V/H/S (2012)

From https://pics.filmaffinity.com/V_H_S_
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Directors: Various

Screenplay: Various

Cast: Various

If we look back at the 2010s, we always should bear in mind the last decade's culture washes over the next at first until the midway, where the new era's trends and aesthetics have definitely taken over. The late 2000s gave us the increasing flux of mumblecore cinema, a lo-fi independent movement of American cinema about small dramas, which mutated into "mumblegore" where that aesthetic met horror cinema. Another poignant aspect of this moment is how the circle could encompass figures from genre cinema and mumblecore, such as Adam Wingard being an actor in a Joe Swanberg film. By 2010, films like Ti West's The House of the Devil (2009) were immensely popular or talked about from this movement.  It's not the only movement from the 2000s in the horror genre, but a prominent one.

By 2020, the 2010s changed a bit considerably. A horror film we talk of from the 2010s, probably the most talked of, is Get Out (2017), a film by an African American director about African American characters which tap into modern concerns. Social concerns creep back in considerably.  "Elevated horror", a subjective term for people to use for films they like who don't like horror, exists which doesn't help a really fascinating crop of art house influence, ambitious work. Unfortunately, in these ten years that initial wave of lo-fi creators from the 2000s I mentioned practically dwindle, or move on to higher budgeted work, or vanished. Ti West practically vanished after 2013, and Wingard helmed a Netflix adaptation of a famous manga (Death Note (2017)).

From https://horrorfreaknews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/v-h-s-10.jpg

It's a potentially contrived couple of paragraphs up there, probably lacking a proper historically accurate assessment, and not to dismiss that Ti West eventually went into television work, but returning to V/H/S it feels like an ominous warning that the initial high wave for that late 2000s movement was going to capsize. The horror anthology, crossed with the found footage subgenre, was challenged for its obsession with white hetero male characters, a lot of stories surrounding dangerous female characters, a lot of female nudity, and questions to whether it was actually good with its curious crossing of the growing obsession with VHS tapes and the small boom of anthology horror films in the 2010s. It's already a time capsule at the end of the decade in the horror genre.

One of V/H/S's biggest issues is the wraparound by Adam Wingard, Tape 56, isn't good. Many won't be on board the story as it follows an incredibly loathsome group of young men, creators of shock tapes who at one point accost a woman and expose her bared breasts to camera against her will, so the segment's already at a disadvantage unless you are comfortable with stories following awful people. I don't mind, belonging in the later camp, here a potential cynical comeuppance suggested as their greed to acquire a videotape at a man's house will do then all in, but the segment (interspersed between others) is barely sketched out and abruptly ends. It's not even that I just wanted to punish loathsome bros either, as for myself horror is much more interesting when its either complex or dark morality fables of the worst in human beings to look at like a mirror, a story of potential interest as bastards whose line of work pulls them into a doomed situation they could've avoided if they thought honourably for once.

It's strange considering, out of the set of directors, Adam Wingard (with screenwriter Simon Barrett), the most successful of all those involved, fell the hardest in making that segment, even in mind they were in the midst of making You're Next (2011) around the same time. David Bruckner, co-director of one of the segments of The Signal (2007), who hasn't made much at all, does better whilst still tackling obnoxious bros finding their comeuppance, these ones acquiring cheap camera spectacles to record sex with a drunken female bar patron or two, individuals most wouldn't have sympathy with either. Amateur Night works entirely because of actress Hannah Fierman, playing a strange female figure that tags along and is revealed to not be human; distinct, with giant brown eyes, she steals the entire anthology in terms of a performance, and tragically didn't do much beyond this film that is known. Even under later prosthetics, she has a mix of the animalistic and strange sympathy in her acting, when everything turns south for everyone else, that I have to applaud her. Obviously as well, in an anthology film with a lot of nudity, it would've been a brave performance for her and her stand-in anyway to have to act in a potentially exposing role completely naked and covered in fake blood.

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After this we get the curious history of Ti West, whose Second Honeymoon is a slow and dialogue heavy psychodrama of a couple (including anthology segment director Joe Swanberg) effectively in a mumblecore minimalist thriller which is an acquired taste, out in rural Americana and being possibly stalked by a third figure. The kind of segment whose abrupt synchronicity, where a fortune telling machine they improvised around managed to provide them with a fortune directly connected to their plot, is worked with. The issue is that, unlike some mumblecore films I've seen, it's sluggish with little reward and too short for characterisation. Ti West' career has been a rollercoaster with a drop at the end, the emperor of horror off the popularity and acclaim The House of the Devil got but into the 2010s meeting diminishing returns critically. Around this time his segment for the first ABCs of Death (2012), an anthology series I really adore, notoriously was criticised for being lazily put together and tasteless as it had a miscarriage as the twist, even in a first film where a ridiculous amount of toilet based segments and indulgences made put off people beforehand. When I mentioned earlier he disappeared, I am referring to the last film of his which got some advertising, The Sacrament (2013), whilst I have heard none of the films he made afterwards into the current day.

