‘V/H/S/99’: An Average Yet Inoffensive Shudder Offering
V/H/S/99 is the fifth instalment in the found-footage horror anthology V/H/S series. While there is certainly some content to enjoy, overall, this latest outing fails to do anything new or notable.
The V/H/S series is produced by the pop culture horror entertainment studio Bloody Disgusting, and has its roots in 2012 with the premier film’s wide release after a Sundance Film Festival debut earlier that year. The series is widely known for the diversity of talent it attracts behind the camera, from no-name debut filmmakers to cult horror icons to big-budget movie directors, and along with the previous film, have debuted as original content on the horror-based streaming service Shudder.
V/H/S/99 tells five original horror tales that take the audience back to the titular year of 1999, a time in the fledgling years of analog home media, and a time of mass uncertainty and uneasiness at the impending second millennium. The film originally debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and was subsequently featured in Fantastic Fest this September.
Unlike the previous installments in the V/H/S franchise, V/H/S/99 does not feature a frame story to tie the different segments together. Instead, the film features a loosely-connected sequence of darkly comedic stop-motion films narrated by a young male character as a sort of intermission. This bold creative choice does ultimately weaken V/H/S/99, especially relative to its franchise brethren, by making the film as a whole feel less cohesive and cinematic.
V/H/S/99 begins with its first segment, simply titled Shredding, written and directed by Maggie Levin. Shredding introduces a group of teenagers in a punk rock garage band called “RACK.” While vlogging day-in-the-life band antics, the group decides to sneak into an abandoned concert venue that was the site of a mysterious electrical fire that killed the members of their favorite punk band during a live show years prior. While there, they encounter a performance from beyond the grave that they will never forget.
Shredding is very much a love letter to that 90s era of punk rock; from the featured music choice to the fashion style and lingo of the main characters, everything about this film screams nineties and is thus fitting in this anthology. The segment also features some ghoulish and macabre makeup and practical effects to bolster its more horrific elements.
While absolutely nailing the 90s punk rock aesthetic, Shredding is held back in many other regards within this film. Aside from the aforementioned gruesome makeup, there is not much else here that makes it particularly horrifying or a worthwhile segment. The performances are mediocre at best, and there is little ability to compellingly convey genuine fright. The characters are also all written to be hooligans and ne’er-do-wells, thus they are insufferable and wholly unlikable. The segment also lacks a real narrative build; nothing of substance happens for the majority of the segment, only for the horror and supernatural to be flung full-force at the viewer in the last couple of minutes until an abrupt end.
The next segment, titled Suicide Bid, was written and directed by Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey at Night, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City). Suicide Bid features Lily, a college freshman, who agrees to participate in a hazing ritual for her dream sorority that involves her spending the night buried in a coffin inside a graveyard, with only the lingering thought of a haunting urban legend to comfort her.
This segment refreshingly featured much-improved acting and performances from the previous segment. The main girls in this segment do a decent job at acting, especially our main character played by Alexia Ioannides. Suicide Bid features some very poignant commentary on Greek life at American universities, and explores how far people are willing to go in order to feel accepted and included. Unfortunately, Suicide Bid tells a story that seems far too real at college campuses across the country.
Suicide Bid succeeds at being eerie and uncomfortable in parts, and begins to evoke feelings of claustrophobia kicking in with the shots within the coffin. However, it loses most of its claustrophobic tension when it makes the deliberate choice to continue to cut between Lily in the coffin and the sorority sisters at the surface. These cuts seem to happen at the wrong times, just when it felt like the restlessness of being trapped within the earth begins to settle in.
Suicide Bid also features a look at the urban legend come to life with the ghost of a deceased sorority sister who died in a similar hazing ritual, that provides some jump scares to the segment, but the makeup and effects on the ghoul looks too cheap like a Halloween costume and does not seem to make much sense in the continuity of the segment. Given that the nature of these segments are that they are recorded found-footage, it does not make sense to incorporate what appears to be a hallucination of Lily’s onto the video tape.
