Movie Review: ‘V/H/S/2’

Were you a fan of V/H/S last year?  If your answer was yes, then you’re bound to be excited to see this follow up.  If your answer was no, the good news for you is that this is an all new directorial team to give you first person insanity.  The bad news?  It doesn’t seem to really make too much difference in terms of style, and it’s my understanding that it was what most folks had difficulty with the first time around.  But the premises and stories of the featurettes are overall a lot stronger this time around, and for that I’d urge the naysayers to give this one a go, and I’ll try to convince you why.

The proceedings begin with the wrap around story of a private investigator  looking for a missing young adult, who with his female partner check up on a lead.  This lead is, of course, a seemingly empty house chock full of videocassettes and TVs set to channel 3.  Might as well start watching to see if there’s any insight into his whereabouts, right?  This is slightly better than the first’s loose idea of some punks breaking into a house to steal a tape, and writer/producer Simon Barrett (Dead Birds, You’re Next) directs it with enough creepy background material that it remains interesting until the end of the film.  But it’s all about the VHS tapes!

Director Adam Wingard (You’re Next) handled the wrap around duties last time, and here gets the lead off hit with Clinical Trials which unfortunately is only a single (baseball analogy right there).  What starts off as a great concept of someone trying out a cybernetic eye implant after a car accident, ends up muddled and confusing without any real payoff.  The gimmick is that the doctor says he might have some glitches and see things, but what he sees appear to be ghosts.  This premise worked fine for The Eye, but here makes zero sense.  I would’ve preferred him discovering digital glitches and hardware failure, maybe even Minecraft style creepers, much more than something tangible and unrelated.

Moving on, Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project, Lovely Molly) and his producer Gregg Hale have a nice Ride in the Park, which is when the film really picks up.  It’s a first person zombie story, which to my knowledge is the first time this has ever been attempted, and it works extremely well.  Wearing a bike helmet cam, the unfortunate lead character stumbles around, eats, and causes a little trouble for a birthday party.  Sanchez and Hale conjure up some great visual tricks and gags that work wonderfully, and this is a gentle and playful short by comparison of what’s to come so it’s quite welcome.

Next up, Gareth Evans (The Raid:Redemption) and Timo Tjahjanto (Macabre, L is for Libido) bring us to Safe Haven, a mysterious cult sanctuary where a group of reporters are reluctantly allowed in to interview the leader’s ideas and…whatever cult leaders do.  Things obviously go quite awry, and if you’ve seen either of these guys’ work you know it’s going to be brutal and visceral.  This is the longest of the shorts, and it almost wears out its welcome and goes a bit too far over the top for what it began as.  But for most of the run time, this thing stays shocking, bizarre, and crazy enough to keep you on your toes…I just wish it ended about 5-6 minutes earlier.

The final vignette is Jason Eisner’s (Hobo With a Shotgun), and it ended up being my favorite of the bunch.  It’s aptly titled Alien Abduction Slumber Party, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Blaring sounds, bright lights, and traditional grey aliens make for one hell of a scary trip…all from the perspective of a camera attached to a little dog.  Eisner handles the tension with ease and manages to build a scare within a scare.  It’s a short, intense blast, and much like Radio Silence’s 10/31/98 (which was my favorite of the first), ends the film with a bang.  We then return to Simon Barrett’s story to wrap things up, and it does so with a bang instead of a whimper like V/H/S did.

I really enjoyed this follow up, but I really enjoyed V/H/S as well, so I’m not sure quite how to recommend this.  This is overall a more cohesive film collection, somehow, which is strange given the varied subjects.  The camera work is chaotic at most times, and if that’s not your thing you might as well stay away instead of watching the movie and subsequently bashing it because it’s not your thing.  Otherwise — buckle up, and enjoy the ride.  Can’t wait for the next one.