V/H/S/99 Review
V/H/S returns with a fun package of found footage segments that ranks among the best in the series. Not everything hits…but that’s standard for anthology movies. What V/H/S/99 delivers, however, is a film you are likely to walk away from with a smile.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
V/H/S/99
Directed by Johannes Roberts, Vanessa Winter, Joseph Winter, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre and Flying Lotus
Written by Zoe Cooper, Flying Lotus, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre, Johannes Roberts, Vanessa Winter and Joseph Winter
Starring Verona Blue, Rolando Davila-Beltran, Tybee Diskin, Jesse LaTourette and Jackson Kelly
V/H/S/99 Review
V/H/S/99 may be the most fun movie in the franchise. Every segment (there are five this time) features either a fun twist or some dark comedy thrown in to make the movie fly. Whether this was by design, or they just hit on a group of filmmakers who happened to make shorts that complimented each other tonally…who knows.
One thing that really aids V/H/S/99 is the absence of a framing story. We’ve made no mistake in our reviews of the franchise that the framing stories largely have not worked. They are often the low point of the movie and at their best still don’t really add to the overall package. V/H/S/99 comes with the elegant solution to just not do one. It is a most welcome change. In its place we get short stop motion animated segments that eventually connect to the fourth short. The Gawkers. By not having a framing story… V/H/S/99 has the best framing story of the series.
Now let’s count down the five new found footage shorts from worst to first.
5. Shredding (segment 1)
V/H/S/99 gets off to a bit of a rocky start with Shredding. An annoying punk rock group who decides to film a music video in a location where another band died years earlier. It takes too long to get the fun going. They probably did this to ensure you would dislike most of the members of the band before heads start to roll…but they accomplish that in the first thirty seconds. Everything else is just waiting around for bad things to hopefully happen to them. Eventually they do and the story becomes much more fun…but for a comparatively short amount of time. If the production had flipped the amount of mayhem for the amount of annoying buildup…they’d have had it.
4. The Gawkers (segment 4)
Another segment that relies on wanting to see bad things happen to annoying people. The Gawkers ranks higher than Shredding because the cast is a little less annoying and the payoff is a little more fun. Teens spy on their hot new neighbor taking it as far as installing spyware on her computer to watch her. They get more than they bargained for when she turns out to be more than just another pretty face. The twist in this one is clever in a kind of just rewards way. It’s all a bit ridiculous but that’s kind of a hallmark of V/H/S at this point.
3. Ozzy’s Dungeon (segment 3)
Ozzy’s Dungeon is the weirdest segment in V/H/S/99…and is likely to be the biggest point of contention in this V/H/S/99 review. I can see it ranking at the very top of some people’s lists. The reason it isn’t ranked higher here is because I think the best V/H/S segments are either scary or funny. Ozzy’s Dungeon is never really either. It does have a crazy premise with an off the rails ending though. And that makes it a good inclusion in the V/H/S series.
After an accident on the set of a 90’s Nickelodeon type game show leaves a little girl disfigured…the family of the girl kidnaps the show’s host and tortures him with a replica set in their basement. That’s a solid premise…but it isn’t the point of the story. The gameshow’s claim is that anyone who wins the show can have a wish granted by someone named Ozzy. The family wants to find the secret behind Ozzy and get their daughter her wish. These two different aspects of the story don’t really work together. Total focus on the revenge aspect would have made for a stronger segment. As it is…the ending does go a bit wild, and the very ending may be worth meshing the ideas together for some.
2. Suicide Bid (segment 2)
Suicide Bid is reminiscent of V/H/S/94’s The Empty Wake in how effective it is with a simple concept. Lily wants to join a sorority so badly that she accepts a dare to spend the night buried alive in a coffin. Before she is buried, the sorority sisters tell her the legend of another student who did this and was left for a week only for their body to have disappeared when they returned. Set mostly inside of a coffin, great use is made of the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. And then…the scary stuff starts to happen. Suicide Bid is a great little slice of horror fiction.
1. To Hell and Back (segment 5)
Directed by Joseph and Vanessa Winter, the couple behind this year’s excellent Deadstream, To Hell and Back is the easy winner of the bunch. Nate and Troy are filming a demonic ritual on New Year’s Eve when they accidentally get sucked into Hell. So yeah…this is the craziest segment of V/H/S/99. It’s also might be the most fun segment in the history of the series. What really makes this work is that unlike the characters in the previous four segments…you like Nate and Troy. These aren’t bad people in need of comeuppance. These are two woefully unprepared everyday people who must find a way to get out of Hell. The performances here are terrific and they are matched by some of the best effects of the series. To Hell and Back closes out V/H/S/99 with a funny, completely wild ride to Hell and…well…you get it.
Scare Value
Getting rid of the framing story helps V/H/S/99 maintain a nice pace. To Hell and Back is the winner here, but every segment has something to enjoy. It seems like the directive for this installment was “just have fun with it”. While it is light on scares…it is full of fun. All but one movie in the V/H/S series has delivered a good time worth watching. This V/H/S/99 review sees it no differently. With the already announced V/H/S/85 on the way to Shudder next year…hopefully this trend continues.
3/5
V/H/S/99 Links
V/H/S/99 Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of V/H/S/99, check out another anthology horror review: Tiny Cinema
