"Phase I Clinical Trials"

Herman (Adam Wingard) inspects his new bionic eye in the mirror.

***"Phase I Clinical Trials"*** is the first proper short featured in "V/H/S/2". Directed by returning director Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett, it sets the tone for the more experimental and original shorts featured in "V/H/S/2" through its unique framing device and higher quality camera and effects.

This story follows a man named Herman who has an artificial eye implanted after an accident and starts to see ghosts and malevolent spirits in his house. This short is shot from Herman's perspective, with his artificial eye containing the camera that the audience watches the story through.

This short is preceded by "Tape 49" Part 1 and followed by "A Ride in the Park".

## Plot

A man, Herman, is sitting in a doctor's office and the doctor is examining his camera. The camera is fitted into an ocular implant which has replaced Herman's right eye after it was damaged in a car accident. The doctor informs Herman that the camera will record and monitor everything he does for research purposes and there is no way to turn it off during this time. Herman is also told that he may experience some "glitches" because the implant is still in its experimental stage. As he leaves the clinic, Herman notices a young red-haired girl staring at him intently. Returning home, Herman passes time by playing video games and eventually gets up for tea. He returns from the kitchen to find his game controller far from where he originally left it, followed by the tea kettle crashing to the ground suddenly. Later, Herman sees what appears to be somebody lying beneath the sheets of his bed, but when he pulls back the sheets, the bed is empty. Herman then finds himself face to face with a bleeding man who appears to be dead, causing him to flee to the bathroom. After phoning his doctor to complain about what happened, Herman emerges from the bathroom and encounters the man again, this time with a young girl who also appears to be dead. Returning to the bathroom, Herman is disturbed by repeated banging on the door and ends up sleeping in the bathtub overnight.

The next morning, Herman emerges from the bathroom again and everything seems to be normal, albeit his room is in more disarray than the night before. Later, the red-haired girl from the hospital appears at his door and requests to be let in as she too is experiencing a similar situation. Giving her name as Clarissa, she explains that she was born deaf and had a cochlear implant installed in her ear, giving her the ability to hear dead people. Herman suggests to remove the implant to make the ghosts go away, but Clarissa says that doing so will only keep Herman from seeing the ghosts. As Clarissa claims that the ghosts will get stronger and more dangerous the longer one pays attention to them, an overweight underwear-clad man appears behind her. Herman alerts her to his presence, but Clarissa says she knows he is there and that he is her uncle, who wasn't a very nice person. Clarissa then initiates sex as a distraction to make the ghosts leave them alone.

Sometime later, Herman awakens and sees Clarissa sleeping on the couch. He finds the young girl in his bed and flees, before witnessing Clarissa being dragged into the pool by an unseen entity. Despite Herman's best efforts to save her, Clarissa drowns. Running back through the house in an attempt to escape the ghosts, Herman once again locks himself in the bathroom and uses a straight razor to cut out the implant. The ghosts of Clarissa and her uncle appear in the bathroom as Herman tries to escape it, but he unwittingly runs directly into the ghosts of the man and young girl, with the former throttling him. The man grabs the implant and shoves it deep into Herman's throat, presumably killing him.

## Cast

* Adam Wingard as Herman
* Hannah Hughes as Clarissa
* John T. Woods as Dr. Fleischer
* Corrie Lynn Fitzpatrick as Young Girl
* Brian Udovich as Bloody Man
* John Karyus as Uncle
* Casey Adams as Justin

## Trivia

* The character of Herman was written with James Rolfe, the online personality behind the YouTube webshow *Angry Video Game Nerd,* in mind, but he was unable to star because he was working on *Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie* at that time.
* It is suggested that the ghostly family who torments Herman through the short are the victims of the car crash that caused Herman to lose his eye before the story begins. It is possible that he was driving recklessly or drunkenly and killed them, so they are taking their revenge by haunting and eventually killing him.
* Heavy implications suggest that Clarissa's uncle molested and raped her, given her first and immediate solution to distract themselves from the ghosts was to have sex with a complete stranger. Context clues and inference seem to be suggesting that she killed him.