Fantastic Fest ’14 Review: V/H/S: VIRAL

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Rejoice!  Seminal horror anthology V/H/S returns, this time with a “Viral” edge.  The viral integration is…suspect.  For the past two films the surrounding story has involved people sorting through VHS tapes in a shady situation, but the “wrap around” story this time doesn’t really follow the found footage formula and instead treats viral videos as an actual virus.  This segment (or segments), called Vicious Circles, was helmed by Marcel Sarmiento (Deadgirl) and unlike the previous entries doesn’t feel like there’s an adhesive to tie it with the shorts.  The good news is that the shorts themselves are all great in their own way, making this the strongest of the V/H/S series.

First up is a segment called Dante the Great, directed by Gregg Bishop (Dance of the Dead).  This was the one that stuck out like a sore thumb because it just doesn’t jibe with the found footage aesthetic that V/H/S goes for and instead opts for a documentary style whilst using some first person camera work sporadically.  Dante is a failed magician who winds up with a magic cloak and is able to pull off unimaginable feats.  The cape has a way of twisting Dante, whose failures have been erased and his new-found power is all consuming.  Though the style doesn’t mesh with the series, the short is really cool.  There are some fantastic death scenes and some really nice surprises.  This gets a pass simply because it’s great.

Parallel Monsters is brought to us by Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) and it’s really, REALLY strange.  A man opens up a portal to an alternate universe in which he sees another version of himself.  They ask each other questions and discover that they have the same wife, the same house, etc.  Naturally they decide to walk into the other’s respective home for a quick 15 minutes before returning.  We soon learn that while everything seemed the same they are most certainly NOT.  This thing was tremendously clever, cutting back and forth between the two guys holding their cameras and each getting into two very fucked situations.  To say much more is to ruin all the surprises, but it’s the funniest of the bunch.

Bonestorm is from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson (Resolution) and it takes us to Tijuana where two skate punks have hired a camera man to record a video for them.  They aren’t the best skaters, the camera man gets on their nerves, and the setting is boring.  They find someone with money to get them over to a reservoir where they accidentally unleash a plague of the dead. Easily my favorite of the three, this one pulls out every first person trick in the book. It’s extremely fun to see the last people you’d expect to actually fight back and not become obvious casualties, and the editing was perfect to compliment all three cameras used.

Unfortunately that total high that came from Bonestorm is marred by a murky, bizarre “conclusion” to Sarmiento’s “story.”  If there had been a more solid viral video feel to the shorts the name might be a little less nonsensical, rather than just using something other than V/H/S 3.  Rumor has it that the 4th short directed by Todd Lincoln (The Apparition) was so poor that they decided not to include it, so the film does feel a little light compared to the other two.  Still, even with the awful clips between stories, and the short runtime, I had a blast.  Much like ABC’s of Death I could watch these on a yearly basis for a long time…let’s just come up with a better title if we’re going to forgo numerals.