V/H/S
Tags: paranormal, violence, horror, murder, prank

Plot synopsis:
The film is presented as an anthology of short horror films, built into a frame narrative which acts as its own short horror film. Each short film is linked together with the concept of found footage (each segment is from the VHS tapes found in the room).
=== Tape 56/frame narrative ===
Directed by Adam Wingard
The frame narrative focuses on a criminal gang who film their exploits, which include smashing the walls and windows of an abandoned house and sexually assaulting a woman in a parking lot. An anonymous source offers them a large sum of money to break into a house and steal a single VHS videotape. The gang is eager to expand their criminal enterprises, and accept the task.
Entering the house, the criminals find an old man sitting dead in front of several television sets playing white noise. Feeling free to roam the house, they discover hundreds of unmarked VHS tapes, and set about collecting them all to ensure that they retrieve the right one. One of the criminals stays behind in the TV room with the dead body to watch the "Amateur Night" tape left in the VCR. The contents of this tape and the four subsequent ones comprise the bulk of the film, with the action cutting back to the criminals' efforts between each short. As the frame narrative progresses, the gang encounters a strange figure moving around the basement, which appears to be the old man. Glimpses of the TV room demonstrate that, unknown to the criminals, the man's body disappears at one point only to reappear in the exact position. Similarly, the criminals return to the TV room to find that the first viewer has disappeared, prompting another of the criminals to continue watching the tapes himself. After the "The Sick Thing that happened to Emily when she was Younger" segment ends, the gang's leader returns to the TV room to discover that he is the only person left, and that the old man's body is gone.
Searching the rooms upstairs, he finds the decapitated remains of one of the criminals, and is subsequently attacked by the old man, who is now a zombie. The leader flees downstairs, where he falls and is killed by the other figure seen walking around the basement, which seems to be a monster. The frame narrative ends with the camera left in the TV room picking up the sound of the VCR starting the "10/31/98" tape by itself.
=== Amateur Night ===
Directed by David Bruckner
Shane, Patrick, and Clint are three friends who have rented a motel room to fulfill Shane's intent of bringing women back for sex; Clint's glasses have been outfitted with a hidden camera that will allow them to turn their planned encounter into an amateur porn video. While the three men are bar-hopping, Clint encounters a mysterious young woman, Lily, who acts aloof and says little other than "I like you."
In addition to picking up Lily, the men also succeed in convincing another young woman, Lisa, to return to their motel with them. Lisa passes out as Shane attempts to initiate sex and Patrick, laughing, discourages him from continuing. Lily continues awkwardly coming on to Clint, but a dejected Shane comes on to Lily instead, oblivious to the scales visible on her feet as he undresses her. Lily appears responsive, pushing Shane onto his back and then beginning to undress Clint, seemingly beginning a threesome. Overwhelmed, Clint goes to the bathroom; Patrick disrobes and attempts to take Clint's place, but Lily has made it clear that she dislikes Patrick.
Moments later, Patrick bursts into the bathroom claiming Lily bit him. When they approach Shane, Lily sprouts fangs, attacks and kills him. Clint and Patrick hide in the bathroom until Patrick, still nude, arms himself with a shower curtain rod and returns to the room. Clint tries to wake Lisa and Patrick attempts to fight Lily but she subdues him, drinks his blood and rips off his genitals. Clint escapes, but ends up falling down a stairwell and breaks his wrist in the process. Lily catches up to Clint, but instead of attacking, she attempts fellatio. Finding Clint unaroused, she crawls over to a corner and cries softly, which gets louder, then turns into a horrific growl. Clint flees, begging bystanders for help, but he is suddenly lifted into the sky by Lily, who has transformed into a winged creature. This reveals that she's a succubus, who was on the hunt. The glasses fall off Clint's face and hit the ground before the video cuts out.
=== Second Honeymoon ===
Directed by Ti West
A married couple, Sam and Stephanie, travel to Arizona for their second honeymoon. They visit a Wild West-themed attraction where Stephanie receives a prediction from a mechanical fortune teller, which claims that she will soon be reunited with a loved one. That evening (off camera), a woman comes to Sam and Stephanie's motel room and awkwardly tries to convince Sam to give her a ride the next day. In the middle of the night, while the couple are asleep, someone breaks into the room, turns on the camcorder and films touching Stephanie's buttocks with a switchblade. The intruder then steals $100 from Sam's wallet and dips his toothbrush in the toilet. The next day, on their way to visit the Grand Canyon, Sam notices the missing money and accuses Stephanie of taking it, but she assumes he is joking. That night, someone enters the room again and stabs Sam in the neck with their switchblade, filming him as he chokes on his own blood and dies. The camera then shows the killer, the woman from earlier, cleaning the blade while she and Stephanie kiss passionately. The recording cuts to Stephanie asking her lover if she has erased the footage.
