I’ve been getting into horror films recently. Much to my own surprise. I’ve even been watching those awful YouTube videos of people talking about their favourite horror stuff. That’s how I found out about this film.
Stranger still, I’ve gone as far as taking out a free week long trial of Shudder, so I could watch this, and some other horror movies, over the upcoming Halloween half-term holiday.
VHS ‘94 is part four of what’s become a growing series (I haven’t seen any of the other instalments). It looks and feels, for the most part, like a relatively low budget affair, many of the stories using suspense and ‘jump scares’ or ‘jump cuts’, or whatever they’re called, more than special effects. It’s also done, in the main, as if recorded to VHS, in the popular ‘found footage’ style.
The wobbly camera work and glitchy images might annoy some, but I quite liked the retro granular video vibes. Plus it can help make lower budget horror and gore less obvious/risible.
And on top of all of this, it’s also a horror anthology. There’s ‘ratman’ (Storm Drain), a risen corpse at The Empty Wake, a mad prof/doc’ making human/robot ‘neo-humans’ (Subject), and cultish ‘homeland patriot’ nutters in Terror. A fifth story, Holy Hell, frames all the others. There’s cultish weirdness, monsters, violence, gore, fear, and above all a general desire to scare.
I wonder what it says about us as a species that we’re so given to the contemplation of death, and our fears? I suppose those things in themselves aren’t too surprising. What is surprising, and possibly disturbing, is the fact it takes the form, these days, of a whole subculture and industry, as prolific as it is … erm..? grotesque.
Certain passages in several segments are very like action from first-person video games. It seems the intersection between the worlds of video game culture and the rest of life, movies in particular, proceeds apace. This is especially true of Subject, which is probably the strongest individual segment of VHS ‘94. Subject is the only story not set in the US, and is also the slickest of the shorts, production wise.
I actually enjoyed VHS ‘94, or at least parts of it, quite a lot. There were, I feel, more interesting ideas in several of these shorts than in most full length horror films. One of the most interesting segments, Terror, is presented as if it’s the home videos of an extreme right wing neo-Nazi group, as they prepare for a terrorist attack.
These Trumpist/MAGA style lunatics are as comically inept as they are morally bankrupt. But their nefarious plans go bloodily awry. Does it make any sense? We see the same man executed repeatedly by different members of the group. Does it ‘mean’ anything? From exploding bunnies to a freaky monster; I’ve no idea right now.
Ironically one of the weakest stories, Holy Hell, is the one that’s spliced up and used as a recurrent ‘back to the story’ type glue, framing all the other threads, and starting and finishing the whole set. Or perhaps it feels disjointed and less effective because it’s chopped up, where the others are complete?
Anyway, better than a lot of much better funded mainstream stuff, and, in my view, worth watching. Especially for the Subject and Terror segments.