V/H/S: Viral Review

V/H/S: Viral would be released a little over a year after V/H/S/2. The series would then take a seven-year hiatus before returning with V/H/S/94. Watching Viral you quickly understand why the series went from a yearly event to left for dead.

Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.

V/H/S: Viral

Directed by Marcel Sarmiento, Gregg Bishop, Nacho Vigalondo, Justin Benson, Aaron Scott Moorhead and Todd Lincoln

Written by Nacho Vigalondo, Marcel Sarmiento, Gregg Bishop, T.J. Cimfel, Ed Dougherty, David White and Justin Benson

Starring Patrick Lawrie, Justin Welborn, Gustavo Salmeron, Nick Blanco and Chase Newton

V/H/S: Viral Review

V/H/S: Viral is a mess. No use beating around the bush about it. This isn’t going to be the most positive review in the world. There are some positives in the movie of course. Every movie has value (he told himself over and over as he watched V/H/S: Viral)

The third chapter of the V/H/S franchise clocks in at a series low 81 minutes. This time we get a framing story and only three shorts. The story goes that a fourth story entitled Gorgeous Vortex was removed from the feature because it wasn’t a found footage short. It is included on the Blu-Ray/DVD release. I watched this on Hulu so it won’t find its way into the review or rankings.

The framing story is different this time. Instead of people finding strange VHS tapes we get the story of a guy trying to make a viral video and save his girlfriend who has been kidnapped. The entire city is going crazy as they watch the mayhem on their phones. There are a few cool moments in this mess. A guy having his feet gnawed away by the road as he is caught on a truck takes the cake. Mostly though it’s just a chaotic mess and has the worst payoff of the three V/H/S movies thus far. Somehow this framing story manages to be worse than the original movie’s gang of the most annoying people in the world.

Alright let’s get into the meat of the movie. As always, ranking the segments from worst to best.

3. Dante the Great (segment 1)

It doesn’t take V/H/S: Viral long to let you know that it isn’t going to scare you. After the fast-paced but suspense-free opening we get an investigative documentary about a magician. Having found Houdini’s cloak, the magician is able to perform real magic if he offers it human sacrifices. Like the framing story, this isn’t suspenseful or scary in the least. In fact, it’s the worst segment thus far in the V/H/S series. Save for one momentary jump scare at the end I wasn’t even sure I was still watching a V/H/S movie.

2. Bonestorm (segment 3)

Bonestorm is an odd one. It is also not played for any kind of suspense or frights. Unlike the framing story and Dante the Great, however, it does manage to provide some entertainment. And at this point V/H/S: Viral desperately needed it. Skateboarders filming their tricks encounter a cult and must fight them off as they raise skeletons and a demon. This is pretty wild. It’s fun enough to justify its inclusion despite, again, not going for anything the series had been known for. It’s still not great but it eventually wins you over.

1. Parallel Monsters (segment 2)

V/H/S: Viral’s clear winner is Parallel Monsters. I don’t know if it would crack top 4 in the original V/H/S but it would sit comfortably in the middle of V/H/S/2. A scientist opens a portal to another dimension and finds that his other self in that dimension has accomplished the same thing at the same time. They decide to switch dimensions for 15 minutes. The first half of this segment is great. Unfortunately, it goes off the rails in a bad way when the differences between the worlds turn out to be…giant monster genitals. It becomes too silly to remain effective. It’s a real shame since they had a good thing going and any number of different ideas could have been terrifying.

Scare Value

V/H/S: Viral is a lot of misfires in a small package. The series lost the plot with this one, an incredible accomplishment in a series that doesn’t have one. Bonestorm provides some entertainment but doesn’t exactly fit what you think of in the series. Parallel Monsters has a great idea and some creepy build but ends up on the silly side. The less said about Dante the Great the better. A clear series low point. V/H/S and V/H/S/2 were flawed movies that each scored a 3/5 on the Scare Value chart. V/H/S: Viral is worth half that.

1.5/5