Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

V/H/S/2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Second Time's the Charm?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 25, 2013

Someone at The Collective, the cutting-edge digital studio behind the V/H/S franchise, obviously listened to the criticisms aimed at the first anthology film of "found video" horror shorts released in 2012, because the sequel is a great leap forward. The running time has been tightened by twenty minutes, there are fewer shorts, the "framing" story is simpler and more efficient, and the shorts themselves move at a faster clip and give the viewer less time to question behavioral logic and look for plot holes (which I'm sure are there, but who cares?).

Comments in the extras suggest that this second entry in the franchise was more carefully planned than the first. The creators of the framing device for the original film ("Tape 56"), Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett (You're Next), have returned with a new frame called "Tape 49", which Barrett says is a "prequel" to V/H/S. But no one should worry too much about continuity, because Wingard says even he doesn't understand the series' mythology. The individual segments are the real show, and Barrett and Wingard are now aboard with their own contribution, which allows them to develop something richer and more interesting than a framing device permits. (Barrett wrote; both directed.) The other directors are newcomers to the series.

The framing device, "Tape 49", concerns an unscrupulous private detective, Larry (Lawrence Michael Levine), and his assistant/girlfriend, Ayesha (Kelsy Abbott), who have been asked by the mother of a student named Kyle (L.C. Holt) to investigate why she hasn't heard from him for days. We know Larry is unscrupulous because, in the opening scene, he videotapes an adulterous husband in flagrante (writer and co-director Barrett, doing full frontal nudity) on assignment for the man's wife, then offers to sell the tape back to the husband so that he can keep charging the wife for further investigation.

Larry and Ayesha break into the house where Kyle was living and find a room full of eerily glowing monitors and a pile of videotapes. While Larry explores the house, Ayesha views the tapes. Neither of them notices the figure briefly appearing behind them at odd moments—not until after all the tapes have been played.

"Phase I Clinical Trials" is Barrett's and Wingard's contribution. It's told through the eyes of Herman (Wingard), a video game designer whose eye was badly damaged in an accident and has been replaced with an optical implant wired directly to his nervous system. As explained by Dr. Fleischer (John T. Woods), everything Herman sees will be recorded during the initial trials so that the scientific and medical team can evaluate their invention. As he exits the office, Herman encounters a woman we will later come to know as Clarissa (Hannah Hughes), who stares at his artificial eye with apparent concern.

Not long after returning home, Herman discovers that his implant has side effects. To borrow a famous catchphrase, Herman sees dead people. His eye camera has opened a door to another world, and not only does the technology make ghosts visible, but it also seems to empower them to interact with him. Clarissa has gained some understanding of the phenomenon, and she arrives on Herman's doorstep to offer assistance. But she's unprepared for the intensity of the new tech with which Herman has been encumbered or the fury of the spirits he seems to attract.

"A Ride in the Park" comes from the pen of Jamie Nash (Lovely Molly) and the directing team of Greg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez (The Blair Witch Project). It's a gift to any fan of zombie films who thought they'd seen it all. Has anyone ever shown the world from a zombie's point of view? Jay Saunders plays a bicycle rider enjoying the titular ride on a beautiful day. He has a small video camera mounted on his safety helmet, plus an iPhone. Just after he's taken a call from his devoted girlfriend (Devon Brookshire), he's the victim of a zombie attack, and the cycle begins: a bite, death, transformation, awakening, an afterlife seeking to feed on the living. The various cameras record everything, including the disembowelment of a victim and the assault, with other zombies, on a kids' birthday party (where, of course, additional cameras are running to record the festivities). And then the girlfriend calls again.

"Safe Haven", written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto (The ABCs of Death) and Gareth Huw Evans (The Raid: Redemption), is the film's standout. Shot in Indonesia (where, as both directors acknowledge, local censorship restrictions would almost certainly prevent it from being shown), "Safe Haven" follows a news crew made up of Adam (Fachry Albar), Lena (Hannah Al Rashid) and Malik (Oka Antara), as they investigate a mysterious religious cult headed by a charismatic leader known as "Father" (Epy Kusnandar). Unconfirmed reports of enslavement and child abuse have swirled around the cult, and the team thinks they've hit the jackpot when Father agrees to be interviewed inside the cult's secluded headquarters. But they have no idea what is waiting for them.

