Review: V/H/S/94 (2021)

V/H/S/94 (2021)

Not rated

Score: 3 out of 5

I happily skipped over the third film in the V/H/S series, V/H/S: Viral, because a) I didn't have it on hand, and b) it was apparently even worse than the first movie. Boasting a "viral video" wraparound that abandoned the basic "people find VHS tapes containing fucked-up shit" conceit of its predecessors in favor of some very circa-2014 stereotypes of social media and Kids These Days, very few people will defend it outside of a handful of cool moments, and its scathing reception killed the series for seven years. It took the horror-focused streaming platform Shudder, the source of a lot of interesting indie horror in the last few years, to bring the series back, reuniting some of the people involved with the first and second movies, including filmmakers Simon Barrett and Timo Tjahjanto, and adding some up-and-coming talents to produce a new found-footage anthology, all while setting the entire thing in the '90s, the golden age of the VHS tape. And apparently, a lot of people were paying attention, because according to Shudder, this was the biggest hit they've ever had.

And it's pretty good! It doesn't reach the pure energetic heights of the second movie, but each of the segments provided a lot of great fun, whether it was the violent mayhem of "The Subject" or the catharsis of "Terror". Likewise, while it doesn't sink to the depths of the first movie, it has problems of its own, whether it's the frequent mood whiplash or characters who, while not flat-out obnoxious, did make some howlingly stupid decisions that got them killed. But ultimately, the energy that the film served up was propulsive enough that I was often having a good time, even if I was often screaming at the screen "now why the hell would you do something like that?"

The worst such stupidity came in the first main segment, Chloe Okuno's "Storm Drain", where the local news reporter Holly Marciano and her cameraman Jeff venture into a storm drain to do a report on the "Ratman", a local urban legend reputed to have been spotted in the area. The moment that it becomes clear that they're being watched and stalked by someone, or something, they should've started running immediately instead of continuing to venture further; lady, that big scoop just isn't worth it. That said, things oddly pick up once it becomes well past too late for the two of them to go back, as the segment provides a surprisingly meaty exploration of poverty in America as the people stalking Holly and Jeff, while undoubtedly villainous, turn out to have a pretty sympathetic motivation. The segment also ends with a beautiful burst of pitch-black comedy paired with one extremely graphic kill that feels like Okuno watched Raiders of the Lost Ark at way too young an age.

The second segment, "The Empty Wake" by the series' old hand Simon Barrett, was probably the strongest as a whole, telling a simple story of a young woman working at a funeral home watching over a dead body that may not be truly dead. Barring a rather thinly-written (if well-acted) protagonist in Hailey, there wasn't much I didn't like here, as it offered plenty of slow-building tension, some messed-up gore effects as we watch a human body fall apart, and some disturbing questions concerning one key supporting character who shows up halfway through, especially when we later see something that raises the question of why and how that person was there in the first place. Not much to talk about, except to say that it's really good.

The third segment, Timo Tjahjanto's "The Subject", felt like it was trying the most but accomplished the least, and was probably the biggest disappointment given how much I enjoyed Tjahjanto's "Safe Haven" from the second film. It felt a lot more dependent on special effects than the rest, and right from the start, dodgy CGI took me right out of it. The plot also went all over the place as it progressed, at first being about a mad scientist, James Suhendra, who kidnaps people and forcibly turns them into body-horror cyborgs, only to drastically shift gears when the police show up to bust his ass, at which point it becomes about one of his subjects, a grotesquely mutilated woman known only as "Subject 99", fighting to escape both the hostile police and another subject, number 98, that has turned violent against everyone. It offered up the most action of the film, feeling like a glorious homage to sci-fi FPS games once Subject 99 straps a machine gun to the weapon mount where her right hand used to be, and while the CGI was shoddy, the practical effects were some of the nastiest in the film; the ultimate reveal of what Dr. Suhendra did to Subject 99's head, built up for much of the segment, did not disappoint. In the end, however, it felt like all action and no plot, and I found myself wishing I could pick up a controller and play it instead of watching it.

The final segment, Ryan Prows' "Terror", leaned the most into the '90s period setting of the film, specifically satirizing the militia movement of the decade as its "protagonists", the First Patriots Movement Militia, plot to bomb a federal building in Detroit using a very unique weapon. You see, in this universe, vampires exist, they explode when exposed to direct sunlight, and the militia, having captured a vampire and kept it hostage in a barn, are draining its blood in order to create a large light-activated explosive device. There wasn't much to this segment except catharsis for everybody who, over the last five years especially, has gotten really sick of certain groups that obsess over guns and conspicuously flaunt the word "patriot" in their names only to reveal that they hate their fellow Americans more than anyone. In this case, the characters' stupidity being their undoing turns out to be a key part of the fun, as putting a deadly weapon in the hands of Y'all Qaeda, who decide to get drunk and party the night before their planned attack, goes exactly as you'd expect it to. It's undoubtedly shallow and intended as not a whole lot more than a goofy gorefest rather than a serious exploration of political violence, but watching assholes reminiscent of loathsome real-life figures bring their just desserts upon themselves simply felt good.

All of it is tied together by a wraparound by Knives and Skin director Jennifer Redder, titled "Holy Hell", in which a SWAT team raids the compound of a religious cult that we see has just committed a mass suicide. This was, unfortunately, one of the weaker parts of the film, and was especially disappointing given both the interesting setup and the directions it seemed to be going. It all came down to the ending, and given that this was the connective tissue that held the film together, it wound up ending the film on something of a downer note for me. The big twist felt like a cop-out, having never been set up properly beforehand while explaining nothing about all the strange things that the SWAT team encountered, the mass suicide being just the start. A lot of interesting ideas were completely dropped and felt wasted for the sake of a cheap play on horror movie tropes, one that seemed interesting on the surface and probably could've been had the film focused on it from the start but felt like it was lifted from a completely different story.

The Bottom Line

All told, this film offered up more good than bad, and I'd call it my second-favorite V/H/S film. If you have a Shudder subscription, check it out, and if you don't, search for it once it hits video (their original films are a common sight at Walmart and Best Buy).

Hail Raatma!