=== Tuesday the 17th ===
Directed by Glenn McQuaid
Three friends—Joey, Spider, and Samantha—accompany their new friend, Wendy, on a camping trip. Joey films the group as Wendy leads them through the woods, occasionally mentioning 'accidents' that took the lives of her friends. When scanning certain areas, images of mutilated bodies appear in the film. Wendy then tells them that a murderer killed her friends during a camping trip here the previous year, but the group laughs it off as a joke. Spider and Samantha leave the group and are killed by a human-like figure with a red head obscured in tracking errors (identified in the credits as "The Glitch").
At the lake, Wendy tells Joey she lured all three of them to the grounds to use as bait so she can find and kill the mysterious force. Wendy reveals that she had been to this lake before where a killer had slaughtered all her friends and she was the only survivor. She notes that the police did not believe her when she said the killer could be in two places at once. The entity walks up behind Joey and slits his throat.
Wendy runs away, luring the figure into two easily escaped booby traps and is cut by it in the second one. She films the entity close up, but it continues to be obscured by the tracking error. Wendy continues to run through the woods, she finds Joey in his death throes. After he dies, the figure approaches Wendy and a final trap impales it. Wendy gloats at it and walks away but when she turns around, it is gone; it reappears in a tree and jumps down, beats her with the camera, then kills her, subsequently eviscerating her, then inhabiting her body.
=== The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger ===
Directed by Joe Swanberg
This segment is shown through computer video chats. Emily talks to her boyfriend James, a trainee doctor, about a strange bump on her arm and how it reminds her of an accident she had when she was younger. After witnessing a small, childlike entity rush into her room and slam the door shut, Emily believes her apartment is haunted. Her landlord claims that no children have ever lived in the apartment, but Emily is unconvinced. During her next video chat with James, an increasingly frantic Emily digs into her arm with a scalpel to find out what the bump is, but James urges her to stop before the wound becomes infected.
Emily attempts to contact the being, but it knocks her out. James quickly appears in her apartment and surgically removes an alien fetus from Emily's torso. Aliens are using Emily as an incubator for alien/human hybrids, and James has been working for them and removing the fetuses for some time. The aliens erase Emily's memory, and James mentions that the arm bump is a tracking device. In their next chat, a badly injured Emily believes she sustained her injuries after wandering into traffic in a fugue state. She reveals that the doctor James recommended has diagnosed her as schizoaffective, and tearfully says that James deserves a better, more normal girlfriend. He assures Emily that she is the only person he wants to be with, but once their chat ends he begins a new chat with a different woman who has the same bump on her arm and also believes James is her boyfriend, showing that the aliens are using more than one person as an incubator.
=== 10/31/98 ===
Written and directed by Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez & Chad Villella)
It's Halloween 1998. Chad, Matt, Tyler, and Paul (dressed in Halloween costumes as the Unabomber, a pirate, a teddy bear implanted with a nanny cam, and a Marine, respectively) head out to a Halloween party at a friend's house, only to end up at the wrong place. Sneaking inside, they begin to experience paranormal phenomena and decide they are at a haunted house and have fun with it. In the attic they find several men gathered around a young woman whom they've suspended from the rafters, apparently performing an exorcism. The men are chanting "cast you down", and the boys exuberantly join in, "cast him down". One of the men reacts angrily to their presence and physically assaults the young woman. More violent, overtly threatening paranormal phenomena then begin to occur and the boys initially flee before realizing they should try to rescue the girl. Returning to the attic, the boys work to untie her and get her to safety, as the house itself comes to life with poltergeist phenomena and ghostly arms rising from the walls and the floors to claim the lives of the woman's captors.
Exiting through the basement, the boys pile into their car with the girl and drive away. The car abruptly stops and the girl disappears, reappearing in the street before them and walking away amid a flock of birds before they realize that they've stopped on train tracks. The boys attempt to get out of the car as the train approaches, but the doors are locked. The screen starts to flicker with static and the train smashes into the car off-camera, presumably killing all inside.
During the end credits, clips from Tape 56 are shown.
=== Alternative Ending To 10/31/98 ===
A joke ending was shot in one-take by Radio Silence in which the doors are unlocked and the boys get out just before the train smashes into their car. The boys walk away and talk about how much fun they had and what a crazy night it was as the train hits the car and it explodes behind them.

