V/H/S Viral

V/H/S: Viral (2014)

Runtime: 81 minutes

Directed by: 5 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

I have seen the first two V/H/S movies before; in fact, I saw the first one again a few weeks ago so I could give it a better Letterboxd review. Yeah, those two movies I did not like at the time and still don't like now. Yet maybe I think I rated them too low after seeing this third and final installment of the V/H/S series. It was as bad as I had heard from most other people. I explain why below: 

Recently I watched the first V/H/S again so I could properly review it here. In that review I expressed how I did not like either of those movies (not even the much-heralded Safe Haven segment from the second one) and yet here I am, talking about how I saw this film, the third and (hopefully final) edition of a bad series of horror anthology pictures. Thing is, the first two at least had a segment or two that was at least halfway worthwhile. This, it doesn't even have that. This was a gigantic waste of time with nothing redeeming. Let me talk about the stories:

The wraparound story, known as Vicious Circles: Jesus H. Christ was this horrible. I mean, even worse than the horrible wraparound stories of the first two movies. This really made zero sense and had an asshat protagonist trying to chase after a DEMONIC ICE CREAM TRUCK (actually a 70's van, the type you might see “free candy” on) as it somehow has his girlfriend. As wacky as that sounds, it's no fun, includes filler to pad out the runtime, and it actually becomes moralizing at the end. Just horrid, and not as in the scares you're supposed to get from a horror movie. In addition, an especially bad moment involving a dog was the moment I said, “F*** this!” with V/H/S: Viral.

Dante the Great: Amazing subtlety there with the name Dante... it's nonsense involving a budding magician finding a magical cape. A big problem was that it was not even found footage; some handheld footage doesn't make it found footage when the other parts are either a traditional movie or a mockumentary.

Parallel Monsters: The idea of people in parallel worlds visiting each other sounded interesting on paper. In execution it did not quite work and plus, part of this involves something I presume is straight out of hentai.

Bonestorm: I am a rare person who did not like the directors' film Resolution, so no surprise I did not like this either. It's a bunch of asshat skateboarders dealing with Satanic people in Tijuana. It would have been better with characters you actually like, it being done in a traditional format instead of handheld and GoPro cameras; the latter makes it hard to make out what's going on. Then again, when the CG is as atrocious as it was here... throughout the movie the CG was probably worse than in the Sharknado films, but it was at its nadir here.

Note that I did not see Gorgeous Vortex, the short made for Viral but taken out at the last minute because it wasn't found footage. That's awfully rich considering that Dante the Great wasn't found footage either. Then again, I was glad this rancid pile of feces was short and additionally, Vortex sounds like pretentious twaddle so it's not something I want to track down and watch.

In the future I'll see more of the actual worthwhile horror anthologies from the 21st century, as most of the ones I've seen were not good. In my opinion, all these V/H/S movies were disappointing at best and were missed opportunities, even when it comes to the found footage genre. There's better recent low-budget horror to watch, for sure.