V/H/S movie review & film summary (2012)

"Paranormal Activity" is the best subsequent example of a found-footage film. "V/H/S" is an example of the genre at its least compelling. It's an anthology of six separate horror stories shot in low-definition VHS. The first, "Tape 56," explains the other five. A group of masked intruders break into a house on a mission to retrieve certain videotapes. After routine haunted-house scares, they come upon the house's owner, sitting dead and decomposing in front of a wall of video monitors.

While one of the group stays to look at some of the video, the others explore the house and make more unsettling discoveries. The overall film consists of this linking film and five other stories, each with a different director and different casts — with slight overlapping of actors.

Do you want to hear the five stories? Better you should make sense of them yourself. One of the pleasures or punishments of the film is that we're not always sure when we have left one story and entered another.

The idea, I gather, is that "V/H/S" is sort of a showcase for its young directors and actors. Since it's such a muddle, I don't understand how any of them hope to stand out. It plays more like a student project in which several short films were cobbled together in the popular found-footage horror genre to masquerade as a feature.

What's the point? None of the segments is particularly compelling. Strung together, it's way too much of a muchness. These ambitious young artists might be better advised to make what I naively call a "real movie." For example, Ti West, one of the six directors, has already released "The Innkeepers," a well-made and effective haunted hotel movie that exhibited a real gift for framing and placement; it created some genuine scares out of what he showed and didn't show. I'd bet on a guy like that. If he showed me "V/H/S," I'd hedge my bet.