After accepting the offer to seek out a missing college student via the young man's mother, two investigators named Larry and Ayesha break into his dormitory perusing for tips and hints. While searching inside, the couple discover two very unusual clues lying on the floor, which could possibly lead to his whereabouts. The first is a laptop computer, which is still recording video by the time that they arrive. The second is a rather large batch of VHS tapes, which Larry commands Ayesha to watch while he continues to examine the house.
When the time came to talk about 2012's massively hyped horror anthology V/H/S, I wasn't shy about letting my opinion be known to any person who reads my reviews. While a significant amount of time has passed since my first viewing on October 9, 2013, and some of my negative thoughts have dissipated (though I still detest the Joe Swanberg-directed portion of that picture), I ultimately found the movie to be a bit on the overrated side, with too many hit-or-miss segments scattered throughout its rather long two hour running time. Admitting that I was hesitant to watch the sequel was still fresh in my mind when I fired this up, which was done mostly out of sheer morbid curiosity. Besides, there was no way in hell that anything I watch for the remainder of the week could be worse than yesterday's abysmal Don't Go In The Woods, right?
Much to my surprise, V/H/S 2 ends up being a very pleasant (if not macabre) little surprise, and one of the few examples of a sequel being done right, and arguably surpassing the original in more ways than one. For starters, the ominous tone from the first one feels more authentic, and the decision to make our main protagonists into investigators rather than thieves like in the previous flick works well to its favor. True, they aren't exactly the purest of people, but you aren't clamoring to see anything bad happen to them. Unlike the first V/H/S, you don't get lost trying to keep up with too many individuals who are ultimately just interrupting you and the characters' video-watching sessions.
And with that, let's talk about the tapes themselves, shall we? Up first is "Clinical Trials," directed by and starring You're Next head honcho Adam Wingard. It starts off incredibly promising, even going so far as to give it a much-needed sense of humor. The idea of a young man being imbued with an eye-based camera is fairly interesting too, adding trippy visual effects to the story and providing plenty of jump scares for the easily-frightened and spooked crowd. Man, now that I think about it, I've watched two distinct horror anthologies within two or three days, and both featured something going awry with eye transplants. Barring future paranoia, I guess I'll end up sticking with a patch should I ever lose my sight. The short unwraps into a more demented version of The Sixth Sense, but it isn't too shabby for being the curtain jerker to this compendium. Segment number two, "A Ride In The Park," almost made me sigh from the get-go. Forgive my blasphemous statement, but I am thoroughly sick and tired of zombies. I'll applaud the blood and gore work coming from the team behind this, and I'll even applaud the efforts of directors Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project) for trying to do something different. But at the end of the day, tape number two just doesn't do much for me. I can't help but find it funny that two of the men who helmed the "Shaky Cam" style are now working for the competition. It's the movie version of hearing that Black Sabbath are going to cover Metallica on a future record.
All of the praise in the world has to be given to the third tape, the all too appropriately-named "Safe Haven," which spotlights a news crew visiting a peculiar sect residing in Indonesia. Since I never got around to typing a proper review for Ti West's The Sacrament, I would like to find the time to just say that cults have always made me feel uncomfortable. The idea of human beings following others so blindly and acting seemingly brainwashed is equally fascinating and unsettling to someone like me. Speaking of that, I don't type the following sentence as often as I would like to, but to call this segment disturbing would be a gross understatement. This is all the more surprising when you discover that the co-directing and writing credits belong to one Gareth Huw Evans, whose previous works lie primarily in the action genre (if you haven't seen The Raid: Redemption, then I can't fully trust you as a person). Joining him behind the chair and holding the script pen is Timo Tjahjanto, whose only work that I can recall seeing was the "L" short in The ABCs Of Death. If there are any big time hollywood executives reading right now (*crickets*), I will make this as clear as I possibly can: you must let these two men make a full-length horror movie! They know how to build tension without turning its audience off, they have the ability to pick relatively believable actors and actresses that don't seem like they're sleepwalking whenever they aren't busy being terrified, and, most important of all, they know how to scare and horrify you when the time calls for it. More impressively is that this was purportedly filmed on a rather small budget, but they mask it so well that you barely notice it.
And so the film ends….well, if we lived in a better world, it would stop after "Safe Haven" wrapped up. Instead, Jason Eisener, the director of cult favorite Hobo With A Shotgun, gives us a silly story called "Slumber Party Alien Abduction," which isn't a song by a musical act in the "Party Thrash" subgenre. Rather, this takes place during a slumber party thrown by teenagers, and focuses on the family dog that has a camera attached to it in order to record the hijinks that will follow. The puerile idiocy and lack of real scares (not to mention an unbelievably sad, though predictable ending) in this one makes me wonder if Eisener got lucky in his very brief fling with success, because I personally have not found any of his post-Hobo material to be worth a single second of my time or attention. It's a little baffling to me that this was chosen to be the final full tale to close out V/H/S 2 rather than any of the others. This felt like the cinematic equivalent of eating a great dinner for your birthday, only for you to have a case of bloody diarrhea shortly thereafter…okay, that's a bit too extreme. I'll just stick with saying that I don't think it was very good.
Bad aftertaste aside, V/H/S 2 is a worthy followup to a movie that divided quite a number of people in the horror community (myself included). I'm sure that my showering of praise for "Safe Haven" makes it sound as if I was close friends with its directors, but I will always find something worth talking about if any part of a picture leaves me feeling unclean.
Yes, it made me feel more uneasy than THREE movies dealing with killer cockroaches. How's that for a sell?
Tomorrow, we're heading overseas for some good old fashioned tentacled fun, with Dead Sushi and Grabbers!
No comments:
Post a Comment