Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (V/H/S 85)

See? Something spooky and scary, with blood and gore and screams and other such macabre stuff. The fact that I'm even back here again to begin with is something of a small miracle. Last year we covered the first entry in the V/H/S series. I really didn't like it. It was lurid in ways beyond just handheld camera footage of people getting stabbed in the throat, as many of its segments were just fucking mean to women in a gross frat boy kind of way. Juvenile misogyny of the worst kind on screen. That and the fact that I'm still not over one of the segments of this creepy VHS tape horror anthology being done in the style of online video chat. The fact that it's decent body horror (albeit once again shitty to women in the form of gaslighting them) is irrelevant in the face of abandoning the goddamn gimmick of the movie you're making. I don't think it's too much to ask for all your segments to share the VHS tape aesthetic. Point is, I would have written this whole thing off if it weren't for pals telling me that some of the later ones are really good. So I gave it a shot with this, from just last year. If they can't nail the found footage VHS horror anthology aesthetic in a movie whose segments are set in the 80's, then there's little goddamn hope.

Luckily for me, it sticks the landing. V/H/S 85 is a good found footage horror anthology movie. It borders on great, really. You got that VHS fuzz, glitchy tape, and nothing that cheats and breaks the rules by doing a fucking livestream segment or something. That's all I asked for. Well, I also asked for something not quite so dudebro-focused on being mean to women, and we clear that bar too. Astounding wonders abound. I'm being catty, I know, but I do mean it when I say this is good. You done a good, V/H/S. I don't know if there's a way to analyze these beyond the summation method for each segment, but please bear with me. The least interesting for me was the wraparound, featuring a documentary on university professors studying this alien thing they name Rory which can mimic people and things it sees on TV. It has nothing to do with the reason for seeing the other segments, it's just stuff that progresses in between the other spooky segments. At the end, predictably, Rory starts killing people and there's blood and gurgling and all that fun stuff. It's adequate.

Adequacy also describes the first segment, which does live in a sort of palpable state of dread. It's a setup you've seen a million times in horror: a bunch of folks go out to the middle of the woods to get drunk and go swimming. The anticipation over what might happen makes it good. Is it going to actually be as passé as a masked killer? There's no swimming signs, is this going to be like The Raft where some monster comes out of the water and melts people? What happens is... some mystery psychopath starts shooting at these pals while they're out in their boat on the lake, and kills them all. Oh. It's just someone with a gun and they all got shot. Except the segment doesn't end. They all get back up. Confusion leads to slow horrific dawning realization, as bullets clatter to the ground when they make it back to shore and people are pulling their guts out of their wounds. The lake brings you back to life. Someone has killed the pals on shore, and they're not coming back to life, but all the friends who went out boating to play with their waterskis and got shot are back to life... and they got the license plate of the fucker who shot them. We'll be back here, but this was a cool segment which played with my expectations and filled me with dread, confusion, and then that slow moment of "oh fucking shit".

The second is an interesting bit of culture-hopping, jumping outside the US and down to Mexico City at a TV station. An earthquake hits in the middle of their broadcast. This is a real earthquake which hit Mexico City in 1985, so we're playing around with real history here. Much of the segment is focused on an injured cameraman still lugging his camera around as rescue workers try and get him out of the damaged building before it all comes down. For much of it, there are no supernatural spooky things happening. It's just panicked people in a crisis, real wounds from the rubble, and dying from that. That could be a tense found footage segment all on its own, no supernatural elements required. They do come in, though, in a wild way. Deep under the building, maybe even opened up by the earthquake, are ancient ruins to an actual Aztec god: Mictlan, the god of death. It awakens, possesses people, there's crowbars in necks and hearts being ripped out in tribute and all that bloody stuff you came here for. It's neat. It's nice to see different cultures being expressed in a horror anthology like this, and it all fits together quite well. The bridge from tension over just getting out alive to the invocation of ancient gods who demand sacrifice is bridged quite well, so this was also a winner for me.

I think the third segment might be my favorite one. It's so simple and yet so in line with the kind of shit I fuck with. It's basically Megami Tensei as all fuck, specifically invoking the power of mythology using the power of 80's technology. It's a one-woman play where our woman preaches that God is dead and technology reigns, before using an 80's VR headset (called "eye-phones", so that yelling about how we've grown dependent on technology gets to reach right across to present day, har har har) as part of a magical invocation to summon forth the god of technology into the modern day. Then she does and she gets ripped the fuck apart by it, flesh and circuitry fusing together as the first sacrifice of the digital age. I fuck with this. I extremely fuck with this. Literal deus ex machina is afoot, and the lines are blurred between performance and reality as the audience thinks this woman getting her legs ripped to fucking shreds live on stage is all part of the performativity of it all. The god of the microchip has awoken, and you will not be saved.

Which brings us to the fourth segment, which is in the running for favorite. There's a family gathering to celebrate the accomplishment of this teenage girl, Ruth. Is she graduating? Is it her sweet sixteen? Nope. Fuck no. Again, the slow dread creeps. Oh god, is this some ritual sacrifice thing? Nope, but just as bad. This is a family of serial killers, and their secret tradition/rite of passage is killing seven people. Ruth has done it, and she even filmed her spree on videotape. The realization hits before play is pressed, but then it's right there on the screen. Those poor lake kids who got popped in the first segment were all shot by Ruth. In the first place, this is a trick that horror anthologies don't play too often. Usually no segment is connected. If segments are connected, they all are, like in Trick R Treat. Connecting one with another is a great trick, and since Ruth didn't know the lake brings you back to life, it leads to an incredible banger of karmic justice for this fucked-up family as the cops get called on them. There's one final twist of the knife for Ruth, the revenge from the lake kids: she got squirted with some of the lake water. She can't use her gun to evade justice. GET REKT NERD!

Finally, the last segment. A nice slow burn of a finale, this one takes its time to reveal what is happening. We see grisly home invasions that lead to murders, all from the killer's POV. These are videotapes being sent to the police... but they are being sent days before the murders happen. What the hell's going on here? Are these killings being sent back through time to taunt? Nope, they're a warning from this goth teen who can see the future, and whose prophetic dreams of murder are being beamed onto analog tape for him to send to the police to try and warn them. Things escalate from there, to the point where we eventually have the final prophetic dream tape playing out in tandem with reality in a killer final sequence (pun unintended). It's The Dead Zone if John Smith's visions were transmitted to VHS like the dreams in Prince Of Darkness. It fucking rules, even if it's especially gory with the kills and how they play out. That about wraps the bow on V/H/S 85, I feel. This is good! It's inventive, it's spooky, it kept me guessing and feeling a myriad of emotions... it's just a good piece of horror that uses its aesthetic well without being too exploitative. I actually want to give another of these a shot next year! They just put out a sci-fi themed one, so maybe that. We'll see. For now, I leave it be with a respectful nod. Job well done, you creepy videotapes.