Title: V/H/S/2

Opens: July 12, 2013

Competing with Lucien Castaing Taylor and Verena Paravel’s look at fishermen “Leviathan” for worst movie this year so far and Raspberry awards-potential film, “V/H/S/2” has been considered by critics to date to be better than V/H/S, which preceded it. One can only guess at how bad the predecessor must have been, since “V/H/S/2,” bearing the names of seven directors and seven screenwriters, is awful in every respect.

High among the list of negatives are the hand-held cameras, which in each of the four principal short stories have ADD, though the studio did not caution motion-sickness afflicted viewers to take Dramamine or Bonine a half hour before the screening. What they might have recommended is the older formulation of these effective tablets, the ones which induce sleep, since snoring through “V/H/S/2” is the most effective way to walk away from the theater with any sense of satisfaction.

There is nary a solid story among the four. Even worse is the framing device which serves as an excuse to delve into the four narratives. “V/H/S/2” is appropriately bloody and gory, which is fine: that’s what slasher movies should be. But there is not a single character in the dramas that one can either hate or love, which means essentially there’s nobody to care about since development of personalities is hardly a strong point here. Nor is there any complexity of plot: in other words this movie is not remotely of the quality “Hostel 2” or “Dracula” (the one that stars Bela Lugosi) or “Phantom of the Opera” (the original, silent version). Add the frequent static of the VHS tapes and various graphics and special effects (some of which are not so terrible) and you have a mess that defies all criteria for horror, whether to demonstrate morbid humor or crawl-under-the-seat ghastliness.

The framing device consists of honing in on two private investigators hired to find a college student who has gone missing. What the duo discover is a series of VHS tapes, each of the four on a different subject, having in common only the frequent use of the f-word. And each deals with the supernatural, which purists among horror fans consider the ne plus ultra of the genre. (Simple slasher films cut no ice with these purists.)

The first of the tapes is the most creative, which is not saying a helluva lot. A young man who has lost an eye in an auto accident gets an experimental transplant that enables the corporation to follow his activities—even when he’s in the john. In addition, he is horrified in his lavish apartment to see dead people, scary dead people who put the poor guy into a frenzy, though he’s helped by a female visitor with a cochlear implant that allows her to hear what he can see. What he does about his fears before consulting the ophthalmologist would render the doctor’s services ineffective.

In the second episode—zombies! Oh, the originality! A biker who makes the mistake of being a Good Samaritan helps a woman who turns out to be a zombie, resulting in his turning into one of the undead as well, while a small army of similar dudes go on the attack. This comes across as a tongue-in-cheek satire of zombie movies—which, by the way, require no satire for laughs.

The one tape that could be developed into a full-length tale features documentarians who get the reluctant permission of an Indonesian cult leader to enter the Gates and film the activities, which involve a dozen or so children who are implicitly raped by the leader to “purify” them before drinking the Kool-Aid. The leader seems almost rational at the initial interview, where he does not wish any non-believer to see his work in the gated community. The documentarians should have followed this advice and bolted. This would have allowed us in the audience to avoid the silly stuff, such as the stripping of the leader and the mass suicides of followers.

Finally a camera tied to a terrier helps some young brats to disturb their sister’s love life, after which sis gets retribution.

If this movie were made just before VHS technology made way for DVDs, the VHS folks could have used the film as an excuse for bowing out of the game rather than having to admit that its format just could not keep up with progress. I did note that at the time of this review that 92% of Rotten Tomatoes critics gave the movie “fresh” ratings, and even the one who put up a green fruit was not so down on the film. Chacun a son gout.

Unrated. 95 minutes © 2013 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Overall – D