V/H/S/94 (2021) / (2.5/5)

 

Probably my least favorite of the V/H/S series, but I'm not really the biggest fan of the films, though the style does work some for me. I just didn't care anything about "Terror" about the nutty religious fanatical militia holding a vampire while plotting to eventually attack the federal government. They kept shooting some guy in the head over and over, gaining access to a whole police cache of weapons from a cop believing in their cause. They appear to be a bunch of losers following a commandant certain to fail on whatever mission they have planned. Eventually the vampire (with a face that opens to reveal a lot of teeth that clamps down of all these fuckers' faces, before the sun takes care of it) goes on a violent rampage, proving how inept these yahoos really are. I got bored of these clowns real quick-like. 

My favorite of the video recorded stories was "The Wake", where a newly hired funeral parlor employee must remain at the wake during a severe thunderstorm under a tornado watch for a young man who leaped from a church to his death. The coffin seems to thump and the employee (Kyal Legend) starts to get the heebee jeebees. Who could blame her, really? All by herself, no one seemingly interested in passing by to pay their respects (one guy does, but he barely says anything, eventually mumbling some words before hitting the bricks), Legend tries to keep it together while the storm cuts the lights on and off, as well as, eventually contend with whatever has allowed the body inside the coffin to reawaken. The walking corpse with half his head gone -- the other half of the head is on the floor with the one eye looking around, eventually locking onto to her! -- zombies around with his tongue wagging, while letting off a snarl as if some monster that has surfaced from a dark abyss. The addition of the tornado wrecking through the parlor was gnarly. 

"Storm Drain" has an ambitious reporter and her anxious camera operator descending into an underground sewer in the hopes of perhaps capturing a "ratman" on tape. She eyes a Pulitzer but that ambition brings about denizens who live in the network of sewers, covered in some oily film, organized and led by a minister who worships the "ratamaa" as a god. What those who come in contact with this god spit out of their mouths can melt faces like acid. We do get a decent look at the creature with an extended face (looks like a long snout and snarls) as it crawls out of a drain to address the minister who sets before it the reporter (Anna Hopkins). Later found in a daze, pulled from a manhole, Hopkins is back at an anchor desk, spewing goo into her co-host's face as he grabs for his eyes while the flesh just peels away (plenty of screams, too). 

"The Subject" has this demented scientist in his laboratory, surgically removing body parts from kidnapped victims, adding weaponry to their heads and arms. You get plenty of POV from the eyes of an experimental victim trying to stay alive as a combat team emerges to shut this whole diabolical operation down. Another of the mad doctor's victims has giant blades on both arms. Sort of like Robocop, these two are both "enhanced" and called by the doctor "Neo-humans". They can do a lot of damage, as the victim of the doctor we look through the eyes of adds a machine gun to her arm, blasting away the covert ops team that broke into the warehouse. "The Subject" might just be an audience favorite since it has a lot of black-suited ops guys with guns being torn apart. One of the officers has a camera, so you get points of view from both sides while all hell breaks loose. There is plenty of gore in this one. The doctor with his saw does some damage, and there is this really shocking scene involving a victim found on a slab with her entire torso opened from neck to crotch, with all this tech not yet perfected...she was a "work in progress". Thankfully the girl we see through the eyes of "pulls the plug", allowing that victim to "shut down". 

"Holy Hell" -- where a SWAT team enters this giant compound and finds cages with cult members whose eyes are gouged and bleeding, along with television sets mostly without a signal (just white noise) -- is the wraparound, as certain television sets draw camera closeups and introduce recorded vignettes. 

I know this is a popular franchise of low budget found footage story films, but I can' really say I have found that one so far that fully satisfies me. As far as the style V/H/S/94 employs, I thought they did a good job of getting the look and feel of shot-on-tape (and the decaying tape with its visible scratches and rough marks causing visual damage) aesthetics for that era of 1994 really on point. That really is what those who make these movies care about. I always feel, for the most part, that is the significant allure that keeps the V/H/S franchise alive. There is enough creepy imagery and bloodshed in 1994, I believe, to perhaps gain this one an eventual cult following. I've read that this is considered one of the most critically hailed films of the franchise.