Following “V/H/S“, “V/H/S/2“, “V/H/S Viral” and “V/H/S 94“, this V/H/S 99 sees, as for its predecessors, its team of directors and scriptwriters totally renewed. Thus, this feature film is an anthological horror film in which the use of found footage is still the trademark of the franchise, even if we would rather say that it has become a pretext! As usual, a conglomeration of mixed influences will be proposed to us from beginning to end. However, what will change a little is that V/H/S 99 has no real guiding thread between each short film. Instead, short stop-motion animations with little soldiers made by the young Brady will serve as interludes. However, the same Brady will be found in the segment ‘The Gawkers…’
V/H/S 99 is the fifth part of the V/H/S saga. The film features segments by Johannes Roberts (“F” and “The strangers: prey at night”, among others), Vanessa & Joseph Winter, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre (“Tragedy girls”) and Flying Lotus. Presented in September 2022 in the Midnight Madness category of the Toronto International Film Festival 2022, it was released as an original film on Shudder in October 2022 and broke streaming records, becoming the most watched premiere on the platform, a title previously held by “V/H/S 94”! But is this a guarantee of quality?
We’ll begin our journey with Shredding, written and directed by Maggie Levin, a segment in which the punk rock band R.A.C.K. (an acronym for members Rachel, Ankur, Chris and Kaleb) regularly records pranks for a web show. For their latest video, the band decides to break into the Colony Underground, a former underground concert hall that burned to the ground three years earlier in a fatal fire that resulted in the four members of the punk band “Bitch Cat” being trampled to death. However, it seems that they are not alone in these basements…
This first short with young rockers willing to go and explore the now disused underground where a group of young punkettes was crushed by a mad public is filmed in found footage with characters as unpleasant as possible, including one who takes on one of his own, Ankur, of Indian origin, who will warn them all that their jokes could awaken the wrath of Bhuta. Unbearable youngsters playing with inflatable dolls, punk zombies, all filmed with their feet, that’s basically the summary of this pitiful ghost story. Fortunately the idiots die quickly, well done!
Next up is Ozzy’s Dungeon, written by Zoe Cooper and Flying Lotus, also a director. Here, “Ozzy’s Dungeon” is a game show in which young contestants participate in physical challenges for a chance to go down into the dungeon and meet Ozzy, who will allow the winner to fulfill a wish. During one show, the enthusiastic Donna, whose wish is to help her impoverished family move out of a run-down Detroit neighborhood, is brutally paralyzed by her rival contestant and loses the game while the host doesn’t even stop the show so her injury can be treated! Years later, after the show is cancelled, Donna and her relatives kidnap the former host, who is forced to complete several tortuous versions of Ozzy’s dungeon challenges, risking his life…
This story of revenge around a poor man’s “Ninja Warrior” style show is not very good because only the bizarre ending, as cheap as it is nice, is worth seeing. However, we had to put up with everything that came before, such as: actors who ham it up to death, including the TV presenter, who is as despicable as possible, as well as Donna’s family filming her misdeeds from every angle and, above all, a dirty image that makes the whole thing rather uninteresting in the end.
Next up is Suicide Bid, written and directed by Johannes Roberts, which follows Lily, a young girl who wants to join Beta Sigma Eta, the most prestigious sorority on her campus. To do so, the young student is invited to spend a night on the town with “the sisters” who take her to a nearby cemetery where, as part of a hazing ritual, she must spend the night buried in a coffin. This so-called ceremony is meant to recreate a myth that another freshman, Giltine, dared to commit the same act to enter the same sorority twenty years earlier, only to end up forgotten by her classmates for a week. Rumor has it that she disappeared when the coffin was dug up…
Between urban legend, witch and strong hints of “Buried”, this short is quite nice because of course “the sisters” are stupid as hell and are going to play some nasty tricks on poor Lily: blows on the coffin, a box with a chilling surprise, while leaving a camera in the coffin to film the reactions of the poor girl, who still has a bell to ring only in case of emergency. But the sequel will not happen as initially planned and we will then witness a highly appreciable end as for the fate reserved to the shrews. For now, this is the best story.
In The Gawkers, written by Chris Lee Hill and director Tyler MacIntyre, while Brady is recording his latest video, his older brother Dylan bursts into his room and confiscates the camera, which he uses to film himself practicing lines. Dylan and his friends Kurt, Mark and Boner then exclude Brady from their activities, considering him a loser. The friends then go out to play pranks on each other and the locals, then take turns at the local skate park. Obsessed with Sandra, a pretty blonde who has moved into the house across the street with its strange stone statue garden, the boys film her constantly without her knowledge. When they discover that Brady knows her, they ask him to be invited by her and to hack her computer, at their expense…
“Uneven” is what comes to mind after watching this segment in its entirety. If the films of little soldiers serving as interludes between the short films have no interest despite two or three bloody effects, the whole story with the teenagers who are difficult to bear and the neighbor Sandra will be much more interesting to watch because the end will be delectable as possible because inevitably, the beautiful young lady hides something that they will unfortunately discover much too late!
This omnibus film will conclude with the short To Hell and back, written and directed by Vanessa & Joseph Winter. Here we discover Nate and Troy, two guys who were hired on New Year’s Eve 1999 by a cult. Their task is to film a ritual in which a woman named Kirsten has volunteered to be offered as a “vessel” to a powerful demon known as Ukabon. Skeptical at first, the two budding filmmakers are soon disillusioned when they find themselves in hell!
Truly superb from beginning to end and equipped with quality special effects, this segment immerses us in this horrible underworld. Sabbath, demons, witches and a damned soul who speaks in archaic terms will be at the rendezvous in this mini survival in Hell from which our video friends will have to escape before midnight or else be stuck there for eternity and suffer all sorts of atrocities!
On the whole, V/H/S 99 is rather irregular, two segments out of four being really worth watching. And as for “V/H/S 94“, its predecessor with a similar title, one can’t help but be disappointed by the story surrounding the whole, cruelly lacking in tone and unworthy of the franchise! Fortunately, this last one will conclude with a really captivating short where the use of the hand-held camera takes all its sense to make us assist to a real visit of what could be the Hell under Earth!
