on them (Kind of works), 3. A group of friends being hunted down while on a trip to the lake (Hardly works), 4. A young girl communicates with her "doctor-to-be" boyfriend over the Internet, believing that her apartment is being haunted (Doesn't work), and 5. A group of guys awaiting an awesome Halloween party, but they got more than what they bargained for (Perfectly works). "V/H/S" is probably one of the most scariest, and one of the most disturbing movies I've ever laid eyes on. Filled with plenty of great scares, some disgustingly grotesque moments, and tons of scenes that will leave you speechless. Now, there are times when this movie follows almost every horror cliché in the book, and although this movie is supposed to be portrayed as a "found-footage" feature, the camera movements are a little too shaky. But, this movie does stay true to it's promise by giving such scares that won't let audiences sleep later at night. Although I prefer "The Cabin in the Woods" as the better horror movie this year, I prefer "V/H/S" as the better horror movie in the terms of scaring me, grossing me out, and leaving me awake at night! In ordinary horror movie fashion, there is plenty of great fun to be found in "V/H/S". I'm just saying you've been warned, because if you're somewhat interested in seeing it, I must warn you that this movie is sick and grotesque, leaving audiences in a stage of vomiting and sleeping with the lights on. "V/H/S", in my review, "A freaky, original, and grotesque scare-fest".

I'm a big fan of anthology horror movies, and horror in general and I'm willing to accept found footage movies if they're done well enough. That being said this is not done well at all. They use every found footage cliché except night vision. Constant "glitch cuts", people carrying the camera around while in danger for no reason, disoriented confusing action sequences. The found footage aspects are the main weakness in this movie, but I'll put that aside for now and review this movie on its other aspects.

First of all every character in this movie is terrible. They're either perverted frat boy assholes or completely void of personality. They're not the kind of characters you can't wait to be killed, they're the kind of characters you can't wait to stop listening to. I know there's no time to really flesh out any characters in an anthology, but you can at least give them a personality, these guys are just boring, boring, boring.

The plot of most of these shorts are only possible through monumentally stupid decisions from the characters. They never call the call the cops, are constantly tripping while running away (maybe if you dropped the camera...), and the overarching plot characters are the stupidest of them all.

There's no bow-tie at the end connecting all these stories, and therefore no need for the very bland overarching story itself. However in a few of the tapes the mystery is strong enough to keep you interested and some of the tension is pretty thrilling, although it never really pays off.

I would be more forgiving of the cliché story and characters if it was easier to watch, and I'd be more forgiving of the found footage faux-pas if it had better stories. But this is the worst of both worlds, I would give this a 4/10 but I'm bumping it up 1 for the tits.