Review: Listen, the only way to truly enjoy a horror film is in a large, pitch black room with deafening surround sound and a group of people just as scared as you are.
Some of the segments are better than others (trust me, you'll know which ones) but overall, V/H/S is one of the most imaginative, jolting, riveting, heart-beating-outside-of-your-chest-because-its-so-intense horror films of recent time.
It's bloody, it's scary, it's haunting, and if you're anything like me, you'll know it scared you when it's 1:43 in the morning and the only thing you can do to make yourself fall asleep, is to review the film on IMDb..
Some things work better depending on the way you view these things, but also, what works with one person, will not work with another, everybody is different.With that out of the way, let me honestly try to convince you that my small review on this film is mainly based on its merits, and not just what I enjoy personally.I think the credit is due to the effort that went behind making this film, because even though each of the video tapes the guys find and watch are very strange and hard to swallow, they have genuinely tried hard to convey a sense of realism.
Each of the five found tapes start off innocently enough like home movies, but each one reveals shocking footage of something strange or unravels into a horrifying ordeal.
The movie  manages to throw 5 of these 'money shots' at the viewer without the  need to tell any real story, build any of the characters or introduce  their personality's to the audience.
The horror anthology has a chequered history, some are bad but saved by one great segment, others boast a couple of genuine creepers but are undone by one instalment so bad it tarnishes the film forever.
The usual problems are evident here, a couple of great stories are surrounded by mediocre ones, but at least there is something for everyone, with most bases covered, but that in itself is a problem, all horror fans have preferences, it's a big ask to expect a fan of stalk and slash to love a story about a winged harpy!Then there is the issue of the found footage format, here recorded on actual VHS.
The former is a cautionary tale of frat boys out for sex who get more than they bargained for when they take home the mysterious Lily, the latter an eerie tale unfolded via Skype communication as Emily appears to be a victim of a haunting whilst chatting to her doctor boyfriend.However, if you ask another fan of the film what stories they feel standout, you may just get two different answers.
Half the time, you'll feel like you're watching some stranger's home movie collection.
We have scenes that make NO SENSE in regards to how it ended up on a VHS tape, uninspired concepts, terrible camera work, and just terrible writing.Here is another Paranormal Activity: TONS of hype, great press and reviews, but underneath all of that is a really uniquely awful film.
In any case, V/H/S is a collection of short "found footage" horror films produced by Brad Miska, the man behind bloody-disgusting.com.
Those who easily get queasy from constant "swingcam" footage, will be particularly pleased with the inclusion of this one.The other segments are: Second Honeymoon (Ti West) - A couple's vacation is compromised by a mysterious nocturnal intruder.Tuesday the 17th (Glenn McQuaid) - A young woman is not honest about her intentions when she brings her friends out to a secluded spot in the woods where several murders once occurred.10/31/98 (Radio Silence) - Friends set off for a party dressed up in lame Halloween costumes, but instead of arriving at their intended destination, they find themselves in a demoniacally haunted house at the absolute worst time possible.and the wraparound...
Released early on demand, after it's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, "V/H/S" is a horror movie told through the "already tired" aspect of found-footage material, shown from the perspective of a hand-held camera.
Now, there are times when this movie follows almost every horror cliché in the book, and although this movie is supposed to be portrayed as a "found-footage" feature, the camera movements are a little too shaky.
If this is, were horror movies are going it is a travesty.This is only my opinion of what I thought of this film.
Probably the most wasted hour and a bit of my whole life - this film would work fine if it picked 1 of the story lines.the synopsis is deceiving and I was so disappointed I almost stopped watching it.Really purely on special effects(Which are mediocre at best) and intrigue (Namely, 'Surely this film has to get better?'), it has nothing going for it!I am a massive fan of the genre of Horror dating back from the 1970s upwards, I'll admit many of the new horrors really lack something these days and tend to go more for the 'scare' or 'graphic' factors, this film is 7, maybe 10 (In honesty I stopped counting through boredom) short films with a sub plot.
I watch a lot of horror movies and that was probably the worst one I have ever seen.Movie is split into couple different stories - guys loot some dead perv basement, got his VHS tapes collection and start watching it.
It is important to note before watching this movie, there is little fear factor; the people were most likely getting ill because it contains an insurmountable amount of flash/strobe effects (not sure if that is what the film industry calls it,) but this effect can cause seizures in people who are prone to them from epilepsy, or any neurological issues.
