By all accounts, the V/H/S franchise had reached the end of its tape after the lackluster response to third entry in the series, V/H/S: Viral. However, while the era of clunky tapes, murky pictures and endless fiddling with the tracking knob has been lost into the maelstrom of nostalgia like portable CD players, MySpace and Andrew W.K., the found footage anthology series managed to make something of a riotous comeback in 2021 with V/H/S/94.
Ditching the modern setting for the far more natural fit of the camcorder waving 90s, the movie finally seemed to cement what the series should be and immediately felt far better because of it. While equalling some of the best, past segments proved to be something of an understandable impossibility (I dare anyone to better “Amateur Night” or “Safe Haven”), the overall quality of the installments rose exponentially and thus V/H/S was reborn anew. However, could the next entry, V/H/S/99, manage keep up the rise in quality?
Dropping the wraparounds, we get right to the action with “Shredding”, which introduces us to R.A.C.K., an obnoxious punk band who spend their days filming each other wiping out on skate boards and endlessly spouting their anti-establishment opinions. However, they find the perfect subject for their next, edgey video when they decide to break into a burnt out music venue where a legendary punk band known as Bitch Cat were trampled to death by their fans after an electrical fire breaks out. However one of the more superstitious members of R.A.C.K. finds that their fears are realised when the angry spirits of Bitch Cat prove to be not a rest.
Next up is “Suicide Bid” that sees hopeful pledge Lilly go all out to join the Beta Sigma ETA sorority in order to “be” somebody, but the usual hazing hijinks take a dark turn when she finds that her sister-to-be demand that she has to be buried alive for twelve hours in order to be a successful pledge. One bottle of alcohol, a prank involving spiders and a rainstorm later, and Lilly is about to have a really bad night, but things get even worse when a local legend of a missing pledge named Giltine proves to be true.
The third entry proves to be the unhinged “Ozzy’s Dungeon” that sees a hopeful Donna try and win the impossible-to-win, gunge-filled, kids gameshow in order to win her ultimate wish – to get her family out of poverty. However, after sustaining a compound fracture during the climatic assault course, her dreams are dashed, but years later, we find that her domineering mother has kidnapped the show’s old host in order to get revenge and the prize her daughter was owed.
The penultimate story, “The Gawkers”, gives us an American Pie-esque story that sees a group of young douchebags try and spy on the hot girl across the street that ends with horrific consequences, but the final story, “To Hell And Back” swings for the Infernal fences as two videographers called Nate and Troy are hired to film a coven of witches as they perform a raising ritual, however an innocent mistake sees them bost accidentally transported to hell where they have to fight to survive.
To open things on a negative note, V/H/S/99 doesn’t prove to be quite as tight as its predecessor and its none of its five entries ultimately has the goods to measure up to the best the franchise has to offer, but as anthology movies go, it still proves to be much better than your average anthology effort. Yes, there’s nothing here that can even hope to lick the boots of the franchise’s gold standard, but as a collective effort, V/H/S/99 is vastly superior to any of the first three movies as a complete whole with none of the stories proving to be the dog that let’s the team down.
Least of the bunch proves to be Tyler Macintyre’s “The Gawkers” which ends up being way too much set up for not a lot of payoff. The endless, horny yearning of the titular group of boys as they leer at neighbour Sandra could have easily lost a good five or more minutes and even though the denouement is randomly unpredictable (she’s a fucking Gorgon, with snakes for hair and everything), the homemade stop motion videos made by the lead kid’s younger brother prove to be far more endearing. Considering V/H/S has already made a superlative horny-dudes-get-their-comeuppance segment in the first film, it’s weird that anyone would think to try again. Faring better is Maggie Levin’s “Shredding” which paints 90s obnoxious youth culture in a similarly odious light, but is smart enough to get to the point quicker and the set up is nicely reminiscent of 80s metal horror like Trick Or Treat or Black Roses. Riffing on those primitive web videos that people would make and then upload for self promotion long before the days of Tiktok, the director pretty much nails the nihilistic, aimless teen restlessness of the time and has the spiteful, disrespectful band meet their match in the form of the mutilating members of Bitch Cat. However, the installment stumbles by having its final act be just another bout of people running about and screaming in the dark as a lot of found footage movies tend to be and while the zombified Bitch Cat look cool, the episode proves to be just a little bit too dingy to make out the good stuff.
In third place is Johannes Roberts’ “Suicide Bid” which proves to be not only the most technically capable of the entries here, but it also has the best plot as Mean Girls meets Edgar Allen Poe’s The Premature Burial. By far the most outwardly upsetting section here, any one who gets the cold sweats by just thinking of being wedged in a coffin and covered with spiders probably should give this segment a wide birth, however, the concept is strong enough as it stands and a final, last reel switch into the overtly supernatural actually dilutes the concept, rather than heightening it and it would have been far more affecting if maybe it had dropped the revenge from beyond the grave angle.
Far less coherent, but far more memorable is Flying Lotus’ “Ozzy’s Dungeon” that take those chaotic, children’s game shows usually seen on the likes of Nickelodeon and gives it a surreal spin that ends up being the most unpredictable section by far. Featuring a turn from The Walking Dead and GTA5’s Steven Ogg as a slimey host who doesn’t particularly seem that bothered when his contestants hurt themselves, things take a turn for the torture porn when a vengeful family torment him in order to get the reward they feel their daughter was cheated of years before. It’s an ugly segment and muddled as hell, but it’s so fucking weird it proves to be perversely entertaining – especially when the ending goes completely off the deep end when it introduces Ozzy as a bloated deity who births people’s desires through an impossibly bloated stomach.
However, first prize this time round goes to Vanessa and Joseph Winter’s “To Hell And Back”, an enjoyably silly romp through the underworld that sees two squabbling friends banished to Hell after a witches spell goes impressively tits up. Framing the place as a rocky domain that’s illuminated with red lightning and dotted with the mishaped bodies of malformed demons, it’s a rare comedy segment that plays this well and while it’s admittedly light (for a trip to Hell at least), it’s fun and inventive enough to take its place as top of the heap. Although it oddly the only segment that makes actual use of the year it’s set with no other entry taking advantage of the anxiety over the approaching millennium.
Could the segments be tighter? Of course, but for sheer variety and imagination alone, V/H/S/99 manages to keep you on your toes enough to happily press play on another sequel.
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