V/H/S 2 – The Review

The fuzzy screen of hissing static noise – a benign magnetic videotape imprinted with the occasional time code becomes a source of evil in V/H/S 2, the outstanding follow-up to last year’s anthology that manages to outdo the original of terms of creativity and intensity. Like the first, it has no stars or big-scale special effects, but it’s an extraordinarily efficient horror film, a celebration of rock-bottom production values—and more proof of how it doesn’t take bells and whistles to scare us. Those who didn’t care for the first (a love-it-or-hate-it affair) may find this one more of the same, but it’s leaner than the original (four stories this time instead of five) with more humor and less nudity. Each segment is written/produced/directed by different filmmakers who take a fractured, mixed-media approach to their respective stories, all of which are strong.

V/H/S 2’s wraparound story begins with some motel sex secretly videotaped by an unethical private eye (Lawrence Michael Levine), gathering evidence against a philandering husband. He and his partner (Kelsey Abbott) are then hired by a woman to find her missing college-aged son. The two sleuths break into his apartment where they find a row of television sets and a stack of videocassettes which become the stories that make up V/H/S 2. She views the tapes while he does some exploring that will no doubt lead to no good.

The first, and weakest, story is Adam Wingard’s “Phase I Clinical Trials” wherein a fellow named Herman (played by Wingard himself) is fitted with an implanted eye that also works as a camera, recording what he sees. He’s soon terrorized by visions of dead people that keep popping up in his apartment. With the help of a young woman (Hannah Hughes) who can hear the spooks thanks to a similar ear implant, the pair battles the undead. It’s a decent premise, but the most routine of the four segments, too reliant on cheap scares without taking full advantage of a potentially ingenious twist.

Much better is “A Ride in the Park” co-directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale (who commenced this whole genre 14 years ago with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). Their contribution is a wacky story of an ill-fated bicyclist (Jay Saunders) with a helmet-cam who finds his peaceful morning ride in the woods interrupted by hungry zombies. This story may be cinema’s first point-of-view presentation of what it’s like to come back from the dead. He crashes a little girl’s birthday party and all hell breaks loose in an absurd way that reminded me of Peter Jackson’s early gore opuses.

The third segment, Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s “Safe Haven” is absolutely the most bat-shit berserk 30 minutes I’ve experienced in a long time. A TV crew (Fachry Albar, Hannah Al-Rashid, Oka Antara, Andrew Lincoln Suleiman) convinces a controversial Indonesian cult leader (a deranged Epy Kusnandar), to agree to an interview and let them film within his religious compound. Their project coincides with the fulfillment of the cult’s apocalyptic achievement; Paradise on Earth, which consists of mass suicide and the birth of a horned, hell-spawn demon. The crew, with cameras mounted in their clothing, is caught in the blood bath. A type of escalating Lovecraftian Armageddon breaks out, delivered with the kind of manic energy the filmmakers brought to last year’s RAID THE REMPTION. Taken by itself, “Safe Haven” is one of the best horror short I’ve seen and is easily the highlight of either V/H/S film.

The fourth and final short “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” is from Jason Eisener, of HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN fame. I’ve heard good things about it but I didn’t watch it. After “Safe Haven”, I shut off the screener that had been provided me. It’s not something I would normally do, but I felt the need to have something to unspool for me for the first time when I see it theatrically this weekend when V/H/S-2 plays midnights at the Tivoli.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

V/H/S 2 plays in St. Louis only at Midnight at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater July 12th and 13th