V/H/S/2

 Within just nine months after V/H/S was released, the fine folks over at Bloody Disgusting rounded up another bunch of new and returning miscreants to make another sleazy, gory collection of found-footage horror shorts. V/H/S/2 runs about thirty minutes shorter than the first movie, and that tightening really pays off. And while it's still sleazy as hell (we get a pair of boobs and a dong within the first few minutes), but it's noticeably tamer than the first film; I'd only choose "degenerate" as the sixth or seventh adjective to apply to this one.

 The wrap-around this time is about an entertainingly amoral private dick (Lawrence Michael Levine) who, along with his partner (Kelsy Abbott) is hired to find a missing college student. They track him down to a house that looks suspiciously like the one in the first film (and we even see a little footage from some recurring assholes) - there are a load of tapes everywhere, but no corpse this time around.

 I'd forgotten these films implied a shared universe, though it always seemed a bit half-arsed. This segment is written and directed by a returning Simon Barrett, but it's pretty forgettable aside from a goofy-looking bit of gore later on.

 Barrett returns for the first story (Phase I Clinical Trials) as a scriptwriter, paired as usual with director Adam Wingard. It follows one Herman (played by Wingard), the recipient of an experimental electronic eye that connects directly to his brain and records everything he sees (justifying the PoV approach).

 The problem is that the eye is a little more keen than is useful, as a cute woman (Hannah Hughes) who's run into similar usability problems explains later on. It's an excellently creepy little ghost story; Between this and V/H/S/94's Empty Wake, Simon Barrett is responsible for probably the most traditionally scary segments on these anthologies.

 Next are Eduardo Sánchez (mis-spelled as Edúardo in the credits) and Gregg Hale, both alums of the found footage film that kicked it all (Sánchez co-directed, and Hale produced) in a zombie segment that has a pretty fun first-person twist on the zombie genre. It's quick, vicious, technically accomplished, and the premise carries it a fairly long way.

 And then comes what's easily the best segment of the movie, and possibly in the whole series: Garth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto's Safe Heaven. An Indonesian documentary (Fachri Albar, Hannah Al Rashid, Oka Antara and Andrew Suleiman) crew go visit the remote compound of a mysterious and controversial cult leader (Epy Kusnandar)... on the same day that their promised rapture comes.
 The tension is built beautifully as the increasingly discomfitted documentarians keep discovering just how fucked up things are, only for things to get more and more fucked up. There's a ton of gore, a lot of weirdness, and the action is shot with the sort of tense energy that both Tjahjanto and Evans can do so well. I've met some people who hate that it ends with a really goofy joke, but not me. I love this one.

 Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere near the same amount of appreciation for the last story, Jason Eisener's Slumber Party Alien Abduction, where a bunch of obnoxious teens and pre-teens face off against each other in an escalating series of pranks before a bunch of feral aliens come to try and abduct them. It's remarkably energetic, but it doesn't go anywhere interesting, and the characters are hateful except for one very good boy who is cruelly put down. If that's intended as a provocation... well, good job: I fucking hate it with a passion.

 Aside from that bum note, V/H/S/2 is a blast: a high-energy collection of fairly distinct, gory tales - it's a shame that it chooses to go out on its weakest link, souring the experience somewhat. But on the whole it's easily one of my favourite modern horror anthology films.
 It was followed one year later by V/H/S Viral; I don't remember it being very good, but it was so poorly received it sidelined the series for seven years - which seems like an exaggeration. I'll revisit that one soon.