20131109: Horror Review--VHS 2

V/H/S/2

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, rated R, 95 minutes,
2. IMDB: 6.1/10.0 from 10,042 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 72% on the meter; 56% liked it from 7,954 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 80,326 audience ratings.
5. 'Two private eyes investigating the disappearance of a student discover horrific content on a collection of VHS tapes in his home.'
6. Directed by: Simon Barrett.
7. Starring: Lawrence Michael Levine as Larry, Kelsey Abbot as Ayesha, L. C. Holt as Kyle, Simon Barrett as Steve, Mindy Robinson as Tabitha, Monica Sanchez Navarro as Hotel Maid.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Tape 49
2. Two PIs (Larry, Ayesha) investigate the disappearance of a student.  They encounter masses of VHS tape and other media to traverse to look for clues.


3. Phase I Clinical Trials----Ayesha watches this one.
4. A man has a bionic eye implanted.  Great, a new type of anti-steady camera.  The company who is testing it records every thing he does.  When he gets home, things go bump in the night.


5. A Ride in the Park----Ayesha watches this one as well; Larry continues with the kid's notebooks.  They agree that the kid on the tape is the client's target.
6. Yet another fool.  This one listens to loud music while biking in a wooded park.  He has a web-cam on his safety helmet.  Why have a safety helmet if you choose to ignore all auditory clues to your environment?  Makes as much sense and listening to loud music while driving.  He gets attacked by zombies.  End of interest.  I've seen much better zombie material.


7. Safe Haven-----After the zombie tape, Ayesha has a nosebleed, but has left her meds at home.  Larry goes to get something for her at a nearby drugstore.  This seems like a mistake.
8. Set in Indonesia.  Intrepid journalists observe a cult and interview its members for possibly improprieties and or felonies.  The lead, Malik, is engaged to Lena, but she has gotten pregnant by another man in the crew, Adam.  What could possibly go wrong?  The celebration of cliches is strong here.  Mass suicide, zombies, demons, cults, gore fest.


9. Slumber Party Alien Abduction---Larry returns with OTC painkillers, but Ayesha has shot herself.  Oi.  Instead of calling the paramedics or the cops, Larry looks at a VHS tape near Ayesha scrawled with 'WATCH'.
10. Family of four in the slightly upscale suburbs.  Late teen daughter, early teen son.  Mom and Dad leave, friends of both children arrive.  The house is near a lake; hijinks with water (pistols loaded with urine, water balloons, splashing) ensue.  Younger group is put down, but not all that harshly.
11. Later, the younger group crash one of the couples starting intercourse.  Sigh. Reprisals are inevitable by the older teens.
12. In the middle of this, the bumps in the night start, and any originality vanished.  This time the cliche is alien abduction, and it is done badly.  Worst looking aliens I have seen in years.


13. Tape 49 wrap up: Larry finds his client's target, plus he and Ayesha find their places in the tapes.


3. Conclusions
1. Netflix review: 'Low budget, not as weird as vhs1, In comparison, gory replaces creepy and thematically it's unforgivably unimaginative.'
2. That covers a lot of the comparison.  The other part would be that VHS2 had close to acceptable video and audio.
3. One line summary: One hundred times better than V/H/S, but still a mediocre zombie movie.
4. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 So much better than VHS since many minutes were shot with stationary cameras of reasonable quality.  Still, there were also many minutes of hand-held but not steady-cam.  Weak focus, lighting, framing, and so on.


2. Sound: 7/10 Reasonable, but sometimes as bad as the weaker parts of the video.


3. Acting: 6/10 There was some acting here, as opposed to V/H/S.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 The stories were better since I could make out what was going on.  The difference with V/H/S was more about better equipment, and better acting, not about better writing.