The
home video revolution began approximately thirty years ago. What that home video revolution entailed (and
still entails today, though with different and updated equipment…) is the capacity to transform each and every
person with a video camera into a journalist, a movie-maker, or even a porn
star.
Consider
for just a moment all the people in the world equipped with video cameras (or
today, phone cameras…) and then imagine thirty
years’ worth of home movies, sex tapes, family holidays…and other stuff,
all on tape or DVD, rattling around the periphery of the pop culture.
Where
do these old forgotten tapes or discs go once discarded or forgotten? To
flea markets? To yard sales? To
traders?
Whose
hands do those recordings ultimately end up in, and for what, perhaps
voyeuristic purpose? What value do these
personal “productions” have in the eyes of strangers?
These
are just a few of the unsettling ideas that the new found-footage horror
anthology V/H/S successfully explores. The film showcases five unsettling
genre stories told from a first-person perspective, and the wraparound
narrative device involves a group of not terribly-bright, small-time miscreants
desperately searching for one particular video tape in the house of a
(presumably) dead tape collector.
As
these crooks ransack the home, they watch one tape after another, and the
audience witnesses some pretty disturbing and offbeat material after the VCR
first lights up with the block word “PLAY”
(seen over the ubiquitous blue VCR screen).
The
first found-footage horror omnibus yet produced, V/H/S is an impressive
horror production not merely because of the stimulating ideas I named above
about three decades worth of consumer-recorded media existing around the edges
of polite society, but because the stories featured here all seem joined by a
common thematic thread: man’s cruelty to
his fellow man, and his manipulation of his fellow man for his own ends.
This
is not a small thing. And V/H/S ably suggests that the “cognitive surplus” (to borrow a term
from Clay Shirky) that permits us the time, technology and opportunity to make
personal video recordings is being spent not on crafting art or even furthering
commerce, but on hurting others. It
takes a special breed to hurt another human being in the ways we witness in V/H/S,
but what order of supreme narcissism is required to hurt another person, and
then record that pain and torment for
posterity?
What
does it say about a culture, the film seems to ask, when our “precious” moments
recorded on tape are all about tricking, abusing, and even murdering other
human beings, even ones we ostensibly love (as is the case in at least two of
the five stories)?
In
some senses, this omnibus feels like an answer to the questions first raised by
Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989) some twenty-five years ago.
In
that film, a serial killer taped his own bloody and vicious acts, so he could
enjoy them (with a beer…) at his leisure.
At the time, this act was seen as an especially atrocious, but also individual one. Henry was a sicko, but also an outlier. He didn’t represent the norm.
By
contrast, V/H/S suggests that, perhaps the reality-TV obsessed culture of
the 2010s is as much about pain as it is about fame. You might get your fifteen minutes of celebrity,
but you’re going to suffer for it.
“A new turns of events will soon come about…”
In
V/H/S
a gang of dumb crooks are hired to break into the house of a tape collector and
steal an important video tape.
Unfortunately, the house is veritably filled with stacks of videotapes,
and finding the right one is no easy task.
The crooks thus watch five different tapes, hoping to find their quarry.
The
first tape (“Amateur Night”) involves three young men who hope to bring a young
woman back to their motel from a local bar for purposes of group sex. One of the boys, Clint, has been outfitted
with a camera in his glasses, so he can tape the entire transaction. Finally, after a long night at the bar, the
boys bring two girls back to their motel room.
One woman, Lisa, passes out before she can put out. But the strange, bug-eyed Lily (Hannah
Fierman) has a few surprises in store for the guys...
The
second tape, “Second Honeymoon,” follows a married couple -- Sam (Joe Swanberg)
and Stephanie (Sophia Takal) -- on a road trip out west. Late one night, they are accosted by a
stalker asking for a ride. Sam refuses,
but remains creeped-out by the incident.
But then, by night, the stalker breaks into the couple’s motel room and
watches them sleep. Over a few nights,
the behavior escalates and becomes more and more dangerous..
In
the third tape, “Tuesday the 17th,” a tortured young woman named
Wendy (Norma C. Quinones) brings a group of friends back to the woods where she
once faced a terrible trauma. But this
time, she’s ready to face whatever comes, even if the video camera can’t quite
register the Bogeyman she fears.
“The
Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” involves a web-cam
conversation between Emily (Helen Rogers) and her boyfriend as she explains a
series of night terrors…and the bruises and wounds that keep appearing on her
arm.
