"V/H/S"

The Random House dictionary defines an anthology as “a book or other collection of selected writings by various authors, usually in the same literary form, of the same period, or on the same subject”.

Anthologies are not, however, simply restricted to written works.  Anthological series have been a staple of television since there was television, and, before that, radio.  The most well known of these are, of course, “The Twilight Zone”, “The Outer Limits”, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, and “Tales From the Crypt”. Often, an anthology may also contain a host, narrator, or ongoing set of characters or story which acts as a bookend for the individual stories.

Anthologies in film, however, are far more rare.  With the exception of the Neil Simon “Suite” movies, most of them tend to fall into the horror category.  In the nineties, a number of independent films were made that are often mistaken as anthologies, but anthologies are, by definition, completely autonomous.  Films like “Pulp Fiction”, “Go”, and “Four Rooms” are episodic, but not anthological.  Anthological films also tend to be adapted from either tv series, like “Twilight Zone” or “Tales from the Darkside”, adapted from print, like “HP Lovecraft’s Necronomicon” (which is nearly unwatchable), or made to emulate an external source, such as “Creepshow” 1 and 2 (which I’ll get to later).

But recently, I found a rarity, the thoroughly original horror anthology, “V/H/S”. Not only that, but “V/H/S” is the first anthology film I know of to be shot in the first person.

First person films have grown in popularity over the last half decade.  The movement began with “The Blair Witch Project”, but has been gaining in popularity films like “Cloverfield” and “Chronicle”, and with the works of Oren Peli, the man behind “Paranormal Activity”, “The Chernobyl Diaries”, and the tv series “The River”.

However, “V/H/S” is unique in being the first film to fall into both of these narrative types, and does so remarkably well.

The premise of “V/H/S” is that a gang of four punks who are being paid to make videos of committing pranks and vandalism are hired by their unknown benefactor to steal a video tape from a private home (while filming the theft).  When they break into the home, they find a whole collection of tapes, and don’t know which one it is, so they start watching tapes to find out which one it is.  This, of course, gives the vehicle for the anthology. What follows are a series of five short films, each one shot in the first person, with scenes of the initial story interweaved.

The only two things that all of these short films have in common is that they are all horror shorts, and they are all shot in first person.  Other than that, the stories, characters, situations, and tones of each short could not be more different.  This is one of the earmarks of a well-assembled anthology.  Rod Serling would be proud.

The bookend story (titled “Tape 56”) sets itself, along with the general tone of the film, up well (I’ve already noted how they justify the filming by stating that they are paid for it).  It does a nice, even natural, job of setting up the presentation of the other shorts, as well as taking advantage of the breaks to progress both it’s own story and the general feeling of dread and uneasiness throughout the film. The twists and turns of the story work really well, and make what is already a shutter-fest even creepier.

The first short, “Amateur Night”, is about a couple of douchebags and their hapless geeky sidekick, who they’ve armed with an eyeglasses camera, trying to pick up girls so that they can record themselves having sex with the girls.  This is one of the best in the batch.  The filmmakers flaunt their creativity and attention to detail well, not only in the course of the story as a whole, but in their consistency with maintaining the idea that the camera is in the one characters glasses: he takes them off, cleans them, sets them down, puts them on again, even drops them, all compounding to keep the audience in the world of the short.  The filmmakers also deserve recognition for their use of physical and makeup effects over CGI, giving the film a much more tangible and visceral feel.

The second short, “Second Honeymoon”, was actually rather disappointing and much less original than any of the other shorts.  This was, in fact, barely a horror story, and more a suspense story, derivative of “Dead On” (1994) and the American version of “Diabolique” (1996), both of which no film should ever want to be associated with.  It also suffers the fatal flaw which tends to befall first person films, which is the question “Why the hell are they filming this?”

The third short, “Tuesday the 17th”, was, as you can guess, also associates itself with less-than-reputable fare.  However, not in a derivative way, but as an interpretation of that data-oriented franchise who shall not be named.  It does this, though, in a way which is both original, and ties itself back to the general concept.

