“Are you afraid of your future?”
Most movies that make you root against their main characters do so accidentally (the recent remake of Friday the 13th, for instance, seems to truly believe that it has likable characters). VHS is not one of those movies. In its framing device, and in the five short films that make up its runtime, VHS shows us the worst collection of men on the planet. The very first men we meet get their kicks by exposing women and selling the footage (one opines that they need to move into upskirt shots, apparently a more lucrative market). One of their group tells them if they can break into an old man’s house and retrieve one VHS tape, they’ll have it made. The film doesn’t bother to explain what about this tape is so valuable, nor does it need to. The less we get bogged down in backstory, the better. There’s a running theme in VHS: we really want to see these men die.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the first vignette, “Amateur Night,” directed by David Bruckner. Three frat guys (the film doesn’t make it clear that they’re frat guys, but they are, if not in name then certainly in spirit) named Shane, Patrick, and Clint go out for a night on the town. Clint is wearing special glasses outfitted with a video camera, the point of which is obvious. In almost every vignette, the women in VHS are unaware that they’re being filmed by the men. The trio take two women back to their hotel. One passes out, and the movie wisely skips what would have been a horrible rape scene. When Shane turns his attention to Lily (Hannah Fierman), things take a turn for the horrific. Fierman is great as Lily; there’s something off about her, and she commits to it through subtlety. Her eyes are too wide, and she seems nearly nonverbal. Like a parrot, she mostly repeats what she’s been told. The reveal that she’s a succubus is well done by Bruckner, ain one long first-person shot. The gore is impressive; she slashes Shane to bits, and as she drinks Patrick’s blood she yanks his genitals clean off. On what had to have been a small budget, it’s wise not to go for scares reliant upon impressive effects – the most we see of Lily’s true form is a set of talons and a glimpse of batlike wings. Short horror builds to a punchline, and “Amateur Night” has a great one.
Ti West’s (The House of the Devil) “Second Honeymoon” is, regrettably, one of the least impressive of the five films. A couple, Sam and Stephanie, are on vacation in Arizona to rekindle their marriage. Joe Swanberg and Sofia Takal do nice character work, and “Honeymoon” works better as an uncomfortable look at a collapsing relationship. There are some creepy sequences of someone filming them while they sleep in their hotel; this happens a few times until the unseen guest brutally slashes Sam’s throat. I like the reveal that the killer was a woman, and Stephanie’s lover at that, but the build in this one is too slow for a relatively tame ending. If you want to see West go for broke, check out The House of the Devil instead.
“Tuesday the 17th” is my favorite of the batch, based on an idea so pleasingly original that I’d like to see it adapted into a feature-length film. Wendy takes her boyfriend Joey, his friend Spider, and her friend Samantha, out to camp at a lake. As they walk through the woods, things start to seem off. Why didn’t Wendy invite any of the friends she usually camps with? It’s revealed that the last time she was here, all of her friends were killed. Wendy is the final girl from a film that we never saw (Tuesday would fall on the 17th if the previous Friday were on the 13th), and she’s brought her friends out here as bait. It’s a hell of a concept, well-executed. The kills are quick and gruesome – watch Samantha’s eye dangle from its socket after she gets a knife in the head – and the killer can only be seen on video. He appears as a glitch, as if the tape is skipping. Glenn McQuaid’s smart, nasty short is as good as VHS gets.
There’s a runner-up, though, and that’s Joe Swanberg’s “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger.” Swanberg is one of the biggest names in the genre of mumblecore; his films like Drinking Buddies are loose, improvisatory affairs that exist mostly through dialogue. So he’s a smart choice to direct “Sick Thing,” which takes place entirely in a video chat screen. Emily has just moved into her new apartment, and is missing James, her long distance boyfriend who is away at medical school. Throughout the short, we see a ghostly little girl running through the apartment, but that’s not the worst of it. “Sick Thing” aims big but stays small, right in that sweet spot that’s perfect for Swanberg. Not only does James live in the same building as Emily, but he’s been using her body as an incubator for an alien fetus. It’s very difficult to make a reveal that big without undermining your own concept, but Swanberg does a great job of it.
“10/31/98” is unfortunately kind of dull. There’s no real reason for it to be set in 1998, and if it seems messy maybe that’s because it was directed by four people, all of whom must have had their own ideas (it doesn’t help that the directors, who also play the main four characters, are an art collective called Radio Silence). There’s fun to be had in a deserted house, but the characters seem too stupid to be anything other than eventual corpses. Who shows up for a party, sees absolutely no one there, and decides that they must be the first to arrive? The imagery isn’t bad – I especially like the hands coming out of the walls and ceiling – and the ending achieves some nice tension, but there is both too much and too little to this short.
I hope films like VHS keep getting made (it has two sequels, VHS 2 and VHS: Viral, so there’s hope for this franchise at least). It’s such a great way to give up and coming horror filmmakers a big break, and for audiences to see the work of actors and directors who don’t make major films.
10/1: Dawn of the Dead
10/2: Drag Me to Hell
10/3: Pet Sematary
10/4: The Descent
10/5: Repo! The Genetic Opera
10/6: Desierto
10/7: The Blair Witch Project
10/8: Blair Witch
10/9: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
10/10: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
10/11: Prince of Darkness
10/12: 30 Days of Night
10/13: Friday the 13th (2009)
10/14: Slither
10/15: Tremors
10/16: Pandorum
10/17: It Follows
10/18: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
10/19: Poltergeist
10/20: Paranormal Activity
10/21: Creepshow
10/22: VHS
10/23: Nosferatu the Vampyre
10/24: An American Werewolf in London
10/25: The Witch
10/26: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
10/27: Cronos
10/28: The Hills Have Eyes
10/29: The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
10/30: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
10/31: Halloween (2007)
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