V/H/S

 Well, here it is - the little indie horror found-footage anthology film that could, with seven sequels and counting. And... the thing is that as much as I've grown to love the series over the years, I didn't really care that much for this one when it originally came out; A little too hit and miss. It was only with the second one that I sat up and really started paying attention.

 The brainchild of Brad Miska and some other folks over at Bloody Disgusting, the series came out the door with a truly impressive roster of horror luminaries: Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, between You're Next and The Guest. David Bruckner in between two other excellent anthology entries (one for The Signal, the other one a career-best for Southbound). Ti West between Innkeepers and Sacrament. Glenn McQuaid, whose other work I haven't seen. Joe Swanberg in what I think is still his only horror directorial detour (the guy was insanely prolific during that period). And last but not least, the Radio Silence team (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez and Chad Villella) - this was their first properly distributed gig, and it's one of the good ones.

 The framing story, from Wingard and Barrett, stars a "delightful" bunch of delinquent assholes (two of which are played by Wingard and Barrett!) who engage in such exuberant youthful shenanigans as vandalism and sexual assault, filming everything to then sell the footage. Tired of the soulless grind of just producing #content, these artistic souls accept a gig to steal a special V/H/S tape from an old man in his run-down home. When they get there the homeowner is dead, and there are plenty of tapes with creepy stories on them strewn around the house. As our intrepid protagonists start watching some of them to figure out which one it is they were meant to take, they're hunted by something. So they (presumably) get killed, and we get shown the shorts; It's a win-win, at least for us.

 David Bruckner starts things off properly with Amateur Night, the tale of three horny asshole kids (Mike Donlan. Joe Sykes and Drew Sawyer) who go out into the night to pick up some chicks, try to get into their pants, and film everything with a pair of spy glasses. Unfortunately for them, one of the girls they pick up (Hannah Fierman) turns out to be weirdo and, more importantly, some sort of succubus. It's a basic structure the V/H/S series would reuse several times over, but this is by far its best execution thanks to Fierman's fierce performance, unrestrained sleaziness, great gore and some great, intense filmmaking from Bruckner. It's really good, but you might feel like you need a bath afterwards.

 Ti West classes up things with his segment, second honeymoon, where a couple (Joe Swanberg and Sophia Takal) go out on a road trip down route 66. They do inconsequential, touristy stuff during the day, and at night someone enters their room and films them with their camera. The night segments are really creepy and the couple have a really well-developed, lived-in relationship, but it takes too long to get to a fairly underwhelming payoff.

 Glenn McQuaid takes us back to a bunch of horny, idiot young adults (Norma C. Quinones, Drew Moerlein, Jeannine Yoder, and Jason Yachanin) who go visit a remote lake in the middle of the woods guided by a girl they just met. They have a nice picnic, enjoy some consequence-free extramarital sex, and leave happy and contented to lead long, fruitful lives.
 Oh, wait, no- they all get killed. My bad.
 It's standard slasher stuff with yet another assortment of basic dickweeds and relatively uninteresting kills, but the short uses video glitches and weirdness in a really interesting way to depict whatever it is that's haunting these woods. The plot doesn't really go very far and the characters are a non-starter, but this unexplained weirdness keeps it fresh.

 We're next left in the able hands of Joe Swanberg, who provides the strangest segment of the film. It's presented as a series of video chats between two childhood sweethearts (Helen Rogers and Daniel Kaufman) as they keep their long-distance relationship alive while at different universities*. Sweet as it is, we still get some gratuitous boobage, because of course we do. Early on the young exhibitionist confesses that she thinks her department is haunted, and soon manages to capture some proof on video... which leads to a nasty bout of self-harm, a couple of good things-that-go-bump-in-the-night scares, and a truly batshit series of revelations. It's pretty evil, and a whole lot of fun.

 The last segment is by Radio Silence, and it's another good one. Here we follow another bunch of kids (the Radio Silence crew), but, amazingly, they're just good-natured dopes, not raging assholes. It also gets one of the best, most original justifications of why everything gets filmed out of any found footage film I've ever seen: the main character's costume is one of those stuffed-toy nannycams!
 The kids are out looking for a Halloween party but get lost and end up in a real, honest-to-god haunted house. The early bits use that old Scooby-Doo trope of the kids thinking it's all make-believe and making fun of the paranormal stuff, but it's well executed, and when shit hits the fan things get appropriately hectic. There's some really dodgy, low budget CGI and the whole thing looks about as tacky as the logo animation at the start of Blumhouse movies, but the concepts are good fun and the goofy tone sells it well. Make sure you look up the alternate ending, too - personally I think it fits the tone of the short better.

 And there you have it. The only thing left is the standard song at the end which remixes some of the footage from the movie, including, ugh, the sexual assault. There's a line beyond which provocation curdles into bad taste, and this really crossed that for me.

 I liked the movie much better this time around, and I think it might have one of the better overall quality levels out of the now long-running anthology film series. Weirdly, I'd still don't rate it all that highly mostly becase at two hours, it feels a little too drawn out, and some of the shorts really overstay their welcome. That's especially true when you have to endure some pretty loathsome kids. And it's not a bad thing, but it did surprise me just how sleazy it is, too: Several full frontals, including a bunch of floppy bananas along with the expected amount of melons (that would be: many pairs of melons). It's a pretty raunchy movie.
 A lot of that horniness is unpleasant by design; Male toxicity is absolutely a running theme (even within the "happily" married couple, the guy tries to pressure his wife into something she doesn't want to do), but I didn't really feel it's taken anywhere more interesting than on any given Tales from the Crypt morality play. Except maybe for Swanberg's short, which is just nuts in the best way possible.

 It's definitely worthwhile even with these few caveats - A very solid collection of shorts, and as usual the high points are pretty high. Wonder if I'll like V/H/S:Viral more this time around, too.

*: I originally mis-typed this as universitites at first; Proof that this sick filth truly has a degrading effect on impressionable, innocent minds like mine. Oh no, the Daily Mirror was right all along!