V/H/S

I just finished watching V/H/S, and it did surprise me.

The movie tells a story about a bunch of guys, going into a creepy house, looking for a special VHS. In the meantime, the movie shows you a couple of independent, short stories, recorded with a handy cam. If movies like Paranormal Activity, REC, etc. are really scary to you, then VHS will really scare you. Otherwise, don't watch it... Don't get me wrong, some of the short stories were a bit frightening, but personally I don't like movies that are filmed like this. Also, some of the characters were VERY annoying. At a certain point, I really wanted some of them to die, because of the bad acting.

So like I said, if you liked REC and PA, you are going to love this one. It was enjoyable, but I certainly will not watch this a second time.

6/10.

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?"

I can understand if you do not like the so-called 'found footage' films, for example; Blair Witch and Cloverfield. I must admit, some of them work, some of them don't. Cloverfield worked for me, but only on the big screen in a cinema. Blair Witch worked for me, but only on a small PC monitor. Some things work better depending on the way you view these things, but also, what works with one person, will not work with another, everybody is different.

With that out of the way, let me honestly try to convince you that my small review on this film is mainly based on its merits, and not just what I enjoy personally.

I think the credit is due to the effort that went behind making this film, because even though each of the video tapes the guys find and watch are very strange and hard to swallow, they have genuinely tried hard to convey a sense of realism.

But it also helps if the viewer made a little effort, and suspended your disbelief in order to get into the film. Some people can do this easier than others. If your a horror fan, this will entertain at the very least. Each of the five found tapes start off innocently enough like home movies, but each one reveals shocking footage of something strange or unravels into a horrifying ordeal. It reminded me of 'Tales of the unexpected' or 'The Twilight Zone' but with the use of a hand-held camera instead.

Again, it'll either work for you or it wont. But the makers of this film tried hard and kudos to them. The effects were great, the acting was as expected, just as in any 'found footage', if its going to convey realism, its NOT going to have Oscar worthy acting, don't forget these are meant to be 'real' people. And the stories behind each tape were all entertaining.

In the end then, before you watch it, heres some top tips; Turn the lights out. Keep telling yourself that what you are watching is 'real'. Open your mind. And enjoy.

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 ...

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.