The V/H/S Thread

[thecolorsblend]

The V/H/S in question relates to the movie series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V/H/S

It has nothing to do with the VHS home video format... except for the fact that VHS cassette tapes do figure rather prominently into the films.

In any case, I really enjoy this horror franchise. Each film is an anthology that features multiple stories. I'm a sucker for anthology films. So, a franchise consisting (primarily) of anthologies works just fine for me.

Some of these stories have been spun off into feature-length standalone films of their own.

SiREN is one of them, which is based on "Amateur Night" from the first V/H/S film. Honestly, I think "Amateur Night" tells a much scarier and more enjoyable story.

Kids vs. Aliens is the other, which is based on "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" from V/H/S 2. I haven't seen Kids vs. Aliens yet, however, so I can't comment on its quality.

Anyway, are there any other V/H/S fans in the house? Or am I all alone on this one?

[Silver Nemesis]

I saw the first two V/H/S movies years ago, but I wasn't keen on either. And that's despite me being a fan of horror anthologies. The only V/H/S segment that stood out to me was the one directed by Gareth Evans about the Indonesian cult. That was eerily effective and had a strong Silent Hill vibe that set it apart from the rest. But I didn't find the other segments particularly memorable.

Horror anthologies tend to work best when there's a twist at the end of each tale, and the twist should typically have a moralistic aspect where some wrongdoing the protagonist committed earlier in the story comes back to bite them later on. Amicus Productions were the masters of this type of anthology. From what I recall, most of the V/H/S stories didn't have twists, and the few that did just pulled the twists out of nowhere without adequately foreshadowing them.

The stories were of the 'some stuff that happens' variety, usually ending in violence. The filmmakers were focused more on the technical aspects, the blocking and first-person photography – which was admittedly well staged – than they were on writing and plot. The resulting movies were watchable enough, but they didn't stay with me afterwards or make me want to revisit them.

The found footage format in general is very hard to get right. There are two found footage films that I love and watch every year around Halloween, and those are Ghostwatch (1992) and The Blair Witch Project (1999). TBWP is the best example I can think of to illustrate why found footage films are so difficult to pull off.

Firstly, the camera in a found-footage film is a diegetic element within the story, and as such its presence and movements much be accounted for in a believable manner. The easiest way of getting around this now is to fit your protagonist with some sort of body cam. But if the camera is handheld, as is the case in most found-footage movies, then its movements are harder to justify. If it moves smoothly like any ordinary film camera, that spoils the element of realism.

When Heather runs in terror in TBWP, she doesn't capture the source of her fear with perfect focus. Instead she waves the camera all over the place as any frantic person would. It's disorientating for the viewer, but it's believable. Contrast that with Rec (2007), in which the protagonist is constantly looking over his shoulder as he's running for his life so he can record the flesh-eating zombies pursuing him. Only he isn't just looking over his shoulder; what he's actually doing, within the story, is pointing the camera over his shoulder. Who would do that in a frantic life or death situation?

There's also the issue of why the characters are filming to begin with. TBWP gives us three plausible reasons: 1) they're making a documentary: 2) they don't own the recording equipment, and thus have to keep lugging it around so they can get it back to its rightful owners; 3) the psychological reason, which brings me to my next point.

Is it psychologically believable that the protagonist in a found-footage film would continue recording after the horror escalates? We know from real life that there's no shortage of people with phone cameras ready to document any event. But when the violence starts, and their lives are in danger, would they continue to stand there recording or would they run? This problem is most noticeable during scenes of violence, where the camera will often zoom in on the gory special effects (George Romero's Diary of the Dead (2007) contains several examples of this). The filmmakers obviously want to capture the effects on camera, but would the character in the story really zoom in on their best friend's injuries as he or she is being brutally killed?

TBWP gives a credible psychological reason for why Heather continues filming after things turn sour: she's a control freak who can't admit that she's wrong, and she wants to maintain the illusion that she's still in charge of the project. She has to keep viewing the situation through her camera lens so she can go on pretending it's all part of her documentary. As Josh says, she's creating a "filtered reality" that allows her to emotionally distance herself from the real horror of what's happening to her crew.

Most found-footage films don't offer a comparable explanation for why their protagonists go on recording. They might supply an explanation for why they're filming at the start – maybe it's a holiday video, or a news report – but there usually comes a point where, if this was real life, the cameraman or woman would stop recording and focus on staying alive. The fact they go on recording beyond this point, capturing every special effect with gruesome clarity, undermines the technical premise and makes it feel like a handheld camera sequence in an ordinary horror movie.

Another factor is the believability of the acting and dialogue. Too many found-footage films have mannered acting that undermines the verisimilitude. In TBWP the actors were genuinely cold, tired and hungry, and their performances were entirely improvised. The result is totally believable. The naturalness of their unscripted acting, with its messy overlapping dialogue, matches the naturalness of the photography. The acting in most found-footage films isn't improvised, and consequently feels incongruous with the cinéma vérité approach to the audio and visuals.

