(– ***Spoilers For All The Above*** –)
Yet the stories themselves felt lacking this time around, while full of gore, retaining the series creep factor, and providing plenty of jump scares, I felt the absence of my own confusion I experienced while watching most of VHS. Specifically Amateur Night and The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, both are chalk full of craziness that made me fall in love with the film. The sequel is skimp on the weird factor, and high on the random. Random in terms of some of the images and villain motive and operation. The stories themselves are also generic, not in content but in form. There are no real surprises in the order of events, and segments seem hell bent on getting to the end, getting to the money shot, rather than setting up the audience anticipation, or giving the viewer an opportunity to care for the characters. Most successful in this capacity is A Ride in the Park and Slumber Party Alien Abduction, both of which are my favorite segments from this sequel.
Unfortunately there are no curve balls thrown, so no real suspense is built. The dialogue is spotty and the performances are passable, both of which were problems that afflicted the original but were forgivable due to the oddity of the material. The sequels problem is not being interesting enough to forgive the poor delivery of poor dialogue. None of this is in detriment for this film in having all the elements for an entertaining and joyful movie, and achieving that goal. I look forward to the next one.
The first segment is Tape 49 and is about some kind of private eye, I was instantly reminded of Bored to death, searching for a missing college student. He and his friend or girlfriend, it is never really addressed, break into a house and find a similar setup of screens and computers and tapes from the original film. It is a different house however, and this initial scene is quite creepy. Of course the guy leaves his companion in the room in order for him to search the house for its owners presumably, and her to watch the tapes to perhaps find clues to his whereabouts. They find a video of the kid in question and decide not to watch it, while he continues searching the home and she watch other vhs tapes. The first she pops in is Phase 1 Clinical Trials, which has all the makings of an insane ghost story, but settles for set pieces and jump scares rather than fully delve into the quite interesting story. There is zero character development and we are left with a decent opener but a story lacking any depth or true fear or audience investment.
The second tape is the aforementioned A Ride in the Park. The most innovated segment, it is a fresh way of telling a zombie story, from the perspective of a person, whom we witness turn into a zombie and then precede to accompany him on a zombie attack. The ingenious camera placement provides this segment and film with an ingenious device and opportunity to reveal something quite interesting in the zombie lore. At one point the Zombie becomes aware of itself and we almost feel sorry for it. At the very least we understand his plight, his thought process. Unfortunately it’s a straightforward conventional story and we have no surprises to take this segment to the next level.
The third tape is Safe Haven a story involving a cult and a compound, this is the strangest and most insane segment of them all, but that also lends it to the randomness and the unconnectedness of the events and motivations. What the cult leader says he is doing at the beginning does not actually match up with what he actually does. The segment is eerie and disturbing and even realistic and believable but I never felt a sense of cohesion to the whole affair. It does however provide a hint of sorts as to an interesting cause to the events taking place in the entire world of VHS, in that the cult leader may have spawned some of the events. Again excellent staging and editing and effects and set design and cinematography, but the story was lacking and again, not a lot of surprises to be found.
The last segment is Slumber Party Alien Abduction, which is a gorgeous portrayal of exactly what the title suggests. The images are brilliantly blocked and framed and the creeping terror builds in a way unlike I have seen portrayed on film. We see the aliens and also hear them before the actors can. It’s a jarring and surprising effect but not really used to enhance the story or the plot. Beautiful colors and sound design make the invasion quite effective and believable. Some of the actions of the characters are unbelievable and is a problem throughout this film, but everything looks so great, all of the segments are frightening to a degree, and deliver the promises made by watching a film like this, however they lack the quirkiness of the first of which I was quite fond.
3 out of 5 stars
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