V/H/S

A still from “V/H/S”

I enjoyed watching “V/H/S,” a horror anthology from a slew of directors. There were parts that legitimately induced dread and terror. There were also parts that made me roll my eyes. I guess that’s what you get when five horror shorts are thrown together, linked by a main storyline. The biggest problem with “V/H/S”? That main storyline. Ugh.

“V/H/S” starts off with a group of badly-behaving men, who like to vandalize stuff, being contracted to slip into an elderly man’s house and steal a VHS tape. And so they do, except they find out that the elderly man is dead in a room with a handful of televisions all playing the same thing: white noise. OK. Naturally, one of the guys inspects the VCR’s in the room with the dead man to see if the VHS tape they are looking for is in there. What they find is five unrelated videos. So, we are treated to all of them. And that’s the film. All that set up, just to essentially watch an anthology of short films. The main storyline fizzles out quickly, so I won’t even elaborate on it. It sucked. It didn’t need to be there.

The five short films we are treated to, though, are at times spectacular, and at times little more than drivel. My favorite from the bunch was a Skype-style short film that followed a boyfriend and girlfriend’s midnight chats in her “haunted” apartment. It had a legitimately fantastic twist (so of course I won’t spoil it.) The worst of the bunch was a four-friends-go-to-a-lake-cabin short that just ended with them all being killed by some pixelated woodland-monster. Because we’ve never seen that before. For the most part, the shorts are solid, and some are worth re-watching a couple of times. The film as a whole however? Meh. I’d rather watch the shorts on their own than watch the entirety of “V/H/S” again.

You can watch “V/H/S” on Netflix or view the trailer here.

1st Short Grade: C+

2nd Short Grade: A-

3rd Short Grade: D

4th Short Grade: A

5th Short Grade: C

Overall Grade: C