I love the handy cam style genre (a la Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity) however this film tried to hard to make it look "real" that the constant shaking of camera made me feel motion sickness most of the movie.
And after a while -- we don't care.If your movie has to rely on this overused "trick" of shaky camera and whirling motion you're covering something up, like a lack of a story (professional directing) and solid character development.
Please...don't waste any of your time on this piece of crap.The "short" stories are about 20 minutes each, but they drag on so that it feels like they're an hour.
Was waiting for that big A-Ha moment - that never came.If you did not like Blair Witch you will not like this.Last part got pretty interesting but not enough to save this film.Some creepy stuff that got me excited but the ending peters out.Kept wondering - are we going for supernatural?
All you need to know about this film is it looks like a bunch of dumb hipsters tried to make a herky jerky POV home video movie.
If they're handing out money to kids who don't know how to make a remotely scary movie, please send some my way, I could have come up with a better 5 shorts in 10 minutes.There is no plot, it's hardly scary, the dialogue was seemingly written by a high school freshman who basically wrote it to see his first boobs, and saggy ones at that.Do YOURSELF a huge favor and do not subject 2 hours of your life to this!
It seemed like a too eager found footage film wanting to appear as real as possible but failing in the attempt since a child wouldn't hold the camera that unsteady.
I would have been livid if I had paid money for this joke of a movie.Note: I am a huge fan of horror, so please do not think my review comes from a lack of knowledge of the genre.Now, as for this film directly - it was more than clear that the target audience was males 15 - 25 due to the ridiculous amount of boobs, and the ridiculous amount of men around that age behaving like idiots.
The stories contained could probable have actually been good and scary but 85% of the film is shot in low, low lighting with quick cuts that blur the images to the point of getting a headache.
It has got no point in it, no sense, no creativity..no anything...wannabe scary clips randomly mixed together..the result, a so called "horror" movie, which didn't scare me a single time.
Each story was something i have seen many times before in other horror movies but executed much worse.
If you read this thinking you want to watch this crap, consider yourself lucky, because you were just convinced to watch something else.There is no plot whatsoever, just a bunch of short stories, or short films about bizarre murders that happen for no reason at all.
Plot holes however, are in great abundance (much much too many for stories of such short length).The movie gets its 2 stars for the same # of reasons broken down here:_the first segment (imagine Cloverfield with a vampire) shows promise & is very well put together._ Ti West (a director who continues to receive critical & fan praise despite making long, meandering & brutally dull movies) is thankfully forced to get to the point of his story.
While the stories are fairly standard, I'd argue that this is one of the best executions of found footage to ever come from the horror genre, with dynamic, realistic and non overwhelming cinematography and logical justifications for why the characters would bother to have cameras.
As nonsensical as that sounds, it provides a good explanation to what you are going to watch in the following 90 minutes: shaky hand-held horror.V/H/S presents five "spooky" tapes (not including the beginning and the end) which at best make you twitch because they rely almost exclusively on jump scares.
So, the characters play the tapes, while we the audience watches what they see on the tapes.The film is a found footage anthology in which different directors and writers tackled each segment.
I initially got excited about that, but my cynical side took that claim with a huge grain of salt.After seeing it three times now, I can honestly say V/H/S is not only one of the best horror films to come out in years, but one of the scariest as well.
If you're a horror fan, especially one who's been waiting for a good found footage film, V/H/S is a must-see..
Don't watch this film it is a massive waste of time and energy, get yourself down to Blockbuster and hire yourself a good horror film like Chainsaw massacre, Saw, Hostel, Aliens etc..
I just finished watching V/H/S, and it did surprise me.The movie tells a story about a bunch of guys, going into a creepy house, looking for a special VHS.
But the nice thing about anthologies is that if one of the stories isn't very good, you only have to wait a few minutes before another one starts.This movie did noting to me!!
Don't get me wrong, some of the short stories were a bit frightening, but personally I don't like movies that are filmed like this.
Don't get me wrong, some of the short stories were a bit frightening, but personally I don't like movies that are filmed like this.
The concept of this movie is pretty good just poorly executed with time-consuming dialogue that is truly not needed.Of the "stories" the third one was my favorite.
I appeal to everyone who doesn't like horror movies - STOP REVIEWING AND RATING THEM.
It may just be the humble opinion of one lousy and insignificant horror fanatic, but personally I think that found footage movies are the ideal format for aspiring directors that are untalented and largely incompetent, but nevertheless want to persist in entering the film industry.