The fourth short, “The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger”, is, in my opinion, the most creative story in the anthology, and one of the most creative horror stories I’ve ever seen.  Instead of someone filming with a camcorder of some kind, the entire film is seen as the desktop of someone’s laptop during a series of video chat conversations between the two main characters, one of whom (“Emily”) thinks that her house is haunted.  The way in which the story is revealed and progresses uses this medium perfectly, and the twist is both brilliant and disturbing.

The fifth and final short, “10/31/98”, about four guys trying to find a halloween party, and, instead, stumbling into an exorcism in a haunted house, is the most fun of the shorts, and rounds out the anthology well.  The filmmakers of this, in also being the cast, bring a degree of silliness to their story that lacked in any of the others.  This is evident from the first moment of the short, where the character doing the filming, who must be at least 6’ tall, is dressing up in a giant teddy bear costume with the camera strapped to his head to be (as he later explains) a nanny cam.  However, once the foursome enter the house, all bets are off.  The effects are, unfortunately, uneven, as some of the CGI effects are more obvious and look less real than others; not to the point of being distracting, but noticeable.

Over all, “V/H/S” while being highly original, calls back to an era of horror filmmaking almost (but hopefully not) long forgotten that was fearless and bold, unforgiving and unrelenting.  An era which birthed the careers of Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, and, lest we forget, Steven Spielberg.

More new horror films could take a few notes from “V/H/S”.

"Army of Darkness"

Quick note: "Army of Darkness" is the sequel to "Evil Dead 2".


Although, it really stretches the definition of the word 'sequel'. At least, not in any sense that Hollywood is familiar with. In fact, it's the only sequel I know of that has been of a completely different genre then it's predecessors.


Where the previous two films were fairly straight forward supernatural horror movies, "Army of Darkness" is the 'Evil Dead' equivalent of "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" with mixins of "Jason and the Argonauts", “Bride of Frankenstein”, "The Three Stooges", and a somewhat unsettling reference to "The Day the Earth Stood Still".


“Army of Darkness” is a fun movie . . . if you’re a thirteen year old boy.  It’s fun even if you’re not, but that seems to be it’s target audience.  How could it not be? To a thirteen year old boy, this movie has everything: swords and sorcery, an awesome battle against an army of the dead, demons and monsters, slapstick comedy, and a chainsaw in a pear tree! (Hell, it even has tits . . . Just for a second, but they're still there)


As a grown up (in a manor of speaking), “Army of Darkness” is still a lot of fun, and not only for the nostalgia (or the tits). That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of nostalgia for me. When I was a teenager, I thought Bruce Campbell’s character was awesome, and I would recite line after line: “Alright you primitive screw heads, listen up: This . . . is my BOOMSTICK!”, “Give me some sugar, baby”, “Klatu Verata Nnnn . . . Necktie, Nickle-”, “By God, let’s give’em what for!”, “Keep your sardine can on, bucket head!”, “Sure, I coulda been king . . .”.  To this day, I still recite my favorite lines along with the movie.  But, now that I’m older, I also notice things that I haven’t before, particularly details.
For me, there are three kinds of movies: movies that I only need to see once, movies that I like to watch when I’m in a particular mood, and movies I can watch over and over again, no matter what mood I’m in. The mark of this kind of movie is that I notice something different everytime I watch it.  “Army of Darkness” is definitely in the third category.


Even just watching it over the weekend, noticed little things.  Not just the fact that, in the pan across the front lines of the army of the dead, every other skeleton is a guy in a mask, and the rest are puppets, but other things.  Like the look of boredom and confusion on the faces of the villagers while Ash is giving the “Boomstick” speech (why is he giving a sales pitch to a crowd of 14th century peasants, and does he honestly think they know what a ‘sporting goods department’ is?).  Or the fact that, besides a book on chemistry and a book on Steam Plant Production and a couple of comic books, Ash has a 2 liter of Coke in his trunk.


