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V/H/S Movie Review

V/H/S is a 2012 anthology horror film directed by Adam Wingard among others. It’s an expectedly uneven, but reasonably creepy movie.

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“They’re dead, Joey. He’s back“

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Like all anthology movies, the quality of its segments varies widely, but a couple of the six are definitely worth praising. Second Honeymoon is by far the most effective of the bunch as it sees a couple in a motel being attacked by a stranger in the middle of the night. The twist worked and was quite clever and unexpected while there is a lot of genuine horror mined from the creepy idea that somebody is watching you while you are asleep.

Tuesday the 17^th is also quite good in the very well realized forest and lake setting while the video chat segment is also quite good, at least at first before the excessive gore. I am always up for these online settings in a horror movie, so this one was appealing to me.

Speaking of that gore, it was way too much for me personally. It tarnished the quality and the reputation of the whole movie as it was not only excessive, but plain disgusting. There are some killing scenes in the film where we literally see slashing of the throat and the pulling of the heart, and that was repulsive and simply unacceptable. Had they pulled back at least a bit with the violence, the movie would have been much more palatable.

V/H/S is first and foremost a found footage flick, and it is actually a pretty solid example of this much-maligned horror subgenre. Yes, some of the quick cuts and very annoying shaky cam were frustrating, but certain scenes definitely benefit from that approach, in particular the scene with the murderer girl who turns out to be a flying monster.

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Such cool imagery here and there propelled the flick to at least an okay status for me, but many other segments, especially in the second half were forgettable, dull and overly gory and dumb. The movie is simply too long, clocking in at two hours. I would have cut at least a quarter of its length personally.

V/H/S is actually quite effective in some of its very well executed found footage thrills and memorable creepy imagery. A couple of segments in this anthology really work, but many others are uninteresting and the film’s runtime was unnecessarily excessive. The excessive gore was the main detractor from the overall experience as it was needlessly repulsive.

My Rating – 3