V/H/S 2 & Resolution

V/H/S 2 (2013)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: 7 different guys! This is a horror anthology

Starring: A bunch of low-budget or microbudget actors no one would have heard of before.

From: The Collective

Resolution (2012)

Runtime: 93 minutes

Directed by: Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead

Starring: Peter Cilella, Vinny Curran, Zahn McClaron, Bill Oberst, Jr.

From: Tribeca Film

First, I'll be talking about the V/H/S sequel then I'll get into Resolution; both are horror-related so reviewing both at once makes sense. For both I'll give some brief thoughts, then give a plot synopsis then copy and paste what I said about the movies on Letterboxd. I will return tomorrow night, hopefully with a movie I actually enjoyed watching.

I reviewed the first V/H/S (review here) and I did not like it. When I heard they were rushing a sequel into production I thought that was a bad sign, but when seemingly everyone bellowed loudly how the sequel was “much better”, I actually believed them and thought that'd be the case. Well...

From the IMDb: "Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into his house and find collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's disappearance."

Here's another review from me where I'll go against the popular opinion. I never seek out the opportunities to do such a thing; it just happens sometimes.

To clarify, I've seen the first V/H/S before and I thought it was pretty bad; there was a cool segment and one that had its moments but otherwise the movie was hot garbage, filled with loathsome protagonists (or as I'd like to call them, asstagonists). Most people I heard said something to the effect that this was “a noted improvement” and went wild over the long segment directed by Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto, so I figured I would think the same way and that's why I watched it last night on Instant.

Unfortunately, I have to rate this the same as I did the first one, i.e. pretty low. The movie's segments made no sense in general (and I am not talking about the usual trappings of the found footage genre) and once again, the segments are full of asstagonists.

The overarching story was just bad and made zero sense at all.

The segment with the fake eye started off OK then just got way confused and just turned pretty bad.

The zombie GoPro segment was actually by far the best segment in my opinion. It was a simple idea and while the ending makes me wonder which version of the zombie mythology they were following, overall it was an amusing idea and I was entertained.

The much hyped Safe Haven segment (the one from Gareth and Timo)... I thought it was awful! I have no comprehension why everyone else loves it besides me; was everyone blinded by all the gore and bloodshed? I suppose so. Again, things are nonsensical and you want to talk about protagonists I couldn't stand, these A-holes who were the documentary filmmakers doing a piece on an Indonesian cult, they were not only complete D-bags who treated each other awfully and end up rolling out some bad cliche moments, but they are brutally inept and buffoons at their job! This was just crap all around and I'm wondering if there's an Emperor With No Clothes going on with this... which I can also say about the massively overrated The Raid 2...

The last segment... oh boy, even more asstagonists and this time it's teenagers or prepubescent children acting REALLY terribly and constantly dropping F-bombs; I'd rather not even say anything else about the segment or those pieces of crap to be honest.

When I first heard they super-rushed this into production I took it as a bad sign and I should have listened to that initial instinct. I sure as heck know that as they're super-rushing a third one into production I won't be watching it nor any other sequels no matter what strong praise I hear about it from everyone else. I don't even have a general problem with the found footage genre; I do have problems with stuff that apparently pleases easy to please people (no offense to my followers who actually enjoyed this) and is just bad filmmaking and the type of horror I'd rather not see.

Now, onto Resolution.

Here's another highly regarded film (on messageboards and even horror movie websites) that's on Instant and I hadn't seen before so I decided to check out on Instant. Turns out, I would rather have watched V/H/S 2 again than see this once! I just had no idea...

From the IMDb: “A man, looking to save his best friend from the throes of methamphetamine addiction, ties him up in an abandoned cabin and induces withdrawal.” Needless to say things go wrong.

Here's a movie I've known about for awhile, due to various people on messageboards and even horror movie websites praising it to high heaven, so I figured I should give it a chance. I knew little about it going in. Come to think of it, if I did know more than I probably wouldn't have watched it in the first place. Yeah, sad to say this is yet another review where I have to disagree with the general opinion.

In short this is about a man who goes to a cabin in the woods to make his meth head friend go cold turkey and stop the drug. Stuff happens and it's not so much a horror film except for the source of what's causing some odd things to happen there; once you find out what it is... I am sure most will disagree but it made me roll my eyes and sigh in disgust as it was not a satisfying payoff to the misery of having to watch this; to be perfectly honest if it wasn't me wanting to review it for this site I would have turned it off rather early. That's pretty bad for a movie called Resolution to have a bad resolution.

You see, it did not take long to see that I would hate EVERYONE in the movie. No exaggeration. By far the worst offender is the disgusting drug addict piece of crap. I am far from a prude and I am not someone who is against people speaking vulgarities. But just about every sentence that A-hole said had at least one instance of the F-bomb! He had to have said it about 300 or 400 times during the movie, no lie. When I speculate if Scorsese, Tarantino or Rob Zombie would go, "Hey now you guys! You're using the F word way too much here!", that's a problem.

This movie just rubbed me the wrong way. You'll probably feel differently; personally I just don't get all the hype this got.