The final point I'd like to make concerns the realism of the imagery. If you go to the effort of creating a film with an authentically pseudo-amateur look, but you then confront the viewer with an image that clearly isn't real, it again undermines the verisimilitude. This is why I don't think something like Cloverfield (2008) really works.

By comparison, TBWP doesn't confront the viewer with anything overtly unreal. The movie is full of haunting imagery – the October woods steeped in autumn leaves, the stick figures hanging from the trees, and the handprints stamped on the walls of the abandoned house – but none of those things are explicitly fantastical, and so the visual realism is never compromised. Compare that with the finale of Blair Witch (2016), where an absurd CGI witch with elongated limbs appears on camera, and the efficacy of restraint is made painfully obvious.

Anyway, sorry for this long rambling post. I don't have much to say about the V/H/S series, so I thought I'd share my critique of the found footage medium in general. When it's done right, the results are frighteningly real. But most of the time it isn't done right, for the reasons I've outlined.

[thecolorsblend]

Those are all fair points. Also, the novelty of the found footage format isn't as fresh as it once was.

But something else that we should consider when it comes to found footage is technology.

BWP is set in 1994. If you were producing an indie documentary in 1994 (or 1999), that's just about how it would look. The film stock would probably cheap 16mm, the camera(s) wouldn't be the finest available, the sound equipment might be all or mostly analog, etc.

The technology used to film BWP is a major aspect of the film's creative success.

Thing is, it's not the Nineties anymore. As a result, a found footage film can't look like BWP anymore (unless it's also set in the Nineties or something).

A good example of what I mean is Paranormal Activity: Next Of Kin. Now, I enjoy the movie overall. It's a fun little low calorie horror movie. I sort of like the PA series in general. So, not very much of NOK is a deal-breaker for me.

And yet, Paranormal Activity: Next Of Kin takes modern tech into account. Namely, iPhones, drones, etc. You can make a much better and much higher quality film (documentary or not) using those tools than anything that Heather (as a fictional character) could've envisioned in 1994.

And that technology does (or should) have an impact on the story that's being told. First, there's the mandatory cut that must happen between someone holding his iPhone to attaching the iPhone to a drone to get aerial footage that BWP never could've afforded to do.

There's also the pierced illusion that accompanies that. The instant the drone takes off, the audience will sense that safety and survival are now possibilities. It tends to undermine the threat of whatever's going on in the film. They have iPhones, so they can call for help if need be. They have drones, so they can tell how far away (or close) the danger might be.

Again, I enjoy Paranormal Activity: Next Of Kin. But I would never argue that it's the best entry in the franchise.

To this all back, the reason V/H/S works for me is because sometimes the movies include framing characters to watch the VHS videos. Often, these characters deserve what's about to happen to them. But aside from all those things, they're just fun little horror shorts cobbled together and I enjoy them.

[Silver Nemesis]

But something else that we should consider when it comes to found footage is technology.

BWP is set in 1994. If you were producing an indie documentary in 1994 (or 1999), that's just about how it would look. The film stock would probably cheap 16mm, the camera(s) wouldn't be the finest available, the sound equipment might be all or mostly analog, etc.

The technology used to film BWP is a major aspect of the film's creative success.

Thing is, it's not the Nineties anymore. As a result, a found footage film can't look like BWP anymore (unless it's also set in the Nineties or something).

This is perhaps the biggest problem facing directors of modern found-footage films. Nowadays the average phone can record at such high quality that the footage loses the stamp of realism. If I were making a found-footage film in 2023, I'd set it in a previous decade and then digitally degrade the film. Using retro film stock (or modern film made to look retro, as the case may be) worked extremely well in Sinister (2012). The Super 8 mm sequences are by far the most disturbing parts of that movie. The unsettling music plays a big part in that, but the grainy film stock is also significant as it makes the audience feel as though they're watching real snuff films. Would those sequences have felt as real if they'd been shot more clearly with a modern digital camera? I doubt it. Of course that would've been anachronistic in the context of the story anyway.

Again, I enjoy Paranormal Activity: Next Of Kin. But I would never argue that it's the best entry in the franchise.

I'm afraid I didn't make it that far into the Paranormal Activity series. I liked the original movie a lot when it first came out, but I haven't seen it in years and don't know how well it holds up. I saw Paranormal Activity 2, 3, 4 and 5, but I didn't like any of them. I gave up on the series after that.

One example of a found-footage film which isn't realistic, and which violates almost all of the rules I mentioned in my previous post, but which I still enjoy, is As Above, So Below (2014). I don't know if anyone else on the site has seen this, but it's an enjoyable adventure-horror hybrid that utilises the found footage format to claustrophobic effect.

The plot concerns a Lara Croft-type adventurer who unwisely goes searching for the philosopher's stone in the catacombs beneath Paris. As she and her companions descend deeper underground, they find reality itself warping into a nightmare of hellish proportions. It's like a cross between The Divine Comedy, Indiana Jones and The Blair Witch Project.

Call it a guilty pleasure if you like, but it's a fun movie that's a lot more imaginative than your average found-footage flick. It's not remotely convincing as 'found footage', but it holds up surprisingly well on repeated viewings.