V/H/S/94

 "V/H/S/94" (2021, Jennifer Reeder, Chloe Okuno, Simon Barrett, Timo Tjahjanto, Ryan Prows, Steven Kostanski, Radio Silence Productions, Bloody Disgusting Films, Shudder Original Films) is a found footage horror anthology and the fourth installment in the V/H/S franchise. 

It's 1994 and a SWAT team enter an abandoned building and discover a series of VHS cassettes which we then watch in order. 

"Storm Drain" is an entertaining story of a reporter (Anna Hopkins) and cameraman (Christian Potenza) who are investigating the sighting of local urban legend "Ratman" and enter the storm sewers to uncover the truth. Upon finding a group of people living in there, they decide it's an opportunity to do a more serious human interest story but, unfortunately for them, the local legend may be more real than they thought! 

A pretty good segment with good pacing and some fun effects. 

"The Empty Wake" is by far my favourite segment of the film. Hayley (Kyal Legend) is a young woman working at a funeral home. She's been asked to hold the wake of a man named Andrew alone at night. After a while with no visitors, she begins to try and find out more about the death of Andrew when suddenly she hears what sounds like knocking coming from the coffin...

A pretty decent jump-fest. The segment builds up slowly before unleashing the actual scares, but, once there it's pretty fast paced. Some fun effects and, even if you feel like you knew where it was going, it's a really strong execution. 

"The Subject" is a story of a mad scientist (Budi Ross) engaging in human-machine vivisection and a team of army personnel on his trail to try and rescue some of his unwilling test subjects. 

We see most of the story in first-person style through the 'eyes' of one of his creations (Shania). The segment boasts some creative camera-work and pretty impressive 'off-screen' acting from our determined 'creature'. However, the action is pretty videogame-like and did feel like it overstayed its welcome a little (and I say this as someone who likes playing videogames). But the action is truly gory and pretty satisfying to watch.

"Terror" is about a group of insurrectionists in America who are planning to attack a federal building. This segment was the weakest in my opinion and didn't hold my interest extremely well. The humour felt somewhat misplaced in comparison to the other segments, although it maintained the same level of gore. 

The wraparound "Holy Hell" is functional but not a standout part of the film, although I did enjoy the 90s advert for "The Veggie Masher". Very entertaining. 

All in all, this is the first time I've really enjoyed a V/H/S installment since the original film, and it felt pretty innovative. The pacing is still an issue, but this is part and parcel with horror anthologies as a whole. 

Available to stream on Shudder.

[Image: Shudder, et al]

Hani

Creep 2

"Creep 2" (2017, Patrick Brice, Blumhouse Productions, The Orchard) is the sequel to 2014's "Creep".

Following on from the previous film, our murderous weirdo (Mark Duplass) is now going by the name Aaron (which is the name of his victim in the original film). He seeks the desperate help of aspiring (and failing) YouTuber, Sara (Desiree Akhavan), having lost his thrill for the kill during his most recent stalking of a guy called Dave (Karan Soni).

Sara's experience with seeking out weirdos online to film for her YouTube show make her a stalling subject for Aaron, as she is more than willing to take his weirdness face-on and doesn't seem phased by his antics whatsoever.

The two spend some time trying to scare one-another before Aaron unleashes his full weirdness upon Sara in an attempt to 'end' his film.

Although it lacks some of the mystery that the original thrived on, I enjoyed Sara's character not falling into a 'damsel' role and maintaining a strong, if flawed, protagonist character. She puts herself into a terrible situation and does not escape when it's smart to in her desperation to succeed in making her video. But she handles Aaron's behaviour and comes across as an equally weird, yet determined character.

Duplass maintains his usual wackiness as the titular creep and, although the film is fairly meandering and awkward, it keeps its strange charm that makes you want to stick with it to the end and see where it's going.

[Image: Blumhouse Productions]

Hani

Sadako vs Kayako

"Sadako vs Kayako" (2016, Kōji Shiraishi, Kadokawa Daiei, NBC Universal Entertainment Japan) is a crossover of the Ring and Ju-On series. The film actually began life as an April Fools' Joke, but was actually turned into a real feature length film after having a good reception.

When college students, Yuri (Mizuki Yamamoto) and Natsumi (Aimi Satsukawa), come across the cursed video tape they had learned about in class they unwittingly watch it, releasing the curse of the forever creepy and forever vengeful Sadako (Elly Nanami).

In another part of town high school student, Suzuka (Tina Tamashiro), moves in next door to the infamous Saeki house and begins to notice creepy things. After unwittingly following some young trespassers into the house she becomes 'grudged' by the ghosts of Kayako (Runa Endo) and Toshio (Rintaro Shibamoto).

The girls' seek to rid themselves of their respective curses, with the help of psychic, Keizō (Masanobu Ando) and his associate; brutally honest, blind, psychic girl, Tamao (Mai Kikuchi). The psychic team decide to try to pit the ghouls against one another in a bid to end both curses forever!

While the film is a little cheesy, busy and definitely favours Sadako's screentime over her rival, Kayako, it works well as a crossover due to its fun characters and humorous fight scenes. There are still some eerie scenes reminiscent of both franchises' roots, but also some comedy in there that oddly works with the offbeat, and somewhat ridiculous plot. I also enjoyed Keizō and Tamao's extremely random repartee.