Glenn McQuaid, who made I Sell the Dead (2008) but has also had difficulty making more films, decided to make pastiche of a slasher film, one where the medium itself is prodded with. Subjectively, the original V/H/S is the only one of the three films that follows the actual premise, reflected the growing interest in VHS tapes as those old enough to have grown up with them in the United Stated became nostalgic for the medium - that all these segments are videotapes in the wraparound collected by an unknown source. Even then, whilst the most faithful to the original idea, the original film of the trilogy doesn't really push the concept at all, the exception really Tuesday the 17th which makes an interesting stab with a phantasmagoric and invisible killer who is only noticed the camera as a glitch. It still plays like a slasher, but reduced to a short, it does overcome an issue I have had with the sub genre that I always turned off whenever they got to the prolonged stalk and slash scenes, and the chase scenes, even though they are the main selling points of slasher films. Here there's also a creepier edge as this killer is a literal phantom, something which defies logic as inevitability as Jason Voorhees was at Camp Crystal Lake.

Following this, Joe Swanberg steps behind the camera and keeps the bar high with The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger. Swanberg was the odd one out from the directors involved, an innovator of the mumblecore movement alongside Andrew Bujalski and others who didn't make horror films at this point. This proves a virtue as whilst trying to include the short in the anthology is awkward, a Skype call recorded onto a videotape, it's a perfect take on a short horror tale. A creepy one at that, a disturbing one of minimalism and manipulation I won't spoil, baring that set around a series of Skype calls between a young woman and her boyfriend, it brings in science fiction and is entirely about the fear of control. It also feels like a cap on the trend throughout of men trying to have control of woman which is a sub current throughout, in which this is the ultimate condemnation. Even the use of nudity becomes uncomfortable in this case and voyeuristic on purpose.

From https://www.filmofilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/v-h-s-15.jpg

Ending the anthology is Radio Silence's 10/31/98, which I have softened to even though it's still more of a technical exercise out of the anthology, playing to the videotape aesthetic by being set at that time and yet involving some obvious CGI for when hell breaks loose. In this case, a group of bros break the trend of how they've been acting so far to try to help someone when they accidentally stumble into an exorcism. You could argue the twist undercuts this and is crass, but I can see why the production decided to end on this rather than the wraparound, as if has the most high impact effect. Being a traditionalist, you should end on a wraparound unless it's really good, but it was the wiser decision considering the blank squib the framing story turned out to be.

Radio Silence itself fragmented. Of interest is how two members, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, collaborated on Ready or Not, a 21st Century Fox release which, even if it got an 18 certificate in the UK, got a good wide release at multiplex in 2019. That's a nice epilogue, returning to this review's prologue, that there are figures from this that did continue on and even jump up the ladder in scale of their work. It's a reminder that the early 2010s anthology boom was a huge virtue in terms of letting talent grow and veterans re-sharpen their teeth, a horror subgenre that deserves to be a constantly funded source as it was back at this point.

The original V/H/S is the weakest of the trilogy, which is controversial to say because I'm arguing V/H/S: Viral (2014), the last and least regarded, is actually better. V/H/S 2 (2013) is arguably the biggest hitter, though controversially I feel that the segment that caught everyone's attention, Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans' Safe Haven, had that effect just for how insane and bloody it was. (The real treat for myself, and the one found footage film which got over the logic issue of why a camera would be left on recording in these incidents, was the one where a cyclist with a head mounted camera ended up in a zombie apocalypse, befittingly helmed by Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale, one half of the directors and the producer of The Blair Witch Project (1999) who inspired these found footage films in the first place.) After Viral, this franchise alongside The ABCs of Death subsided and ended, this particular franchise burning the candle at both ends considering how these films were released over only three years. It's a shame as I'd rather have horror franchises like this continue on, letting new talent and veterans work, than a terrible string of sequels and straight-to-video (digital?) work based on a good film that shouldn't have stretched further on. Returning to the original V/H/S, I've softened to it and find fascination in its grimy VHS fuzz tone even if it's really a marker of how all the influences in the film were going to disappear eventually, just from how divisive it was when reviewed. I'm glad the tone drastically changed, just one film like this enough to suffice.

Abstract Spectrum: Lurid

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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