They have been allowed to visit on what turns out to be a very special day that Father has long been anticipating. As he gives an interview in his office, he turns on the microphone connected to the P.A. system throughout the complex and begins addressing his followers. (In the extras, Evans says that Tjahjanto played him tapes from the 1978 People's Temple mass suicide at Jonestown, which frightened him more than any horror film.) What follows moves at the speed of an action film and combines elements of the Jonestown massacre, Rosemary's Baby and the Alien films. The directing team adds their own ghoulish sense of humor, which is evident in such touches as Father's grisly exit and the closing shot.

The final short, "Slumber Party Alien Abduction", directed and co-written by Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun), is also the weakest in the group. A young boy and his older sister are left alone for the weekend at a country house by the lake. The older sister invites her boyfriend to stay, and the boy invites all his friends. Everyone horses around in the water, while at night the kids harass the teenage couple's private moments, and the teenagers sneak up on one of the kids masturbating. All of the action is captured by a video camera that, in a light-hearted moment, the kids have fastened to the back of the family dog,

Then odd lights and weird noises begin, strange figures appear outside the window, and aliens begin taking away everyone in the house. How do we know they're aliens? That's exactly the problem. They look like card-carrying members of the same aliens union that has been supplying the population of flying saucer fantasies since before The X-Files: big black eyes, skinny faces, hairless bodies, thin long limbs and interchangeable identities. (Steven Spielberg did these figures better in Close Encounters of the Third Kind , where they were spooky but friendly.) Eisener lets you see them too well and too often, and they're not scary. He tries to compensate with loud shocks of sound, but that only works the first few times. Then it just gets tiring.

Fortunately for V/H/S/2, it has the conclusion of "Tape 49" with which to end the film. Now that has some bloody good moments.

(Note: The Blu-ray contains both R-rated and unrated versions, which have almost the same running times. According to the commentary, the vast majority of changes required to obtain an R were in the "Safe Haven" segment.)

V/H/S/2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I am not the first reviewer to note that "found video" films are difficult to evaluate on Blu-ray, because their very nature works against such typical criteria as sharpness, detail, etc. It may be just as well in an anthology film like V/H/S/2, which was shot by multiple hands, with different equipment, using a variety of visual strategies. One obvious element in several segments (noted by at least one of the directing teams) was a desire to avoid the "shaky cam" look that has become so closely associated with the "found video" genre. In the case of "Safe Haven", the directors used button cams on the news team's shirts, which provided a steadier image. For "Phase I Clinical Trials", director Wingard studied the visual strategies of Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void, which used a similar point-of-view camera but managed to hold the image steady. In "Tape 49", note how often the characters set down their video cameras to provide the equivalent of a locked-off shot.

Although the title may say "VHS", the image on Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray provides far superior resolution to anything that early format ever conveyed, even when shots have been deliberately degraded in post-production for effect. The various editors, directors and effects people (the personnel often overlap) have achieved an appropriate balance between sharpness and detail and the haphazard aesthetic that their chosen genre requires. Colors are generally dull, which has the effect of making occasional bursts of color unusually striking. Many such bursts involve video breakup, but they can also result from bright daylight scenes (as in "A Ride in the Park" or the early portions of "Slumber Party Alien Abduction"). Blacks are often "clotted", and contrast is frequently insufficient, but these phenomena appear to be inherent in the source and part of its "damaged" aesthetic, rather than a flaw in the transfer or mastering. The video image is frequently noisy (or "grainy") in low light, which is typical of "found video" productions.

With a source like V/H/S/2, compression artifacts would be almost impossible to distinguish from intentional distortion, but nothing I saw seemed out of place. The average bitrate of 21.99 Mbps did not seem inappropriate for a film that contains just as many scenes of people staring at something as it does of frantic running.

