V/H/S/99

 V/H/S is a series of found footage horror anthologies whose central gimmick is that they were, yes, all found recorded on obsolete technology - a single VHS tape per movie; some of the . The series, overseen by Brad Miska, has attracted some big names over the years: Gareth Evans, Timo Tajhanto, Ti West, Adam Wingard, Benson & Moorhead, Nacho Vigalondo, Steve Kostanski and a bunch of others. They're all pretty uneven, as any anthology is bound to be, but they also hit that sweet spot where there's almost always enough good stuff to make it worth it - and segments are varied and short enough to make even the worst misses not register that much. I have a huge soft spot for the series.

 This fifth installment is, as it tile indicates, set in 1999. There's no framing story this time around - as the tape starts we're treated to a some kid's (pretty funny) stop-motion animation, before we're hurled into the first story - Shredders, directed by Maggie Levin.

 

 It's your standard tale of a bunch of punk kids who manage to be punk enough to piss off an undead punk band in a spooky derelict club. The characters are a loud bunch of assholes and it's a beyond predictable tale of comeuppance, so it becomes a bit of an exercise in patiently waiting until the zombies pop up and kill everyone; The undead do redeem the segment somewhat by being entertainingly Fulci-esque.

 Next is Johannes Roberts' The Suicide Bid, a tale of a fraternity hazing gone horrifyingly wrong- one that manages to be genuinely disturbing without shedding a single drop of blood. It also gets an amazing amount of mileage from a non-articulated rubber mask. The ending is a little too EC comics, but this one's a keeper.

 Ozzy's Dungeon, from Flying Lotus (Hip Hop artist Steven Ellison, whose Kuso I've had on my watchlist for ages) is a far more bizarre exercise. It starts out as a pretty funny satire of those shitty, gross-out 90's kid's contest shows where kids had to slide into a pool of slime or whatever, until a horrifying injury makes it switch rails to... well, basically torture porn. It's not very engaging, the pacing is all shot to hell, and all the '90s references get a bit strained, but it's well made and saved by a gloriously weird (and Weird, as in the genre) ending.

 Tyler MacIntyre provides The Gawkers, another chance to spend some interminable minutes with a bunch of assholes until they get their just deserts. Yay. Said deserts are provided by a pretty fun mythical menace, but as in the first skit, this is horror storytelling at its most basic and uninteresting.

 But then comes the highlight of... well, not just the highlight of this movie, but one of the better shorts in the whole series. Vanessa & Joseph Winter - the couple behind the extremely entertaining Deadstream - close out with To Hell and Back, the story of a couple of documentarians (Archelaus Crisanto and Joseph Winter) trying to make a movie about a witch coven who are about to summon a demon on the cusp of the millennium. Things go horribly, horribly wrong for them in deeply hilarious and imaginative ways; More happens in this segment than on a lot of mainstream movies, and with a tiny fraction of the budget, too. It's firmly on the comedy side of things, but I don't think that will disappoint anyone as it's intense, eventful, and funny as hell.
 Melanie Stone returns as a friendly (or is she?) undead witch, confirming her standout character in Deadstream wasn't a fluke, and there are so many little gags and bizarre touches - seriously, it is a fucking blast.

 So, on the whole? Well, I can't say it doesn't drag here or there, especially given its running theme of toxic people and how they get other people who really should know better to do stupid things; We're forced to spend a little too much time with some seriously annoying shits.

 But as usual the good outweighs the bad - and then some, given how good that last story is.