V/H/S/2
Director: Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Eduardo Sanchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Huw Evans, Jason Eisener
Screenwriter(s): Simon Barrett, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Evans, Jamie Nash, Jason Eisener, John Davies
Cast: Adam Wingard, Lawrence Levine, L. C. Holt, Kelsy Abbott, Hannah Hughes
Magnet Releasing
Rated R | 96 Minutes
On Demand
Release Date: June 6, 2013

In 2012, Bloody Disgusting and Magnet Releasing collaborated on V/H/S, a horror anthology of found-footage short films directed by some of the genre’s up-and-coming filmmakers including Adam Wingard (You’re Next) and Ti West (House of the Devil).

The film’s central narrative involves a group of young criminals who take a job from an anonymous third party who is willing to pay them a large sum of money to burglarize a home and steal a single VHS videotape. After breaking into the house, the criminals find an old man dead in front of a bank of television sets and VCRs playing white noise. They dig through boxes and boxes of VHS tapes, playing each one, looking for the million-dollar tape.

V/H/S suffers from an overall inconsistency in quality between the found-footage shorts; two are pretty good, one is so-so, and two fail to impress. Despite a weak wrap-around and some not-so-great segments, V/H/S introduces a really interesting premise worth exploring: the power of the VHS tape.

V/H/S/2 (originally titled S-V/H/S) is an across-the-board improvement, with a framing narrative that follows two private detectives as they investigate the disappearance of a college student. Upon entering the kid’s house, they stumble upon a collection of VHS tapes and a makeshift shrine of TVs and VCRs. There are stacks of spiral notebooks; a laptop is nearby, recording video. The investigators discover a video diary from the missing college kid who appears to be a connoisseur of rare VHS tapes.