The film is oddly charming and, like all crossovers, has a strange fanfiction-like atmosphere.

[Image: Kadokawa Daiei)

Hani

All Hallow's Eve

"All Hallow's Eve" (2013, Damien Leone, Ruthless Pictures) is a supernatural slasher about a killer clown and a VHS tape. With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I'd start looking at some films I haven't seen before.

Sarah (Katie Maquire) is babysitting Tia (Sydney Freihofer) and her brother Timmy (Cole Mathewson) on Halloween night. We all know that's a bad idea for a start. Timmy opens his trick or treat loot to find that some strange neighbour has put a VHS tape in instead of sweets. Sarah is obviously keen to check the tape's contents before letting the kids watch it. Personally, I would have just put that creepy shit in the bin, but whatever.

The tape turns out to be an anthology of murders which all feature Art the Creepy Clown (Mike Giannelli) in some way or other. Thinking it's just a somewhat disturbing movie, Sarah gives in and lets the kids watch some of it before putting them to bed. But Art the clown makes a special guest appearance later that night, with some unhappy results...

Art the clown was first invented for a short film called "The 9th Circle" in 2008 and was again seen in another short called "Terrifier" in 2011. He's a pretty creepy character, but the film doesn't do him justice as it's just not scary enough to make the most of him.

The film itself isn't awful by any means, but there are long boring stretches and the lack of dialogue in large segments of film, while mostly effective, result in a loss of interest from the viewer after a while. The subject matter is violent and gory with most of the action centering on the depraved clown who just seems to hate lone women and want to hurt them.

There are some really disturbing scenes and some good practical effects, considering the film's low budget. I particularly appreciated the beginning to the end of the wraparound plot, which is by far the best part of the film. Unfortunately, some other effects and costumes are much less effective (I'm sure I could get a more convincing alien costume in 'Poundland') and lose some of the viewer's engagement.

The whole VHS tape thing is becoming a trope of its own and I couldn't review this film without obviously comparing it to "The Ring" series and "V/H/S", which both enjoy much more scares than this one does, but also bigger budgets. One thing that "All Hallow's Eve" did do quite well was slowly make the babysitter's environment more menacing as the film went on.

They've tried to give the film a gritty, video tape vibe with some muting of colours etc. Each segment has a different post-production hue, which I liked.

So, it's not a masterpiece. I'm not a huge fan of torture-porn films and the low budget hindered some of the film's effectiveness. The overall linkage of the shorts is pretty sketchy, the actual shorts themselves are not great and some of the action is more funny or just gross than scary. But it shows a lot of potential from Damien Leone as his full length debut and Art the clown is truly very creepy.

[Image: Ruthless Pictures]

Hani

Videodrome

"Videodrome" (1983, Canadian Film Development Corporation, Famous Players, Filmplan International, David Cronenberg) explores porn and how we view life in our advancingly technology-dependent world in an excellently (Rick Baker) gore-soaked way.

Max Renn (James Woods) is a TV executive for a cable channel. It's the 80s, VHS and Betamax are still shiny new technologies, and he thinks he's found the most interesting thing ever to show on TV: foreign snuff porn of questionable quality! The underground programme is called "Videodrome" and Renn is determined to get to the bottom of it. He has become sinisterly obsessed.

As his life becomes more entwined into the cult-like Videodrome lifestyle, his view on life changes and he begins to see things that he is not sure are real or not... Is he losing his mind or is he becoming part of a new reality? His femme fatale friend, Nicki (Debbie Harry of Blondie), also gets herself involved as she and Renn fall into the Videodrome trap together.

His searchings lead him to the hub of the technological cult, but has he gone too far?

This film was a slighlty different step for Cronenberg at the time and hinted towards where he would take his movies next. Videodrome manages to balance slightly obnoxious cerebral plot with a message about society's obsession with technology, with the confusing, but gory action his audience had come to expect. He manages to make a social comment on video and technology while also exploiting just that as his platform to do so. The film remains ever relevant and the effects make for undated, uncomfortable viewing.

[Image: FilmPlan International, et al]

Hani

V/H/S/2

"V/H/S/2" (2013, Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Eduardo Sánchez, Gregg Hale, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Huw Evans & Jason Eisener, The Collective, Haxan Films, Magnet Releasing) is the sequel to the 2012 found footage film.

Similar to its predecessor, the film is an anthology of short horrors, all found footage, encased within one wrap-around horror story, which is also found footage. Whilst following the same equation, it manages to separate itself from the original.

As in most anthologies, and the original film, some of the stories are hit and miss, and some of the effect qualities vary from pretty schlocky to 'oooh, that was gross'. But on the whole, I really enjoyed this one over its predecessor and thought it held together much better as a film.

I'm not a fan of found footage at the best of times, finding it more likely to give me a migraine that the chills, but V/H/S/2 does well in the format. Some of the 'shorts' could have been doing with being a little shorter though, as they began to get a bit monotonous and Go Pro cameras will probably enjoy all this advertising.

 

 

[Image: Magnet Releasing]

Hani