There are little details like that that I’ve never noticed before.  There are also parallels to the other movies that I hadn’t noticed before, like the floating witch, or the force in the woods chasing Ash, or the use of mirrors.  


In all three movies, the first person to be revealed as possessed floats errilly in the air and speaks in a warped voice without moving their mouth.  In “Army of Darkness”, the witch even makes the same quick head reveal that Cheryl does in “The Evil Dead”.


In “Army of Darkness”, when Ash quests for the book, his horse is spooked by and he is chased through the woods by (presumably) the same force which chased and stalked the people in the previous two films.


In “The Evil Dead”, Ash reaches out to touch his reflection in a mirror, and his hand passes through like it was water.  In “Evil Dead 2”, Ash’s own reflection reaches out and begins to throttle him. In “Army of Darkness”, Ash’s reflections come to life once again, but after he has shattered a mirror, so the reflections are all small.  This may lead to one of the silliest sequences in the entire series, but it’s also arguably one of the most creative, and definitely one of the most fun (“London bridges falling down . . .”).


It seems to me that one of the places where “Army of Darkness” gets a lot of flack is the silliness of it.  However, I would argue that much of the creativity and originality of the film lay in the silliness.  I’ve already mentioned the mini-Ashes, but also the whole leadup to the “Good Ash, Bad Ash” scene, or the fact that he’s fighting himself at the end, or the skeleton’s skull popping open at the end, showing his brains.


Actually, I think Sam Raimi deserves a lot of credit for this film.  Unlike it’s predecessors, who, while containing numerous elaborate effects, had comparatively limited cast and setting, “Army of Darkness” is a big production.  It’s huge!  There’s a period setting, complete with costumes, large sets, and horses. The camera work is also more impressive, particularly the large scale scenes depicting large crowds or more complicated shots, like the one where the camera follows Ash up through the battle preparations to the top of a tower to look out over the enemy army.


The only major problem that I have with it is that, with all the opportunities for creativity, “Army of Darkness” is highly derivative.  While I know that I said that I felt that much of the creativity and originality lay in the film’s silliness, there are numerous opportunities to be much more creative with the use of elements from the previous films, scary or not, funny or not.  I understand that they may have had a limited budget, but “Army of Darkness” had a much larger budget than that of the previous two combine, and, I feel, anyway, that, as much fun as it is, it is the least creative and least original of the two.

"Evil Dead 2"

Quick notice: If you haven't seen "The Evil Dead" yet, 'thar be spoilers ahead'.  After all, I can't exactly talk about where the sequel picks up without talking about where the previous one left off.

Actually, in this case, and (presumably) only this case, I can.

There are four ways in which a sequel traditionally begins in relation to how the previous chapter ends: eventually, immediately, ignorantly or expositionally (yes, I know it’s not a word, but . . . well, it is now).

Most commonly, a sequel will begin after some period of time (maybe short, maybe lengthy) has passed in the lives of the characters in the first film (Ghostbusters, Star Wars, The Ring, Transformers, Ace Ventura, Blues Brothers, etc).  More common in horror (particularly slasher movies, where everyone or at least nearly everyone has died by the end of the film), a sequel will begin sometime after the original with a new cast of characters who have no awareness of the events of the original (Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St).  In this case, the events of the sequel may not even tie into the original beyond a common concept, theme or style (Urban Legend, House, Creepshow).

Sometimes a sequel will begin immediately where it’s predecessor ended, briefly recapping the end of the film to establish context (Back to the Future, The Karate Kid, Hellraiser).  Occasionally, this recap will take longer and the events in the recap will be seen from the perspective of a character who has not yet been introduced as a way to establish a new character base, including a new antagonist or protagonist (this is used more often in TV series for season finale/premiere or at the end of the film to establish a cliffhanger).

“Evil Dead 2” distinguishes itself in being the only sequel to begin by summarily retelling the story of the original within the first 10 minutes of the film, but only with Ash and Linda.

