V/H/S 2 (2013)

Directed by: See below

Writers:  See below

 

The first V/H/S movie was pretty much a disappointment, at least given the names of some of the people involved. However, due to its anthological nature, it never got really boring, so I can't say watching it was a waste of time. Something similar goes for the sequel, but the quality of the stories varies much more here. Since there are only four stories (compared to 26 in The ABCs of Death), we'll look into each one of them briefly:

TAPE 49
(Written and directed by Simon Barrett)

The one that connects them all. Some people get into some house (which might or might not be the one from the first V/H/S, I don't remember), find some tapes and watch them. At the same time, we are made aware that something sinister is happening in the house, leading to a "shocking" twist at the end. Boring.

PHASE I CLINICAL TRIALS
(Directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett)

A filthy rich guy (played by Adam Wingard himself) gets a supercool fancy eye-camera implant, which unfortunately makes him see dead people (Haley Joel Osment, eat your heart out). He spends most of the time running around completely terrified after a huge number of jump scares, which creates some pretty funny moments. Then he's visited by a girl who hears dead people. And then bad stuff happens. This one is told completely in the first person POV, has some nice humor in it, so I guess I'd call it not bad.

A RIDE IN THE PARK
(Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, written by Jamie Nash)

A guy goes for a nice bike ride in the park, only to fall victim to some zombies. He then wakes up as a zombie, forms a zombie party with some other guys and together they crash some child's birthday party. This one is also rather funny at times and it's interesting to see the events from a perspective of a zombie (the lead character has a camera on his helmet), however it drags in places and the birthday party chaos is not nearly as effective as it could have been.

SAFE HAVEN
(Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, story by Timo Tjahjanto)

By far the best story in the movie is also one of the most insane things I've seen in a long time. A film crew somewhere in Indonesia is making a documentary about a mysterious end-of-the-world sect, led by some obviously insane bastard. First they interview that insane bastard in a café or something, where he gives them a piece of his philosophy and then they persuade him to let them visit the place where his followers abide. Big mistake! After a somewhat slow intro, this quickly turns into a bloodbath of epic proportions, where randomly crazy stuff happens every few seconds. None of it makes much sense, but I guess the directors weren't exactly concerned about that - they wanted to give us a hilarious thrill ride, and boy did they succeed! This story was co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, the director of the mightily successful Raid, and I'm so glad he gave a shot at directing a horror. Let's hope he does a full feature one after Raid 2.

SLUMBER PARTY ALIEN ABDUCTION
(Directed by Jason Eisener, written by Jason Eisener and John Davies)

Some kids are playing pranks on each other and then they are attacked by aliens and everything goes to Hell. The stupidest and most boring story of them all, it consists solely of irritating kids screaming "Oh my God, did you see that, what is that, we're gonna die, woe are us!!!!!" and pointlessly running around trying to escape some equally boring aliens. I don't know why in the heck did they put this one at the end, to ruin the entire impression. Jason Eisener had previously made a great little short called Treevenge, which had a terrific idea and execution, which makes the complete lack of imagination in this one even more surprising. 

I tre volti della paura (1963)

Directed by: Mario Bava

Writers: Marcello Fondatto, Alberto Bevilacqua, Mario Bava

 

I tre volti della paura (also known as Black Sabbath) is a horror anthology consisting of three stories directed by Mario Bava and based on literary works of Chekhov, Maupassant and Tolstoy. At least that's what the intro claims, but the IMDb and Wikipedia tell us that these are Ivan (and not Anton) Chekhov and Alexey (and not Leo) Tolstoy and they don't mention Guy de Maupassant at all, so I decided to omit this information altogether and just mention the screenwriters. The stories are as follows:

 

First, Il telefono, in which a woman is terrorized by a series of disturbing telephone calls apparently made by her ex boyfriend who freshly got out of jail (it was her testimony that put him there) and wants revenge, but not before he telephone terrorizes her a bit. He makes various kinds of threats and the woman is out of her mind, so terrified in fact that she promptly calls the polic..., no, sorry, she actually calls another woman, her former friend or lover or something. She begs her to come and make her company, even though they had a falling out long time ago. Some not entirely unpredictable plot twists ensue, resulting in some people dying. While the story is rather well directed, the acting is a bit dated and the score mostly comprises unnecessarily cheerful jazz music which effectively ruins the potential of suspense at every possible step. Watchable, but hardly memorable, it certainly has nothing on classics like When a Stranger Calls and Black Christmas.

 

The second story is called I wurdulak and is the longest and probably the most boring of the three. It is reminiscent of the Hammer horror films and takes place in 19th century Russia, where a young hero encounters an unusual family in some spooky village. They advise him to get the hell away from there because there's an imminent danger of a wurdulak attack. Of course, if he did, that would be the end of the movie, so he falls in love with one of the girls and decides to stay. At the stroke of midnight, the head of the family, played by Boris Karloff, returns after a five days absence - he had previously gone out to kill some Turkish wurdulak. What is that thing, anyway? Essentially, it's an undead creature that combines some features of vampires and zombies. The most prominent characteristic of wurdulaks is that they drink blood of the persons they loved during lifetime. Boris Karloff acts rather strange upon his return, bringing up the suspicion that he might have been wurdulaked himself, but that doesn't prevent the family from letting him stay in the house. As the night progresses, the family members demonstrate progressively more serious lack of common sense, giving the chance to the wurdulak team to thrive at their expense. This story is nicely shot and features some fine locations and it could have been almost good had the wurdulaks been made more scary (or scary at all). Unfortunately, they are a bit boring. The hero shows a serious charisma deficiency and the love story is quite silly, just as the rest of the screenplay, which features some genuine what-the-hell moments. For example, when Karloff had left the house, he had said he would be back in five days. If he's late, he's turned into wurdulak and is not to be let into the house. But he arrives exactly five days later, so his sons are at a loss as what to do. I mean, come on!

