As a subscriber to a named brand of cable television in the United Kingdom, I have fond memories of being able to record content. All right, Channel Five did tend to end up kind of fuzzy, but then their programmes were somewhat sordid, as those who currently watch BIG BROTHER will attest. Strangely, as I look through my remaining bunch of VHS cassettes, an awful lot of them feature the Teletubbies.
V / H / S is not my sort of film but I do think it is a jolly clever take on the whole found footage genre. (Will critics please stop reminding me it started with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST?) It consists of six separate films – five stories and a framing device – made by practitioners of something called MUMBLECORE, which I think refers to group of people sitting around, talking about stuff which may, you know, be interesting.
The directors in question are Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg and a collective known as Radio Silence.
Each segment is roughly twenty minutes long, which collectively makes it longer than the typical found footage movie, Paranormal Activity one through four, the Chernobyl Diaries and the like. For those who find such things distasteful, it does feature exploitative female nudity and violence, but it is not pure exploitation.
The framing device, helmed by Adam Wingard, is distasteful. A bunch of rowdy and thoroughly unpleasant young men attack women by lifting up their blouses and exposing their chests and smash up houses, all for the sake of selling user-generated content. FILM ANNEX I am sure would not support such behaviour. One of their number talks of a videotape that is the Holy Grail of found footage with really messed up stuff, man. The group goes to find it in an old house. The owner is dead, slumped in an armchair. He is surrounded by hundreds of tapes. In not one of them does Tinky Winky say hello! They truly do feature some messed up stuff, as we discover through five examples.
Of course, CREEPSHOW did not take so long to get into the storytelling bit, but then this is MUMBLECORE, not George A Romero and Stephen King on a double-off day. The stories once they get going are moderately inventive.
The first, AMATEUR NIGHT (director: David Bruckner), features three buddies with a hidden handycam (‘check this out, man’) who go out to score, or whatever it is that the young people call casual sex without further need of communication. They ‘hit a bar’, or whatever it is that young people call going into a drinking establishment frequented by people with fake identification. There they pick up ‘two honeys’, or whatever it is that young people call two young women coerced with alcohol into having non-consensual sex. One of the young women is really into the sex bit but she turns out to be a succubus, or whatever young people call a woman who drains the life out of humans. One guy gets it in a hotel room. Then another guy gets it, but what about the cameraman? HELLLP!
Number two is SECOND HONEYMOON (director: Ti West) in which a couple check into a hotel. The guy, Sam (Joe Swanberg) wants to videotape himself and his wife, Stephanie (Sophia Takal) having intimate relations. She’s not keen. They plan their day but Sam is put out by the strange young lady who asked for a lift. You don’t ask people when they are checking in. At night, the camera is switched on – but not by Sam or Stephanie. Sam’s toothbrush is put in the toilet. GROSS! His money is stolen. EWWW! You think they are going to get it, when a knife is put to Stephanie’s undergarments, but no! (Big surprise, the camera is left behind.) The next day, Sam notices his cash is missing – it was, like, a hundred dollars. Did Stephanie take it? BIG MYSTERY. This does not stop them driving to a Grand Canyon type location. Sam disappears between some rocks. We worry. We worry some more. Then he reappears. ‘Wow, you can hear someone from miles away,’ he tells Stephanie. There is a conversation about going to a casino. That night in the hotel room, the intruder returns. What happens next is THE BIG TWIST.
Not bad. I cannot really recommend the third segment, TUESDAY THE 17th (director: Glenn McQuaid) a homage to FRIDAY THE 13TH – four days later, geddit? In this, five teenagers of the sort who might turn up in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS head for, well, the woods. A girl leads them to a spot where some kids were brutally murdered some time ago. Her plan: to summon the mysterious killer known as THE GLITCH out to kill him. (Her friends are fresh meat.) Once we get the idea, there is not much suspense. The idea lends itself better to a feature.
Number four has the longest title: THE SICK THING THAT HAPPENED TO EMILY WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER (director: Joe Swanberg). This takes the form of a series of web chats shown picture-in-picture. It is a conversation between Emily (Helen Rogers) and her working out of town boyfriend, James (Daniel Kaufman) and goes something like this:
JAMES: Hey, Emily.
EMILY: Hey, James.
JAMES: Would you mind disrobing on camera? [This is a mandatory requirement, like one of the rules of Dogme 95]
EMILY: I’d rather tell you about the creepy noise I’ve been hearing in the apartment.
JAMES: Creepy? Really?
EMILY: Yeah, it’s like someone is messing with my stuff.
JAMES: (Pause) Hmmm.
EMILY: Do you have any practical suggestions?
JAMES: Maybe you could call pest control [substitute: environmental health, a bio-exorcist, Beetlejuice, or your mom for this]
EMILY: Oh and I’ve been feeling a little scratchy.
JAMES: Have you seen ROSEMARY’S BABY?
EMILY: No, did she have the same thing?
JAMES: Never mind. Whatever you do pay no attention to –
- And then there is the stuff of SPOILER ALERTS.
There is a good twist. Some people have asked, ‘surely in the age of web chats, you would not have VHS cassettes?’ My dear reader, it is called ‘artistic licence’.
The final segment is written, directed by and stars the collective known as Radio Silence. The title of the segment is ‘10/31/98’. It’s about a bunch of guys who go fancy dress to a party on Halloween, only the house is empty. They can hear some noises upstairs and there appears to be some sort of group of HIGHLY RELIGIOUS FOLK engaging in human sacrifice. A girl is in trouble. The guys as we say in the United Kingdom ‘leg it’. But then they have to go back. The girl is screaming. What would you do? So they rescue her and the weird culty people are kind of urinated off. So our heroes escape to their car. Oh dear! I can tell you this segment is the most perfectly realised, funny and suspenseful.
What of the group of men in the house from the framing device? Do you think they find their ‘heavy poopy’ video cassette. Do you think the slumped figure of the old man COMES BACK TO LIFE? I could not possibly comment. I can however cautiously recommend V / H / S for having a better strike rate than most horror anthologies. Bring on the sequel due later in 2013, with a contribution from Gareth Huw Evans, the director of THE RAID.
In conclusion, with apologies to Joe Bob Briggs, Larry Oliver says ‘check it out’.