V/H/S/2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The soundtrack is where V/H/S/2 gives up all pretense of verisimilitude, because no VHS tape ever sounded this detailed or reached these kinds of volume levels without distorting or dissolving into aural mush. The 5.1 track, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, ranges from the creepy creaks, squeaks and ghostly presence behind the hissing monitors in Kyle's house in "Tape 49" to the assault of the aliens in "Slumber Party Alien Abduction", where the attack is as much sonic as physical, almost as if the sound were intended to paralyze the victim as it comes in waves from all sides. In "Safe Haven", there are gunshots, explosions, screams, rendings of flesh, a car crash and its aftermath—and, of course, the viewer is in the middle of it all. The screams of the ghosts in "Phase I Clinical Trials" are loud, piercing and come from everywhere, and their pounding on doors is insistent. An underwater sequence is, if you'll forgive the term, immersive.

The credits list original music, but it's sparsely used. There are several original songs by Lovelock and Natur, whose styles are entirely appropriate to the film.

V/H/S/2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Filmmakers' Commentary: Each group of filmmakers recorded a separate commentary, and the various contributions were edited together. All of them deal with technical challenges to a significant extent; some deal with thematic elements more than others. Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard have the most air time, because their commentary covers both "Tape 49" and "Phase I Clinical Trials". They repeatedly refer to a drunken commentary recorded the previous evening, which I wouldn't mind hearing. (They say they'll post it online.) Greg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez describe how their reluctance to make a zombie film was overcome once they saw the script for "A Ride in the Park". Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans discuss how their disparate backgrounds combined in "Safe Haven" (Evans comes from action films, Tjahjanto from horror films). Jason Eisener, writer John Davies and producer Robert Cotterill talk about the personal elements from which "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" was created and the challenges of working with an animal as a lead character.



• Tape 49 Rewind (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:37): A short segment with producer Chris Harding and writer/co-director Simon Barrett.



• Dissecting Phase I Clinical Trials (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:27): Director and star Adam Wingard describes the origins of the segment and his decision to star in it.



• Inside Safe Haven (1080i; 1.78:1; 3:33): An overview of the episode with directors Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans.



• Slumber Party Alien Abduction: Behind the Lights (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:55): Behind-the-scenes footage, without commentary or voiceover.



• A Ride in the Park: I Dare You (1080p; unknown AR; 3:04): "During a tech scout for A Ride in the Park, Director Gregg Hale dared First Assistant Director Matthew Crosby and Director Eduardo Sánchez to push down a tree. The following is a recording of this dare . . . Warning: Do not try this at home . . . "



• AXS TV: A Look at V/H/S/2 (1080i; 1.78:1; 2:58): A brief promo for the film, featuring short interviews with most of the directors.



• Behind the Scenes Photo Galleries (1080p; various): These are behind-the-scenes photos. Some are of professional quality, while others are informal snapshots.
• Tape 49
• Phase I Clinical Trials
• A Ride in the Park
• Save Haven
• Slumber Party Alien Abduction



• Theatrical Trailers: Two trailers are included, although they are not separately selectable. Both are 1080p and run almost exactly the same length (1:58 and 1:56). The obvious difference is that the first would be a "red band" version, while the second eliminates language and explicit gore so that it could qualify as a "green band" trailer.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Hammer of the Gods, Europa Report, Prince Avalanche and Syrup, as well as a promo for AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

V/H/S/2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In his review of the first V/H/S, my colleague Casey Broadwater questioned whether "found video" had run its course. I approached V/H/S/2 with trepidation, but on the strength of the invention shown in the "Safe Haven" and "A Ride in the Park" shorts (and even in the "Tape 49" framing device and "Phase I Clinical Trials"), I came away feeling that there's life in the format yet. Even "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" represented an intriguing concept. The V/H/S franchise will remain vital as long as it continues to encourage writers and directors to challenge themselves. Highly recommended (although I cannot advise anyone on which of the various versions offered by Magnolia—Blu-ray, Blu-ray + DVD, Blu-ray + DVD + VHS—to acquire).