V/H/S/85

 Ever since the V/H/S anthology series of movies found a new home over at Shudder, they've been released at a yearly schedule, gotten a bit better at maintaining the found-footage gimmick, and they've gotten a year appended to the title that works as a theme - more a suggestion than a mandate, but it adds some color to each installment.

 The latest film in the franchise takes aim at 1985 - stylistically, if nothing else; Don't expect any insights about the Regan era, and the few references to the time period feel pretty forced.

 Mike P. Nelson kicks things of with your standard bunch of loud, horny people heading to a remote lake to get killed. They're not quite as repellent as they could have been in slasher-movie terms, so it's a little upsetting once they start getting shot to pieces.

 It takes its time to get to the fireworks factory, but things get memorably gruesome once a hidden sniper starts picking them off. There's a fun, very silly supernatural twist later on, but it kind of fizzles out without a real resolution.

 Then we jump to the film's weakest link, as writer/director Gigi Saul Guerrero takes us through a survival story about a film operator and his rescue team trying to escape a tall building after a nasty quake in Mexico City caves in a broadcast studio. As they make their way ever downwards, they discover a mythical threat amongst the bones of the city. It's got some gore and a couple of cool images, and the found footage angle does add a lot of immediacy to their predicament... but overall this is a major miss.

 I did find it funny that it's got a comedy asshole Argentine dude, a trope I've noticed pop up mainly in Spanish films; Other Latin peoples really don't like us, it seems.

 TKNOGD follows, directed by Natasha Kermani off a script by Zoe Cooper; It's a filmed performance art piece/one-woman-show where the speaker (Chivonne Michelle) invokes the god of technology using some silly VR gear. It's a short, not very interesting segment that builds towards an entirely predictable but satisfying and darkly humorous ending - and one of the most memorable bits of bloody mayhem in a very gory movie. It was a struggle not to spoil its final shot as the header image for this review, but it deserves to be seen with fresh eyes.

 Ambrosia marks the return of Mike P. Nelson with a fun little story about a family reunion that turns to be, surprise surprise, a lot darker than it seems. To-the-point, inventive, and very satisfying.

 For the last segment Scott Derrickson makes his debut in the series with the agreeably nasty Dreamkill. The story (co-written with Derrickson's regular writing partner C. Robert Cargill) follows a detective (Freddy Rodriguez) and his 'forensic videographer' (James Ransone) investigating a series of grisly murders; The twist is that the police has received videotapes chronicling the murders from the killer's point of view... three days before each killing.

 It's a simple story, constrained a little by the short running time, but very effective. By far the most impressive looking short of the bunch (and the only one not in a 4:3 ratio), it uses a variety of film stocks and soundscapes to give it a dreamlike feel. The filmed murders are very, very nasty Giallo-inspired fever dreams. In one a a straight razor reprises its role from Un Chien Andalou, another one overlays a brutal slashdown with Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady to channel a version of Skinamarink where things actually happen.

 And it ends with a bang. Many, many bangs. There's a lot to like here.

 The fifth or sixth story, depending on how you're counting, is V/H/S series vet Richard Bruckner's framing device which takes the form of a cheesy TV documentary chronicling a group of university scientists studying some sort of alien shape-shifting life-form; They keep it locked in a room watching non-stop TV shows.

 The documentary elements - especially the host - are spot-on, and it does build some tension as we get fed scraps of information in between the other stories. But it's a little too overblown for what ends up being there, and once we're shown the heavily foreshadowed massacre it's been heading towards, it's extremely tame compared to the shit that took place on most of the shorts. Thankfully it pays off with a gloriously goofy punchline.

 As a send-off things wrap up with a (pretty funny) cheesy eighties pop number that riffs on the events of the movie.
 Overall V/H/S/85 is messy, uneven, and the found-footage nature combined with the VHS conceit means that a lot of it looks like ass. But as usual there's a lot to like, with a couple of honest-to-god kick-ass segments. Here's looking forward to next year's tape.