V/H/S/99 – Film Review

There’s a certain charm to the V/H/S franchise that I have never quite been able to put my finger on… until now. It’s that retro-style feel blended with the chilling horror elements that culminates in it feeling like both a warm hug and a rush of blood at the same time.

Are all of the movies in the franchise good? Certainly not. I’d argue that the first film is honestly the only truly great one… until now. V/H/S99 is not only easily the best in the series since the first, but it’s also a legitimately chilling found footage horror anthology that comes complete with five bone-chillingly tense segments with almost all of them managing to impress immensely.

The first segment, “Shredding,” already told me that this film was definitely going to commit to the 90s nostalgia and boy did it work. This is, surprisingly, a film that overall doesn’t rely on nostalgia in order to get audiences to enjoy it. Instead, it utilizes nostalgia in clever ways but always puts good, creepy horror storytelling front and center.

“Shredding” is a legitimately eerie tale about a punk rock band who break into an abandoned underground music venue that turns out to be quite different than they were expecting. It’s nothing groundbreaking in terms of the twists it takes, but it still makes for a delightfully entertaining entry.

Then we jump into “Suicide Bid,” which is surely going to be a terrifying tale for those who are extremely claustrophobic or arachnophobic (like myself). It tells the story of a young girl named Lily who is essentially, a loner in high school. She has no friends and wants to fit in more than anything else in the whole world.

That’s when she gets told by the most popular group of girls at school that if she sleeps in an a coffin overnight, she can be a part of their clique. However, when Lily reluctantly agrees, it ends up going terribly wrong (as expected). It’s one of the shorter stories in this anthology, but boy does it ever make an impact.

As each second ticks by, I grew more and more anxious, waiting to see what terrifying things were lurking around the corner for sympathetic protagonist Lily. The ending to this one is sure to delight and thrill horror fans as well. It’s one of the best of the bunch.

But easily my favorite story here has to be “Ozzy’s Dungeon,” which looked and felt so much like a real-life game show from the nineties that that in and of itself was a little scary. It follows a popular children’s television game show that is beloved by many people, and we watch an ordinary taping of a regular episode.

However, a typical episode quickly turns into something rather horrific in a matter of seconds that fundamentally changes the course of the story, throwing the audience for a real curveball. This is certainly the most unpredictable segment in the film, and it’s the one that left the biggest impact on me as well.

One of the lesser ones, sadly, is “The Gawkers,” for two reasons. One: it kind of felt a bit too similar to the infamous “Tape 56” from the first film in the franchise. And two: because it just kind of felt… a little dull and predictable in the grand scheme of things, unfortunately

The setup goes like this: a group of teenage friends start to spy on an attractive woman across the street. They seriously cannot stop looking at her through the window. In other words, they’re stalkers. One of the guys eventually manages to hack into the woman’s webcam to watch her get undressed, but things quickly take a dark turn.

It ends in the most generic and formulaic way imaginable, which is such a shame considering how the previous segments in the film up until this point were all remarkably original and unpredictable. Oh well, I guess. They can’t all be winners at the end of the day, can they?

The last segment in this collection, “To Hell And Back” also wasn’t as strong as it could’ve been. It follows two men named Nate and Troy who are unwillingly hired by cultists to film a summoning ritual. And so, of course, in a (not so) shocking twist, things go awfully wrong.

There is some legitimately great stuff to unpack with this one in the long run, but it also feels a little anticlimactic. Also, to be honest, it didn’t really fit the theme of the film either. I get that it was filmed on the eve of Y2K, but other than that, this story has nothing to do with the 90s.

Overall though, this is an outstandingly eerie and frightening collection that managed to impress me in more ways than one. Does every story work? No. There are also some stories that could’ve hit a little bit harder than they did, but nevertheless, this is one horror film you should definitely be checking out this weekend.

V/H/S99 is not only the best in the franchise since the first, but it’s also a legitimately frightening collection of stories that will leave you checking under your bed at night.