In
the final, harrowing tale, “10/31/98,” a group of friends looking for a
Halloween party instead find themselves in a real life house of horrors, one
where some kind of occult ritual is occurring in the attic…
“Amateur Night”
If
I had to describe “Amateur Night” briefly, I would use this (admittedly trite)
term: the hunters become the hunted.
Here,
three young men hope to lure a woman back to their motel room to taped sex
acts. They believe that they are the predators, but in fact -- as they discover
-- they are the prey.
One
extremely gory moment in the action sees the “monster” pull the penis off one
of the boys, and toss it onto the motel carpet with a splat. It’s a sight you don’t see in a horror movie
every day, but the shot reflects the story’s purpose, and the idea of the
(apparent) weak turning on the apparent strong.
Since sex is part of the “weaponry” used by the young men in the
beginnings, it’s appropriate that sex should be part of the violence, as well.
“Amateur
Night” works like gangbusters because the installment doesn’t hold back in
terms of confronting the racy subject matter.
There’s not just the severed penis, for instance, but, relatively late
in the game, we are treated to a moment when the (lonely?) Lily attempts to
perform fellatio on one of the boys.
But
her feelings are hurt when the guy -- after
witnessing the bloody demise of his friends, falling down a flight of stairs,
and breaking his wrist -- can’t get it up for her ministrations.
This
valedictory moment is important because like the earlier scenes set in the
motel room, the subject is sex, and how sex can be used by the strong to
victimize the weak. In this case, it
turns out that the guy who wanted to have group sex so badly isn’t actually in
the mood for sex when the tables are violently turned on him. What a
surprise. Nobody likes to have
control taken away, and in some sense that’s the lesson of this first tale.
“Second
Honeymoon”
The
sophomore sortie in V/H/S comes from director Ti West. I’m an avowed admirer of West because of his
incredible films House of the Devil (2008) and The Innkeepers
(2012). His story here takes a decidedly
different approach than you might expect after the “Amateur Night” gore-fest,
and it concerns a young couple on a road trip.
All
throughout the story, there are small signs that Sam and Stephanie aren’t
really getting along, and aren’t particularly happy. But what I appreciate
about this story is how little is actually revealed through dialogue or action. Most of the frissons are unspoken, or
uncommented upon. We just get little things to cue us in that things are not
right, like a discussion in which Sam accuses Stephanie of stealing money from
his wallet.
It’s
not a portrait of marital bliss, but if you’re not paying attention, you won’t
pick up the clues of discontent, either.
Like much of West’s work, there’s a high degree of nuance here.
“Second
Honeymoon” is the probably the least overtly horrific of all the segments in V/H/S,
but something about the human drama between Sam and Stephanie really
resonates. Like “Amateur Night,” the
story involves how people set out to hurt other people, often with intricate
strategies to do so. The terror
escalates from mischievous (a nasty gag involving a tooth brush) to bloody
murder.
I
can’t take sides in the dispute we see prosecuted in “Second Honeymoon,” but
there are, of course, better ways to end a marriage.
“Tuesday
the 17th”
I
imagine that if Cabin in the Woods (2012) hadn’t also premiered this year, many
horror fans might be lauding this V/H/S segment for the way it catalogs
and re-purposes horror movie clichés. It
plays roughly the same game as Whedon’s film but boasts the added benefit of
actually being scary.
In
this case, a girl who was previously attacked by a Jason Voorhees-type slasher figure,
returns to the woods where she was originally hunted (and escaped) and, once
there, intentionally smokes weed and courts pre-marital sex to lure him out, essentially
recognizing the old “vice-precedes slice-and-dice” scenario.
The
only problem in her plan, of course, is that to lure the strange killer back
into the open, Wendy needs human bait.
And thus she willingly offers up three friends -- or pseudo-friends, I suppose – as chum. The story thus functions on a post-modern level, recognizing and
mocking elements of the slasher movie lexicon while simultaneously offering a
further variation on V/H/S’s theme about how people are cruel to one another for
their own selfish purposes.
One
of the elements that makes “Tuesday the 17th” an especially effective
horror story is the visual presentation of the Jason-like killer. For some reason, he never appears clearly on the
video tape.
Instead,
he’s a creeping, darting, sometimes-invisible visual “distortion,” and this unusual
appearance is genuinely fear-provoking.
