I was pleasantly surprised by the first V/H/S movie. I’m normally
not a fan of “found footage” style horror movies but V/H/S managed to be a fresh take on the genre and a fun little
flick. Since it did very well, they
decided to do a sequel and bring in some new directors for the segments—most
notably, Timo Tjahjanto, the acclaimed director of The Raid. While this outing is definitely more gimmicky
and cliché, it's still worth the rental for Tjahjanto's
contribution alone.
The premise of the series is there are several short stories
loosely tied together with a light back story. It's an anthology with a different director at the helm of each segment
which provides some variety in styles. They employ lots of actual VHS tape style effects, such as compression
artifacts and tracking. It’s very well
done and adds a lot to the creepy atmosphere—I’m not sure if the younger generation
will pick up on it as well not having been exposed to the idiosyncrasies of
watching tapes in their youth. V/H/S/2 still does this but it’s not as
prevalent as in the first movie. The
back story that ties the mini stories together is much more contrived but
luckily we don’t see too much of it.
This movie should really be called V/H/S/2: There’s a Camera Where Now? Since this supposed to be footage recorded
onto a tape they have to find ways to incorporate the characters having
camcorders and alternate ways for recording what’s going on and they don’t
always do a great job of suspending your belief. There is one especially ridiculous character that
has a camera and it resulted in me laughing my ass off throughout the entire
scene instead of being scared, which was their intention. The stories are hit or miss with two
exceptions: a zombie short with a first person perspective that is very clever
and Timo Tjahanto’s short Safe Haven. Safe
Haven is incredible and the best offering out of both films. It’s a better homage to Silent Hill than both
of the actual Silent Hill movies! Most
of the acting in V/H/S/2 is pretty
bad but that’s usually par for the course in these types of films.
V/H/S/2 isn’t a
masterpiece by any means but it’s worth a viewing just to see Safe Haven. I would say I liked it less than the first
one overall because it failed to bring anything new to the series and falls
short in most aspects.
-reviewed by Michelle Kisner