The retelling ends exactly how the original did, and then picks up from there, the story picks back up more exposition for the story of the rest of the film (which focuses on the voice on the recording and the book of the dead) and goes from there.

The most noticeable difference from the original (besides the recasting of Linda) is one of production design and quality: lighting, camera movement, picture quality, set construction and many of the makeup effects are noticeably more impressive than that of “The Evil Dead”.  That isn’t to say that “The Evil Dead” isn’t impressive; I’ve already stated that it was impressive that they were able to do what they did with what they had.  However, it is fairly obvious from the opening of the film on that those limitations are not present in “Evil Dead 2”, and they took every advantage with what they now had to make more elaborate effects.

The next most noticeable difference is the change in tone.  American sequels tend to make the mistake in sequels of following the ‘bigger’ formula: to set the sequel apart from the original, the filmmakers try to do everything bigger; bigger events and bigger baddies to make bigger stakes.  In action movies, this means bigger stunts, bigger chases, bigger fights.  In horror, this means bigger body counts, bigger kills.  However, the problem with this formula is how easy it is to take it too far and go over the top.  Once that happens, the stakes cease to be dramatic and become hokey, even campy.

When an original film is more serious, this change in the sequel is done by mistake.  Sequels are usually only made deliberately hokey if the original is hokey, and usually only by Michael Bay (Transformers, Bad Boys).  “Evil Dead 2” is the only case I know of where a sequel to a terrifying horror film is made at all hokey or campy deliberately.  There are plenty of moments in the film which are still scary, if not downright disturbing, but they are, to a certain degree offset by some more deliberately comedic elements.  There are even moments in the film which (to its credit) may be frightening to some and funny to others.  Frankly, I think it makes the movie even more fun than the original.

This blend of silly and scary also serves to cement director Sam Raimi’s signature shooting style, which appears time and again throughout his films (most notably in “Darkman” and in the three “Spider-man” movies).  

Now, a lot of people I know would question my judgement at noting the signs of a given director’s impending career in having debuted by directing a horror movie.  Well, I have two words for them: Steven Spielberg. Spielberg’s debut film was “Duel”, a white-knuckle suspense film about a man being chased along a barren highway by an unrelenting semi.  He followed that up with “Jaws”.

What’s my point?  Well, for one, horror as a genre gets a bad rap. Just because someone likes horror movies doesn’t mean they have a puerile mind; it doesn’t mean they are a sociopath or a psychopath; it doesn’t mean they have a death fetish. Also, the qualities that make a movie good or bad are the same qualities that make a horror movie good or bad, and the main quality is honesty.

For all it’s flaws, for the cheesy moments or campy effects, for the ridiculousness of the situation, there is honesty in “Evil Dead 2”.  There is honesty in Ash’s reaction to having to kill Linda.  There is honesty in Annie’s reaction in seeing the cabin in the state it is in when they first arrive and think the worst.  There is honesty in Annie’s desperation when trying to escape Ash.  While the situations that these characters find themselves in is both impossible and ridiculous, their reactions (terror, desperation, anger, panic) are all portrayed honestly.

“Evil Dead 2” may not be a great movie; it may not win any major awards, it may not be recognized as a hallmark of great acting or production value.  However, it is fun, and it is creative, and it is honest.

In my mind, this makes it, at the very least, a good movie.

"The Evil Dead"

Let me begin by saying that I cannot write an impartial or objective review of this film.  I, as many others of my generation, love "The Evil Dead".

I think that it is important to note for our younger readers that this is not the new film which is soon to be out in theaters, but is the original, which is now over 30 years old.

