V/H/S

the Signal director David Bruckner's new film V/H/S is a found footage anthology. Each story has a sperate writer and director Ti West of House of the Devil fame being one. With so many cooks in the kitchen the results very.

the background story is about hipster internet criminals paid to retrieve a video tape from a dead man's house.

In the first piece a vampire story whose title Amateur night I found on the movie's Wiki. The vampire comes as no surprise when the character is introduced. I do like the fact it's a feral monster vampire, no sparkle to it and the effects regarding it's super human abilities are handled well, similar to Let the Right one in, but able to fly.

The second piece title Second Honeymoon is filmed with higher resolution but a lot of build up for not much pay off. it falls into the horror mishap of not caring if the characters die because they annoy you, it works in Friday the 13th style slashers but these are mainly character driven so not so much.

The third vignette called Tuesday the 17th, is a typical going to a cabin in the woods, though nothing so clever as Joss Whedon, instead we get amateur gore the knife coming out of the eye scene is bad 80's and might work in a "Dear god no" type setting here , it looks like this is a YouTube video.

Fourth The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger shot shot like a cam chat. Its along the line of a paranormal activity style haunting, though with viasable ghosts.it 's one of the more effective pieces on here though i have a thing for a good ghost story, the twist t the end of this one , has a nice pair of tits courtesy of Liz Harvey, so it works for me as the ever classic marriage of boobs and horror can't go wrong. Another thing to be said for this movie is aside from this short they keep with my survival rule

the ongoing story escalates and it is what it is , as a rule all off these movies every one is don't go in the basement horror dumb.

The final short is very "Last Exorcism" meet typical haunt, the arms coming out of the wall are a little over done and some of the poltergeist like effects are hokey, but it has some effect tense scares and I liked the ending. The tuesday the 17th short is the only one I didn't like at all, all the rest had there moments some the vampire, and the final two I really liked SO this is recommended if you are not burned out on the found footage thing , which i think this demonstrated still has some life in it yet.

the Tall-man

The Tall Man flies a false flag of sorts to market it's self as a horror movie.More often than not finds it's self walking the line closer to thriller.I almost didn't covr it for this reason, but figured I might as well to clear the air that this isn't a horror movie, though dark enough in some sense for me to go ahead and finish reviewing it.

To it's credit a scene that would be the big finisher for most movies happen at the thirty minute mark I ask what are they going to do for the next hour and a half is a good sign plot wise.Sure they screaming your child who was abducted's name while you follow a trail into the woods, is stupid victim thinking.

Then the movie fakes making you think it's a bad town conspiracy, so you re-adjust your expectations and say o.k here's what we are going with. This creates tension not scares and gets as close to Jessica Biel getting naked as we come to in this one when she changes out of her dirty/bloodied clothes.

Then the chase scene where we think we see one of the bad guys revealed and Biel is captured in a run down building which is shot in sufficient creepy effect. Here is where the tone shifts and the director remains hazy in how they wanted to communicate this. For a minute you think wait is this person just crazy is this for real and that tone continues.

Once the big twist occurs it does flip the movie up side down but once the supposed bad guy is revealed and not really reviled it slows down into what could be any crime/mystery/thriller as when Jessica Biel's character under goes this change the essence for her character changes tonally in way that just doesn't make sense.

The narrative shift at the end of the movie is a similar misstep, while it works with "the Lovely Bones" a movie this shares a few commonalities with , it's not really effective here.

The reason I kept watching this movie after a point was is the Tall Character ever going to reappear of be further explored. When one character says she wants to meet him, this is not fleshed out until later on and turns out to be a disappointment. I thought going into this a movie based on the Slender-man urban legend would be cool and creepy, while this is referenced early on in a bait and switch manner if you want anything paranormal this is not the movie for you . there is not a single supernatural element in this and as the movie unwinds it makes me wonder why the stuff with the dog truck guy even happened even though it was the best part of the film.

In interviews for "Total Recall" I wondered why she didn't say anything to promote this film and now that I made it all the way through I think I understand, not sure if this is getting a theatrical release and if it does it will be short lived so don't bother wasting your 11 dollars, it will be on USA one rainy weekend soon enough.