V/H/S Viral

The original VHS was great, VHS 2 was fun and tied in the first one, but I have no clue what the hell they were thinking when they put together this piece of garbage. A couple of the "videos" were mildly entertaining, and the one dealing with the alternate universe had great potential, that was, until the end. I watched this with a group of friends and we found ourselves laughing more than anything and questioning if this was a joke or if we were watching VHS to begin with. I am pretty much writing this review just tell anyone who is remotely interested in seeing this to save your money. If you just can not resist, try to watch it with friends so you can, A) split the price of renting/buying it, and B) enjoy sharing laughs with them at the expense of the ridiculousness of this film. Other than that save your precious time, and money

This movie is so awful it put me in a bad mood. Stay away, and I say this as a guy with an original VHS poser.

The wraparound story tries to break formula but ends up being a mess. I'm fine with a mess if it's entertaining or scary, but this felt like it was shot in a weekend.

The first story doesn't feel like it belongs in a VHS movie and the tone doesn't match. It's something your mom would like.

The middle story starts out promising but manages to feel like a parody of itself by the end. My favorite (?) of the bunch.

The third story feels like it should be airing on MTV in 2003.

Another bummer is that the directors have done good movies (Resolution and Timecrimes), I don't know how they lost their mojo here.

Also, there are only three stories. I'm cool with a shorter movie if it's a better movie, but they cut the fourth. People speculate bit was axed because it was so bad. How terrible must it have been to be left out of this limp, toothless pile?

Any soul, any scary or funny from the first two is not here. Avoid.

Why are people hating on this movie? They're getting basically what they got in the first film! A series of incoherent found footage films strung together with a premise slimmer than an anorexic's g-string!

It really isn't any better or any worse than the other films in the series. It may be the weakest yet it still has something to offer. You've got one great film, Parallel Monsters, very spooky, very trippy. One pretty good film that slowly grows on you, Bonestorm, which is saying something, since I really hate skateboarders. One highly mediocre film, Dante the Great, that's like something out of a lame SyFy Channel movie yet still watchable, and the wrap around film to tie it altogether, (the not so) Vicious Circles, the weakest of the bunch.

Plus there's a short and incoherent section of what looks like a bunch of Latino gangbangers having a party and one vato flips out and slaughters them all for no apparent reason. Weird. Loco.

And there's a gratuitous helping of cringe inducing gore, i.e. a man being dragged to pieces from a moving truck.

You're never getting a masterpiece of horror from the V/H/S movies, you're getting what's expected. One annoyance is the opening segment uses far too much feedback noise, a little of that goes a long way.

Free your mind and watch it for what it is, something to see and enjoy once and forget it! There's no classics to be found here! Adios, pendejos!

First I'd like to say, as with any horror film, the less you know about the film going in the better it will be. For those wondering if they should spend their money on this. I would say wait for Netflix, IMO it does not live up to the previous VHS movies, and actually seems to lose what the unique premise was. I love VHS and I liked VHS 2 a good bit, but this feels like a drop off of sorts. If VHS was a 9 and VHS 2 was a 7.5 then VHS Viral is probably an average of 5.5 (but the second segment is a MUST SEE).

The previous 2 movies have gotten many talented young horror film makers and collectives together to make interesting short films. VHS was probably my favorite horror film of 2012, some of the shorts fell flat (static monster and connecting story) but most of the others are really amazing, especially the last. VHS 2 lacked some of the originality but still felt like a solid horror film. VHS Viral just feels like it lacks the same vision and direction that VHS 1 and 2 had.

Whether you like it or hate it VHS is built around the idea of playing with portable cameras, experimenting with the "found footage" horror sub-genre, and really presenting a horror film from the POV of those going through it. It is basically like a haunted house on film, some with interesting stories and ideas. VHS 2 didn't really revolutionize anything but was still interesting. It stuck with the premise and kept it going in interesting ways. Probably my biggest issue with VHS Viral is that it ostensibly completely drops the found footage premise, but still sticks with the found footage type editing and shooting. This breaks the immersion, which is The whole point of found footage stuff.

As you can tell I didn't like the movie for the most part. The second segment is the ONLY reason it even has 4 stars out of 10. Ultimately though I am disappointed because they didn't really try anything interesting with the found footage format, especially the way that the previous 2 films did. Also 3 segments feels too short, even though this film has a lot of filler.

This movie was utterly disappointing.

Most of the movie includes an over-saturation of CGI effects and unnecessary action. The plot line did not make much sense at all and left me more bewildered than interested; adding to my disinterest was the terribly written dialogue of our wildly underdeveloped main characters. There are also a lot of forced scenes to progress the plot and just like this movie, they were all over the place.

I was also saddened to see this movie shy away from what made it successful: Fear. There are almost no scenes in this entire movie that makes me jump and the intensity in this movie is just lost.