I first saw "The Evil Dead" in October of '99.  I'd been a fan of "Army of Darkness" (the third movie in the "Evil Dead" trilogy . . . yes, it is a trilogy) since the first time I'd seen it on the SciFi channel, and I'd seen it at least a dozen times prior to seeing "The Evil Dead" or "Evil Dead 2", and for that matter, had no idea that it was a sequel.  Then, in the lat nineties  as a result of the movie "Scream", I was having a bit of a horror movie renaissance; not in the sense of the new horror movies that Hollywood was churning out like cars off an assembly line, but at the horror section of my local video store.  I plowed through as many horror movies of the 70's and 80's as I could, and, being a slacker in college, having the time to do so.  And then a friend mentioned "The Evil Dead" and put it in the context of "Army of Darkness" for me.  So I promptly borrowed their copies of "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead 2".  At the time, we had a decent sized TV in our dorm room, and I had (what I considered to be) a decent stereo, so, sometimes, when I would watch movies, I would turn out all the lights and watch theater-style.  So, I watched it.

I was stunned.  I was shocked.  

I was disturbed.

I had been frightened by movies before; not many, but a few.  When I was four years old, my mom took me to see E.T. in the theaters, and the scene with the NASA guys in the reflective helmets gave me nightmares.  Then again, I was four.

"The Evil Dead" is the first time I was disturbed by a movie.  It was the first time that, when watching a movie, I could hear myself thinking, "This is some disturbing, fucked up shit right here", and did not want to look away.  I can count on one hand the number of films which I have found out rightly disturbing since, but "The Evil Dead" was the first, and has since stood as my own personal bellwether of disturbing in movies.

"The Evil Dead" has also stood as my own personal bellwether of independent film effort.  The film was made for what was then an extremely small budget of $90,000 dollars in the woods in Tennessee.  It was made without the assistance of a studio at the end of the 1970's by a small handful of Michigan college students and their friends and family.  Those college students were (most notably) Sam, Ivan and Ted Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Robert Tapert.  

Since "The Evil Dead", these men have continued to work together, and have since gone on to lead successful careers.  They also became friends with the Coen brothers, with whom Sam co-wrote "The Hudsucker Proxy". (which is fantastic . . . but I'll get to that one later)

 In the nineties, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert would go on to produce numerous TV series, the most successful of which would be “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and “Xena: Warrior Princess”, on which, Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi would play staple characters.  Bruce Campbell would also star in the short-lived anachronistic steam-punk western “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.” (which was a better remake of “The Wild Wild West” than the Will Smith movie of the same name).  Bruce can now be seen as “Sam Axe” on the USA series “Burn Notice”. 

Sam also flexed his directing muscles in the nineties on the original superhero creation “Darkman”, on the western “The Quick and the Dead”, the suspense thriller “A Simple Plan” (in my opinion, his best work), and the Kevin Costner baseball vehicle “For Love of the Game”, and the supernatural murder-mystery “The Gift” (which is a close second to “A Simple Plan”).  Then, in the 2000s, Sam would go on to direct the three “Spider-Man” movies, once again fitting Bruce and Ted into cameo roles.  Many of these movies also featured, to some degree or another, the fiercely original shooting style which is already evident in “The Evil Dead”.

His latest effort, “Oz the Great and Powerful” will be in theaters this summer (which I am looking forward to).

However, this success is understandable when you consider that they were not only the driving force behind getting “The Evil Dead” made, but they did so without the benefit of a studio; they financed the film by seeking local businesses to invest in their own home town themselves, in their twenties.

Imagine being a twenty year old college kid going into a local, family owned business, a grocer or pharmacy, and asking them for $90,000 dollars to make a zombie movie.  What the hell do you say?

Even without this knowledge, “The Evil Dead” is still an impressive effort.  While the low budget is obvious, the acting is, in numerous places, amateurish, and the editing in the opening scene is somewhat awkward, the story is thoroughly original, Bruce Campbell’s acting throughout is solid, and even powerful in the third act, and he does all his own stunts, and, in fact, the entire third act (the last twenty minutes of the movie) are impressive, disturbing, and unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere, ever, before or since.

Steven King also wrote a rare review of “The Evil Dead”, calling it “the most ferociously original movie of 1982”.

Not that Steven King is the be-all-end-all of horror (oh . . . wait), but I wouldn’t even qualify it with the year.