This character might be worthy of a horror franchise all on his own…
“The
Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger”
Punctuated
by a number of jump scares, the fourth tale in V/H/S really seems to be
a comment on domestic abuse and spousal exploitation.
A kind, sweet girl named Emily faces night
after night of confrontations with the ghost-like figures of malevolent
children. Her boyfriend thinks she is
crazy, even when he sees evidence of the ghouls, and doesn’t come to her aid.
I
don’t want to reveal the punch-line or surprise ending, but you may have
guessed that all is not as it seems, and that there is a conspiracy (a la Rosemary’s
Baby [1968]) to keep Emily firmly trapped in this cycle of nightly
abuse.
Again,
I don’t want to belabor the people-hurting-people-and-then-recording
it aspect of these stories, but suffice it to say that “The Sick Thing that
Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” fits in with the film’s leitmotif. Visually, the story plays like a combination
of the Paranormal Activity series and the Japanese water girl horror movement.
I
should also add, perhaps, that my wife found this segment the most disturbing
and frightening of the five stories.
As
for me, that honor goes to…
“10/31/98”
I
can see why the filmmakers left this story for last. It’s a harrowing, effects-heavy tale about
lost trick-or-treaters who end up in a House of the Devil-type scenario,
almost literally trying to outrun the Devil.
I
found this story absolutely spell-binding, in part because the protagonists
violate the movie’s established character “type” up to that point. They are not miscreants, exploiters or
manipulators. They are not murderers,
either. Instead, they are just average Joes
who end up in the wrong house on the wrong night and are faced with a moral
crisis.
Should they rescue
the girl they find in the attic, or just get the hell out?
What
I enjoyed so much about this story is that it best gets at the idea of life
unfolding around you spontaneously, and in front of the camera. In other words, our characters walk headlong
into situations they don’t understand, and have no frame of reference for any
understanding. Are the men torturing the
girl upstairs actually devil worshippers? Or
are they performing an exorcism? Is
the girl an innocent child being exploited (thus keeping with the
people-hurting-people leitmotif) or possessed
by a horrible demon?
The
guys who blunder into this situation have no time to determine the truth. But -- heroically -- they act on gut instincts
and attempt to rescue the girl before getting the hell out of that damned
house.
And
damned house is an apt
description.
As
the visitors attempt to flee, monstrous arms lunge out of walls, doorways reshape
into solid walls, and other surreal terrors ensue. In all my years reviewing horror movies, I’ve
never seen a story more viscerally present a human vs. the Devil clash, with
the Devil holding all the cards. This
story is, genuinely terrifying, a cinema-verite-styled nightmare. Accordingly, “10/31/98” ends V/H/S
on an adrenaline rush of anxiety, giggles, and outright terror.
As
you probably remember, I’m a long-time admirer of the found footage approach to
horror films, and here that approach does the seemingly impossible: it raises the moribund genre form of the
anthology from the grave.
Together,
the stories all carry an umbrella of unity thanks to the theme I’ve mentioned,
but also in terms of consistent visual approach. This is quite an accomplishment, considering
the diversity of the tales, from supernatural horror (“Amateur Night”), to
psychological thriller and intrigue (“Second Honeymoon”) to post-modern
meta-horror (“Tuesday the 17th.”) A lot of ground gets covered in terms of the
genre, and none of it feels like a stretch, or out of place.
In
most anthologies there’s also stinker story or two weighting down the whole,
but V/H/S
is rock solid in that regard, and best of all ends on a high note of horror.
If
you’re seeking a good, scary Halloween movie this year, look no further. V/H/S
is America’s Scariest Home Videos.
I like the layout change. Your web page is loading much faster. I am still having a little problem finding everything, but it may be because I am not used to the new layout. Thank you so much for such an interesting site.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review of this one. I was on the fence about seeing it, because I've watched quite a few found footage flicks recently and found them mostly disappointing. But your review has convinced me to give it a shot. I didn't know Ti West was working on this one. In the last couple weeks I watched "The Innkeepers" and "House of the Devil" and enjoyed them both a great deal. I'm really looking forward to what he does next and hey, here it is.
ReplyDeleteI do not recall ever reading such a glowing review for a film on this blog as the one you've just written. And I have read your 3 'Decade' books on horror and such a glowing review is usually the domain of the 'Halloween's' and the 'Blair Witch Projects'. Being a sucker for FF films, I had every intention of seeing this film, but if I was on the fence, you've certainly sold it.
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