 

The third story, La goccia d'acqua, is the one that sets everything right. It's about a young nurse who has to prepare a deceased medium for the funeral, so she goes to her big and spooky house. In the process, she steals an expensive-looking ring from her finger because she won't need it where she's going, right? Wrong! You have probably seen more than enough horror movies to know what happens when you steal from the dead. Strange things promptly start to happen and the poor woman (the living one) is slowly driven to madness. This is a shining example of a haunted house story done right, where spookiness oozes from every corner, the highlight being the dead old woman herself. She is scary and disturbing when you first see her just lying motionlessly on the bed. Imagine what happens later! Don't be deceived by the fact that the movie was made in 1963 - this damn thing is scary.

 

The intro and the outro of the movie feature Boris Karloff, who acts unnecessarily silly, which is in contrast with the dead serious tone of all three stories. Overall, it's a hit and miss, but the third story is a must-see.

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Directed by: See the review

Writers: See above

You've all watched numerous films that consist of three (sometimes four) stories, but sure as heck you haven't seen twenty six different stories in one movie before! Apparently, some producer, whose name I forgot, came up with a brilliant idea to make some kind of horror alphabet - for each letter of the alphabet one short story whose title is a single word beginning with that letter. Each story was done by a different director - they were given only the letter and the title and of course the story were entirely up to them.

 

Good thing about this concept is that stories follow one another so rapidly that the movie hardly ever gets boring. The bad thing - well, it's not the fault of the concept, but the fact is that today it's hard to find twenty six (or even six) good horror directors to fill the space. Of course, it's impossible to please everyone - I could bitch about the absence of Alexandre Aja, David Bruckner, Marcus Dunstan, Darren Lynn Bousman, Hideo Nakata etc., but on the other hand I have to be pleased with the presence of Yoshihiro Nishimura and Ti West (even though he failed miserably). Even if some of them were present, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have failed miserably like Ti West.

 

OK, anyway, on to the movie itself. I won't even try to describe each story separately (I've forgotten most of them, anyway), so just a few general remarks: The quality in general is below average and the lack of good ideas is horrifying. There are no vampires, werewolves, Japanese long haired scary ghosts (even though at least four or five directors are Japanese), or even ghosts of any kind, no decent (post)apocalyptic story (even though the first one is titled A is for Apocalypse) etc. What have we instead? Two stories are actually meta-movies about their directors' lack of inspiration, at least three of them heavily feature toilets, one is about farting (directed, not surprisingly, by Noboru Iguchi), one contains masturbation competition (this one is actually well done, but it's sick beyond words), one about (and titled) orgasm, many other aren't even horror and... you get the idea. If "toilet humor" is an appropriate term to describe most of today's comedies, then "toilet horror" is sure fighting for its place in our favorite genre.

 

The style and quality vary considerably, there are "normal" stories, some of them are animated, one contains stop motion animation, some (like O is for Orgasm) are so heavily stylized that it's hard to tell what the hell's going on, some feature traditional Japanese bloodbath insanity, but it's all at best watchable and hardly anything will make you go "Wow!", except...

 

... for better or worse, there is a story called D is for Dogfight, directed by Marcel Sarmiento (previously known for Deadgirl, which was an OK movie with an interesting idea, but not terribly spectacular), which is so above everything else story-wise and execution-wise that it's simply unbelievable. It's like putting Akira Kurosawa next to Kevin Smith. The story is about some guy, obviously a prisoner of some kind, who is forced to fight with a particularly vicious dog. Some nasty people are watching, placing bets, etc. So, the fight starts, the dog is biting the man, the man is hitting the dog, you know, standard stuff, and then... something clicks between the two of them and we have what's pretty damn close to a best ending ever. I was literally overwhelmed with joy and wanted to kiss Sarmiento (in a totally non-gay way, of course) on the forehead. Story aside, you simply won't believe how well this was made. Shot almost entirely in slow motion, it features probably the most realistic man-animal fight scenes ever, with close-ups of dogs teeth biting the man's flesh, but also of the dog's head being hit by the man, all of which will probably make you extremely uncomfortable for all the right reasons. Moreover, without a single spoken word, the story will make you feel sympathy for both the man and the dog, which makes the ending even more brilliant.

 

So, what's the problem? Well, the stories go in alphabetic order, so this one is the fourth from the beginning. That means that after something that's probably one of the best short movies ever made, something so seriously and professionally devised and executed, after that glimpse of brilliance you have to sit through twenty two mostly lame half-assed uninspired attempts. It would have been better if Sarmiento hadn't been there to remind us what the true greatness looks like.