Review: V/H/S/85

Directors:  Scott Derrickson, David Bruckner, Mike P. Nelson, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Natasha Kermani

Stars:  Freddy Rodriguez, James Ransone, Chivonne Michelle

After years in the streaming wilderness, the V/H/S movies have found a new and steady home on Shudder, with fresh entries in the anthology series becoming a Halloween mainstay. Yet these recent iterations – V/H/S/94 and 99 respectively – marked a concerted drift away from darkly sour found footage bad moods toward more trashy or fantastic splatter essays.

The title of this collection suggests an overt effort to ape some of the staples of the technology’s golden era, and that certainly feels true for Mike P Nelson’s opening story “No Wake”, which offers a riff on the ’80s lakeside slasher movie, one that actually feels refreshingly authentic. Nelson resists the urge to lean hard on fashions and hairstyles to evoke era, letting self-imposed restrictions of filming and his location do a majority of the heavy-lifting for him.

Nelson’s yarn feels like a holiday home movie turned bad, as a group of barely-sketched partying young adults fall foul of a mysterious sniper while out boating on the lake, only to find themselves in a far freakier supernatural predicament. It collides the gleefully gloopy with a situation that’s genuinely frightening.

The first ‘complete’ short is from Gigi Saul Guerrero; a seasoned director of horror shorts and television episodes who here presents “God of Death” in which a Mexican news broadcast is interrupted by a studio shattering earthquake; itself a harbinger of more apocalyptic disasters to come. As with Nelson’s opener, Guerrero mines a terrifying real-world possibility then uses this as a springboard to orchestrate wilder, gorier material. Both engender a sense of events spiralling out of the control of their respective character sets, both veering into zombified new realities. V/H/S/85 takes place in a chaotic world in which natural law cannot be assumed. Her short recalls Chloe Okuno’s cavernous “Storm Drain”, and Guerrero herself cameos as roving reporter Gabriela.

Longtime series producer/contributor David Bruckner contributes a more sinuous wraparound that recurs between stories. Set within some murky institution that has a sinister test subject named Rory, Bruckner’s “Total Copy” has shades of James Wan’s Malignant about it. Which is, of course, the highest praise possible. You almost begrudge the constant interruptions.

The next of which is Natasha Kermani’s “TKNOGD”. Kermani is similarly well-versed in the genre with over a decade of shorts and TV entries behind her. “TKNOGD” represents a welcome shift in tone and form, manifesting as a taped seminar-cum-performance art piece in which some virtual reality kit is presented while Chivonne Michelle holds court on stage as prognosticator of doom Ada Lovelace. No doubt enhanced by the nature of the performance, Michelle remains the standout player in this set of offerings, while Kermani’s piece overall lovingly embraces the vibe of any number of made-for-TV technophobic thrillers that surfaced in the run-up to the millennium. It’s a trash genre unto itself. Still, “TKNOGD” links back to Guerrero’s “God of Death” in its presentation of a monstrous deity existing just at the periphery of our perception.

Following this we reconvene with Nelson for the other side of his sinister sniper project. In this second segment of the story, Nelson switches venues to affluent suburbia, where benign family festivities are revealed as a front for some kind of far-right death cult. It feels like a natural extension of some of the ground Nelson covered in his remix of the Wrong Turn property a couple of years ago, suggesting a preoccupation with dark enclaves that exist in plain sight in society.

Sinister and The Black Phone director Scott Derrickson is probably the biggest ‘get’ the series has had thus far. He brings recognisable faces Freddy Rodriguez and James Ransone along for the ride, presenting “Dreamkill”, and their arrival seems to cement a change in manifesto for the franchise. Where V/H/S used to be a space for largely unseen talent, its latter entries and particularly this one exist to allow already-established names to flex creatively between projects. Derrickson’s segment kicks off with some of the same POV dread that powered the film reels discovered by Ethan Hawke’s character in Sinister, while also channelling the eerier elements of Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Once the stars arrive, however, it assumes a more knowing tone, and comes to feel like a parody of better projects. Neighbourhood prowlers seem to weigh heavy on Derrickson’s mind. Still, the unease of his POV work feels like subversive access to snuff footage, making “Dreamkill” some of the most chilling work of his career.

For the most part all sections of V/H/S/85 play their shocks and schlock straight, reigning the series in from the sense of goof that typified the last entry (Bruckner’s closing section of “Total Copy” does make room for one great gag and it plays well). With this more judicious balancing act in mind, this latest set amounts to a marked return to form even if, in the process, V/H/S has let go of some of the championing spirit that made it a worthwhile fixture in the first place.