Mind-numbing and migraine-inducing horror anthology involving several stories (all filmed via home movie cameras) wrapped around a small group of miscreants (themselves filmed on home movie cameras as well) who have been hired by an unknown character to steal a certain VHS tape.
I love the special effects here and honestly, if that happened to me in that house, I would be screaming and running too.All and all, this is a very good found footage film.
In fact, as separate entries, the stories are more like 'fragments' of more complete films, and some of these with an abrupt ending, actually come off as a little movie that has run out of ideas and just ends, which caused confusion and frustration for me.Now, if you want graphic gore, nudity, sexual content and wall-to-wall profanity, then you'll like this.
There's a lot of found footage type movies coming out, no plot, no original ideas and nothing to contribute to the genre but a couple of cheap scares.
If you want that kind of review, read the others.Ill sum this up by NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE!The idea behind this is very interesting and if it was pulled off properly, it could have been a great horror flick, but it wasn't, so its not good.
I think all the individuals involved with this film were high as hell, because, again, NOTHING MAKES SENSE!!I will say that of all the different "tapes", the one that i liked the best was the last one.Do yourself a favor and don't pay to see this.
Some of the premises were actually very original and I probably would've enjoyed watching one of those films more, however the plot of this movie, and how it is sloppily woven together just didn't make sense.
But the truth is - people are conditioned to expect very specific things in horror - and when a movie deviates from that, many are left confused.This is not a great film.
I've seen a lot of shitty films, but I don't think I've ever had to actually talk myself into watching one through to the end like this.
OK, so the overarching storyline of watching people watch movies is pretty nonsensical and the way the filmmakers incorporate the VHS aspect into these little horror shorts is, at times, quite far-fetched, but due to some very intriguing visuals (which will have many audiences completely baffled as to how certain effects were accomplished) and two borderline scary but quite entertaining story lines, "V/H/S" is worth checking out; even though it is so hit and miss, it can only be defined as slightly above average, at best .Since this is not your traditional narrative, the following is a mini synopsis of each short: 1.
But that rather cool, film geek aspect is quickly forgotten, as audiences are plunged headfirst into an aggressively vulgar horror story, reminding us all as to why the shaky camera/found footage genre is on life support.3.
The third story (or the second tape played) from acclaimed Indie-horror director Ti West, is essentially the first film worth paying attention too.
Adam Wingard, Ti West, David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and the YouTube sensation Radio Silence have all come together to create "V/H/S", which simultaneously resurrects the anthology film with gusto, places itself among the scariest of scary movies, and makes the found footage genre more legit than it has ever been.Set in the narrative framework of a group of villainous hoodlums with a v/h/s camcorder, we follow them into a house during a "job" to steal a precious v/h/s tape for a mysterious third party.
It worked out successful because they combined it with a classic horror sub-genre; the horror anthology genre, that basically is being a movie with a bunch of short and individual segments, each often featuring their own story and characters, like this movie does as well.
It's always a sort of a problem that these type of movies often featuring 1 or 2 truly good and successful short stories and the rest is being just average, or even below that level.
I mean, it's sort of ridicules once you start paying attention to it, as to how much stuff got filmed by the characters in this movie.
But that's just something that is an integrated part of the found footage genre and something you more or less have to take for granted, when watching a movie like this.
Most people won't be troubled by this though and will just have a good time watching this, like I, for most part, did as well.In my opinion nothing more and nothing less but an enjoyable and fine modern take on the anthology horror sub-genre.
Personally, I'm bored by found-footage horror films, which this is.
I don't like found-footage films but this is a really good one.
I love horror movies, but this one was not worth the watch.
Most of the stories were poorly written, filmed with a wobbly camera with distortion effects that doesn't even look like real distortion.
I generally like "found footage" horror movies.
If you like hand-held camera horror movies, it's worth watching after all..
Watchin all three game me a little idea of the story that's underneath all the events but I still don't get it which makes me want to watch them again.Last thing I liked about the films was the unfamiliar actors.
There are a couple of scenes that almost threw me out of the movie, but I'm glad I continued to watch.I think the team put most of the film's budget into the last short and it shows.
5.5/1010/31/98 - Although I had said "Amateur Night" is the best segment, this one is by far the most effective as a horror film.
V/H/S is the first anthology horror film I've seen and it's the movie that made me interested in the sub-genre, even though I've checked that many films like these (I'll keep the review short, because I don't want to spoil what the short films are about).Positives: From the 6 short films 3 were really awesome, though the other ones weren't so bad.
V/H/S is a great low-budget found-footage horror film, that from BAD 1 to EXCELLENT 6 I give VERY GOOD 5.25..