V/H/S 2

Looking back at my review of the first V/H/S, I find my reaction to the second to be quite similar.  In each story, someone dies in a manner that is bloody, and is in a different context than the previous story.  However, none of them are stories I relate to…exactly like last time.

I honestly think that these stories are mostly too clever for their own good.  The directors are talented people, so I suspect that if I sat down with them for an explanation of their intentions I would end up going “Oh, that is clever!”  Unfortunately, they’re not sitting next to me to explain what tropes they were ingeniously trying to subvert.  Instead, I’m sitting alone, watching stories where people die for no adequately explained reason.

This time we get a private investigator (Lawrence Michael Levine) breaking into the dorm of a missing college student to view a series of video tapes.  A man (Adam Wingard) gets an eye that lets him see ghosts.  A biker (Jay Saunders) is turned into a zombie and continues recording with his helmet cam as he attacks people.  Another segment covers reporters observing a suicidal cult.  Finally, a group of teens have a party and are attacked by aliens, and it’s all filmed by a dog with a camera on its back.

...oh, and watching the tapes turns the investigator’s sidekick (Kelsy Abbott) into a zombie who attacks him.  Then he’s attacked by the zombified student he was originally supposed to find.  Apparently, the man shot himself in the head and...was a zombie after that.

I didn’t really expect them to recycle the same framing device as the first film.  But, we get zombies both times, plus another zombie story just for good measure.  If zombies were the common theme it would make sense, but they’re not, so it just comes across as a lazy repeat of an easy-to-use horror villain.

Is it horrible?  No.  If you’re a fan of horror anthologies and simple gore, or if you’re really, really good at analyzing movies, go for it.  Personally, I found it hard to concentrate on because it was just uninteresting.