One night, my friends and I were discussing the V/H/S series, and one of them happened to mention thinking about streaming the sequel. Having seen the first one (and being left unsatisfied with it), I decided to check this one out so I could give her my opinion on it. I haven't been more repulsed and let down by a film.
To start, the story line outside of the tapes is pretty much the same as the first movie's. There couldn't be another way for someone to discover the tapes? There's still not a way to connect all the tape stories together? That aside, my biggest problem with the movie is that the horror is not smart. There's no real psychological manipulation or realistic monsters. It's all just jumpscares and blood splashing around, because some filmmakers are still under the impression that abrupt loud noises and bodily injuries are scary.
The detectives in this film discover four tapes. One guy gets an eye transplant that lets him see ghosts...the only thing cool about this one was the POV being just like a first-person view. He meets a woman with similar abilities, and then they have sex to techno music and that's never explained properly. The next tape is about a guy who gets turned into a zombie in the woods, then he eats some people, then they eat some people at a child's birthday party, then the guy kills himself. A pattern in these tapes is that a normal person encounters something weird, pokes it instead of fleeing, and then everybody dies. Every tape ends the same, so there's absolutely no element of fear from not knowing what to expect. What's to expect? Everybody's going to get murdered, just by a different monster.
The next tape, I was absolutely enthralled by for the first while...it focuses on a group of documentary filmmakers who enter a cult accused of child abuse. I was so hooked to this one, until the first jumpscare. Then it escalates into a bizarre series of events, starting with children drinking poison, to people turning into zombies, to a really bad goat suit bursting out of a woman half its size. I've never seen so much potential completely immolated halfway through.
The last tape at least had one funny bit where a group of kids burst in on a couple making out, but before I could even finish laughing, the Monster of the Day made a foghorn noise. (These aliens also looked like Slenderman with a cartoon alien's face, pincher hands, and chest hair.) This short features ten-year-olds saying the f-word, a child almost drowning, a preteen boy masturbating on screen, and a puppy falling from a great distance that dies slowly while gazing sadly into the camera. That wasn't clever, that was needlessly sick. The maker of this short was probably trying to assert how daring and edgy they were, but it just made me want to noogie them and shove their head in a toilet.
The main tape ended with a woman turning into the girl from The Ring and a guy had an obviously fake dislocated tongue. I've got nothing.
As a final film fart, the credits end with the same thing the first movie did...a choppy recap with obviously manmade glitches set to something that sounds like early 1990s punk rock. After that, the technical credits are a way creepier text-on-black set to tape hiss. As I thought after the first movie, you couldn't just keep up the creepy mood and use the black credits? You thought the obnoxious not- quite-dubstep really added something?
What a complete disappointment. There was so much feedback on the first movie that the filmmakers could have learned from in this instalment, but they just did the exact same thing before, with old and new faults. This is one of the top five worst movies I've ever seen. If you liked the first movie, don't watch this. If you didn't like the first movie, don't watch this. If your sense of horror and humour are completely distorted, watch this, and then make an appointment with your doctor.
To start, the story line outside of the tapes is pretty much the same as the first movie's. There couldn't be another way for someone to discover the tapes? There's still not a way to connect all the tape stories together? That aside, my biggest problem with the movie is that the horror is not smart. There's no real psychological manipulation or realistic monsters. It's all just jumpscares and blood splashing around, because some filmmakers are still under the impression that abrupt loud noises and bodily injuries are scary.
The detectives in this film discover four tapes. One guy gets an eye transplant that lets him see ghosts...the only thing cool about this one was the POV being just like a first-person view. He meets a woman with similar abilities, and then they have sex to techno music and that's never explained properly. The next tape is about a guy who gets turned into a zombie in the woods, then he eats some people, then they eat some people at a child's birthday party, then the guy kills himself. A pattern in these tapes is that a normal person encounters something weird, pokes it instead of fleeing, and then everybody dies. Every tape ends the same, so there's absolutely no element of fear from not knowing what to expect. What's to expect? Everybody's going to get murdered, just by a different monster.
The next tape, I was absolutely enthralled by for the first while...it focuses on a group of documentary filmmakers who enter a cult accused of child abuse. I was so hooked to this one, until the first jumpscare. Then it escalates into a bizarre series of events, starting with children drinking poison, to people turning into zombies, to a really bad goat suit bursting out of a woman half its size. I've never seen so much potential completely immolated halfway through.
The last tape at least had one funny bit where a group of kids burst in on a couple making out, but before I could even finish laughing, the Monster of the Day made a foghorn noise. (These aliens also looked like Slenderman with a cartoon alien's face, pincher hands, and chest hair.) This short features ten-year-olds saying the f-word, a child almost drowning, a preteen boy masturbating on screen, and a puppy falling from a great distance that dies slowly while gazing sadly into the camera. That wasn't clever, that was needlessly sick. The maker of this short was probably trying to assert how daring and edgy they were, but it just made me want to noogie them and shove their head in a toilet.
The main tape ended with a woman turning into the girl from The Ring and a guy had an obviously fake dislocated tongue. I've got nothing.
As a final film fart, the credits end with the same thing the first movie did...a choppy recap with obviously manmade glitches set to something that sounds like early 1990s punk rock. After that, the technical credits are a way creepier text-on-black set to tape hiss. As I thought after the first movie, you couldn't just keep up the creepy mood and use the black credits? You thought the obnoxious not- quite-dubstep really added something?
What a complete disappointment. There was so much feedback on the first movie that the filmmakers could have learned from in this instalment, but they just did the exact same thing before, with old and new faults. This is one of the top five worst movies I've ever seen. If you liked the first movie, don't watch this. If you didn't like the first movie, don't watch this. If your sense of horror and humour are completely distorted, watch this, and then make an appointment with your doctor.