V/H/S/85 is the sixth installment in the found-footage anthology series. Though it peaks far too early, Daniel Rutledge still thinks this is fun enough when you set your expectations accordingly.
Early on in this latest entry into the VHS-inspired horror anthology series, I thought it might just be the best one so far. The first short is fantastic, playing very well to the franchise’s strengths and exploiting the ‘80s setting and video cassette technology shtick about as well as possible. It builds to a sequence of violence that is brilliantly handled, delivering terrific flashes of gore and not showing too much as to take away from the convincing, disturbing feel. Unfortunately, after a fake end to that short, it then continues on where it really shouldn’t have. The tone turns to something a lot more comedic, the effects earlier only briefly displayed onscreen are lingered on much longer and a lot of the good work is undone. Sigh.
After the opener from Mike P. Nelson we get the usual hodge podge of fairly good but mostly average horror shorts the V/H/S franchise has become reliable for with its later releases. Gigi Saul Guerrero’s is a cool Mexican disaster movie that turns into a supernatural shocker, while Scott Derrickson’s has a couple of brutal home invasion knife murders from the POV of the killer. Then there’s others, including Natasha Kermani’s which has an annoying preacher type and frequent jokes about “eye phones” and a “techno glove”, poking fun at retro-futurology in that way that simply isn’t as funny as watching YouTube clips of the genuine stuff it’s parodying. David Bruckner’s wraparound story follows scientists observing some sort of alien, or a wildly mutated child – this one again is great in the build-up, but disappointing in the pay-off.
If you love the nostalgia of VHS era horror this of course scratches that itch. It is fun, the novelty not yet having worn off at least for this child of the 80s and 90s. I really like the way V/H/S/85 emulates a video on which someone has taped over older recordings many times, as well as a few references to Beta and other effects that pay tribute to the years we spent with the VHS format. Also, this film definitely does not skimp on the splatter. Each and every short serves up the bloody goods, which makes it worth a watch for certain horror fans regardless of much else. But none of the shorts are ultimately memorable and none reach the heights of what the first one came so close to achieving, nor the heights the franchise has reached in previous entries.
I do wish the humour was toned down in this series. It’s weakest in its comedy, and much stronger when it’s going nasty and grimy. But look, perhaps I shouldn’t be so critical. Perhaps one goes into this sort of direct-to-streaming anthology type of thing with low expectations anyway. I didn’t find any of these shorts offensively shit, which is important. Thanks to the nostalgic value and the decent violence, with the right group of friends and a few drinks this could make for a good night in which the dreary humour would be far more tolerable. It’s just the wasted opportunity of how good this could have been leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
