REVIEW - V/H/S 2

You need only watch the first V/H/S film to know how important creative licence can be. To those who rail against minor factual inaccuracies, or deviations from source narratives, I say watch V/H/S and then tell me you're glad that the filmmakers stuck by their video-cam concept so vehemently. So too does V/H/S 2, but with more consideration for the comfort of the viewer. All those shaky, grainy images and all that muffled sound is not nostalgia for tape, it's an ugly reminder of why tape has become obsolete. In his short film Safe Haven, Gareth Evans sticks cameras here, there and everywhere, employs clear sound recording and even manages to hold the lens still for long enough that annoyance / motion sickness don't begin to take root. After his moronic paean for ghastly brutality, The Raid, Evans puts his technical talents to better use here, and Safe Haven is a gruelling, unsettling, gradual submersion in bloody hell. His sensationalistic tendencies kick in occasionally, and his conclusion is plain stupid, but this is mostly bravura filmmaking from the Welsh director. The other segments are of varying quality - Alien Abduction Slumber Party does what it says on the tin, and is a basic betrayal of the notion of 'short horror films' as it's wholly un-scary (and wholly uninteresting). Frame story Tape 49 has flashes of promise, but is overall quite dull, and may have you wondering if shooting people in the head is the new black. A Ride in the Park is a fun twist on a simple zombie story, with woeful dialogue and a dud ending but a decent sense of humour, and the none-more-egotistical yet talentless hack Adam Wingard serves up the most asinine section of both films combined in the heinously bad Clinical Trials, which must be seen to be believed.