Suicide Bid features competent acting, a relevant social message, and provides some unease and uncomfortablity with its fearful setting, but ultimately cheapens its own gimmick and keeps itself from being truly effective.
The middle segment of V/H/S/99 is entitled Ozzy’s Dungeon, and was written by Zoe Cooper and American record producer Flying Lotus, and was directed by Flying Lotus himself.
Ozzy’s Dungeon concerns a spoof of the real-life popular American game show Legends of the Hidden Temple that promises a free wish granted to whoever can complete the seemingly-impossible final obstacle course. After a young girl severely injures herself while competing and being denied her chance at a free wish, her spurned family devises a devilish plan to kidnap the show’s host (played by Steven Ogg) and put him through their own homemade game show from Hell in order to receive it.
Ozzy’s Dungeon is a frustrating watch for the horror fan. Almost the entire first half of the segment is devoted to showcasing the nature of the titular game show through clips from fictional episodes in the program. None of these feature anything particularly horrific or scary, at best merely mildly gross or unsettling. Then in the second half, it starts to dive more into the horror genre but still loses itself in its zaniness.
There is no doubt that Ozzy’s Dungeon is full of energy, but with the energy comes a lot of unneeded camp that made the entire segment come off as a little too over-stylized, over-the-top, and wacky. Despite all this, however, its conclusion leads into some revelations that actually work for a very interesting concept that leaves the viewer wanting more, and wishing that this had been a larger focus in the story as a whole instead of pushed to the very back burner at the expense of comedy.
The penultimate segment in V/H/S/99 is entitled The Gawkers, written by Chris Lee Hill and Tyler MacIntyre and directed by Tyler MacIntyre. The Gawkers follows a group of hormonal young teens, already in the habit of stalking and filming their crush next door, who decide to launch their voyeurism into the digital age and install spyware into her webcam, only to uncover her sinister secret.
The Gawkers is easily the best segment in V/H/S/99. The segment works on many levels: it has a creative concept reminiscent of the fan-favorite Amateur Night segment from the original V/H/S, it features clever foreshadowing and the layering of details and clues to its ultimate mystery, it features protagonists who succeed in being believable for their characters, and it delivers some quality frights with creepy visuals and monster effects.
The stars of the segment are all hooligans and act completely obnoxious, but the actors pull it off in a believable way harkening back to the days of being a suburban preteen hanging out with our friends. Another thing to appreciate about The Gawkers is how witty the revelations within are in lieu of the title and the central messaging of the segment, making it all the more thematically-rich of a segment all thanks to the quality writing.
The fifth and final segment of the film is titled To Hell and Back, co-written and co-directed by duo Vanessa & Joseph Winter. The segment follows a skeptical film crew documenting a doomsday cult attempting to summon a demon at the stroke of midnight on Y2K, only for things to go horribly wrong and the crew being sent to Hell instead.
On its surface, the concept of To Hell and Back is a brilliant one. The segment actually spends the majority of its runtime inside Hell, as the main protagonists attempt to locate the demon that can get them back to Earth, and this setting provides room for some very creepy visuals and characters. To Hell and Back does have great demon makeup and effects that are effective and terrifying. One prominent feature that works well is the presence of an overarching demon (presumably Satan) in the background of some of the exterior wide shots, shown only in shadow and vague outline but a spine-tingling presence as always.
What holds this segment back from all this is a frustratingly campy and comedic tone. Most of the scenes are spoiled with slapstick and injected humor that has no place in literal Hell. The main two characters stuck inside the fiery domain are unbelievably annoying and their banter back-and-forth gets insufferable with how much corny humor is trying to be wedged in. What makes this even worse is the weak performances being given to deliver these lines that offer nothing to make them feel organic or genuine.
To Hell and Back starts off with such a promising setup, and features many elements that would have made this arguably the scariest and most horrific of the bunch, but it undercuts itself at nearly every turn making this segment out to be basically a cheap campy comedy of lost potential.
Overall, V/H/S/99 is an inoffensive instalment in the franchise that is not nearly the best, but also not the worst overall film yet, that features some segments which are genuinely horrific and effective, but offset by others that are disappointing and mediocre.