There really aren’t that many consistently good anthology films out there, let alone horror anthologies. To be certain—there are many with outstanding parts or memorable segments or are mostly great, but there tends to be a weak link somewhere along the way that bogs down the other sections or keeps the entire movie from feeling on one cohesive level of quality. A fun remix project for erstwhile film artistes out there would be to take bits from the various Amicus anthologies, Stephen King collections, and other assembly of stories and try to create one or two streamlined, fun, collectively good segmented cinematic experiences. In the meantime, V/H/S/94 is another mixed bag with some awesome, some okay, and some unfortunate parts, like previous entries in the franchise. The collection of talent is impressive with newcomers Jennifer Reeder, Ryan Prows, Chloe Okuno turning in tales alongside series veterans Timo Tjahjanto and Simon Barrett. Each slice of the V/H/S/94 pie has something going for it that is remarkable, but again they are not all created equal and that leads to an awfully uneven experience.
In the wraparound segment (by Reeder, entitled “Holy Hell”), a SWAT team descends on a compound they believe to be housing a drug lab, but turns out to be the location for much weirder, darker activities involving a cult and perpetual screenings of cursed tapes. Okuno’s “Storm Drain” finds a reporter (Anna Hopkins) and her cameraman exploring an urban legend about a sewer dwelling creature for a news segment only to stumble onto something more sinister. Meanwhile, Barrett invokes the EC Comics feel with funeral home worker realizing she may not be as alone as she thought at “The Empty Wake.” Then it’s off to Indonesia where a mad scientist is concocting something beyond human in “The Subject.” And back to the midwestern homestead of a poorly regulated militia with “The Terror,” in which they plan to use a monster for their own ideological purposes.
Like in most anthologies—themselves based on lurid pulp comics of the past, which in turn were based on all sorts of folklore and campfire tales—each segment starts off in one direction before there’s a form of twist in the plot (things are worse than the protagonist thinks or what’s actually transpiring is far crazier than what appears to be transpiring). And like most of those, they don’t always work well. The greatest achievement that all parts of V/H/S/94 share is the technical properties where the filmmakers used a lot of period appropriate/analog devices to properly get the look and feel correct. And while that can cause a lot of frustration when trying to figure out what something is supposed to look like in the dark or finer details hidden underneath scrambled scratches on the tape, it does lend a greater authenticity and tactile feel recalling those videos passed around in the ‘90s or the grainy clips that made their way onto the Internet in its formative years. And while this lessens some of the visual flourish that would be welcomed in most of the segments, it does help create that aura of actual found footage—an aspect that most found footage films don’t even aspire to capture anymore.
Unfortunately, while there’s a range of effectiveness of the segments, there’s a bit too much uniformity in some of the details. Almost every story has a moment where the camera (and therefore the person operating it) is pointing one way, only to quickly turn 180 degrees and find a horrific surprise waiting for them. Similarly, most segments try to get a lot of tense mileage out of the meager spotlights on the mid-90s video cameras, with them turning off (or on) at the wrong time. These haunted house techniques are fun and fine enough, but when they are repeated in five different short films across V/H/S/94’s 100 minutes…it gets tiresome and feels like someone overseeing the film should’ve compared notes between each moment.
“The Subject” is far and away the best segment of V/H/S/94, with Tjahjanto once again turning in a tale that starts in an expected horror situation before it veers off into batshit gruesome territory (though not as much as it did in his part of V/H/S/2). The filmmaker’s ability to cross action and horror, while telling a complete and engaging story using first person POV, Is impressive and makes for a fun and gnarly experience. “The Empty Wake” has some strong effects (and humor), and the feeling of a well-worn tale of the macabre, but it takes too long to get to the fireworks factory; that stalling doesn’t feel like mounting tension but instead just dead air. There’s some “(shrug) I guess so” aspects to the plot of “Storm Drain”, but Okuno gets strong performances from her cast and fares much better with the weird humor than attempts at verisimilitude. “The Terror” is incredibly original in its scope and ideas, plus Prows impressively and quickly sketches out multiple characters enough, but the section needed a bigger ending that didn’t feel as rushed. Reeder’s wraparound doesn’t really make any sense—and is a weak way of introducing the other sections—but the filmmaker shows a true gift for creepy imagery and set design while also utilizing the grainy video to its fullest to make everything feel excessively scuzzy and distressed. (There’s also a very short infomercial that suddenly appears, made by THE VOID’s Steven Kostanski and starring his Astron-6 pal Conor Sweeney.)
V/H/S/94 isn’t the best of the series (that remains V/H/S/2), but it’s safe to say it’s the second best of the four entries that make up the franchise so far (V/H/S VIRAL coming in last). The appeal of genre anthologies is to get different types of horror that can encompass different locations, people, monsters/opponents, rules, tones, and more. One story can be a restrained ghost story while the next is just wall-to-wall with spilt intestines. In that aspect, despite the few overlaps, V/H/S/94 does have something for everyone in terms of humor, aesthetics, sub-genre of horror, and subject matter. Unfortunately, by switching it up between sections (and filmmakers) it becomes readily apparent how much better one part is over the other. Watching five short films back-to-back-to-back forces viewers’ minds to stack each entry up against the others. If they were all cohesively good, it wouldn’t be a problem. But when the round-up of found footage tales vary in quality to such degree as in V/H/S/94, it may have viewers looking for the fast forward button.
V/H/S/94 premieres October 6 on Shudder.
Tags: Anna Hopkins, Anthology, Chloe Okuno, Conor Sweeney, Cult, Cyborgs, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest 2021, Found-Footage, Greg Anderson, Horror, Indonesia, Jennifer Reeder, Kimmy Choi, Militia, Ryan Prows, Sewers, Shudder, Simon Barrett, Steven Kostanski, Sunn O))), Thiago Dos Santos, Timo Tjahjanto, United States, vampires, VHS
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