All the way back to Footsteps and through The Raid, he was indulging in intense bursts of gore and terror beyond what the usual action movie holds. The brainchild of up-and-coming horror director Adam Wingard (who at this point, I think, had already directed You’re Next, though it wouldn’t see wide release for another year), V/H/S sought to combine the found-footage movie with that other august horror subgenre, the anthology movie. well, actually i've never seen Viral. That, plus I feel like they kinda halfway gave up on the entire concept behind the movies - a mockumentary doesn't make sense as a mysterious video you'd find on somebody's phone, for instance. The movie has multiple short horror stories inside an overlaying story arc. Does anyone have any recommendations for found footage films similar to Safe Haven? But they aren’t there long before things take an even darker turn; as the members of the film crew are separated, Father makes some cryptic announcements over the compound’s intercom, and all hell breaks loose, in the most direct and literal meaning of the term. I’ve already made it clear how tiresome I find the blandly anonymous visual aesthetic of found-footage at large, so if Evans has to game things a bit, more power to him. It's still pretty good if you want to give it a watch. From Coraline to ParaNorman check out some of our favorite family-friendly movie picks to watch this Halloween. And maybe that’s still in the future for him. Clarissa (segment "Phase I Clinical Trials"), Young Girl (segment "Phase I Clinical Trials"), Bloody Man (segment "Phase I Clinical Trials"), Uncle (segment "Phase I Clinical Trials"), Justin (segment "Phase I Clinical Trials"), Screaming Girl (segment "A Ride in the Park"). k For a great horror night out with either you or with your pals, VHS 2 will make you horrified. V/H/S/2 Specifically: the Found-Footage Movie. The world government has denied any access to every forest around the globe, but with your lucky steel bat, you're determined to get to the root of the problem. Without spoiling it, this short is about a film crew interviewing a cult in a 3rd world country hinting the leader is abusing some of their members. Shiiiiit that was my fav one. Find Safe Haven In This Exclusive ‘V/H/S/2’ Featurette! Come on down to ‘Eden Parrish’ and drink your troubles away. Take a look at this bloody clip from V/H/S/2's Safe Haven segment! But for all the beard-stroking observations one can make about how the found-footage subgenre reflects our media saturated, handheld device driven culture in the 21st century (and I do feel that the horror genre reflects a given society’s values more than most), I think the glut of often indistinguishably jittery first-person horror movies in the 2000s and 2010s comes down to two things: they work like gangbusters on people that are easily rattled by youtube videos where a ghost jumps out at you, and they finally found a way to make horror movies even cheaper and easier to crank out.

Safe Haven alone is the reason why I understand why VHS 2 has good reviews. EDIT: I also wanted to add, it's a good thing I didn't look closely at the photos on IMDB. In half an hour (Safe Haven is the longest segment in either V/H/S movie – Wingard et al.

Horror fans willing to sift through the chaff were left clamoring for Evans to take on a feature-length horror project. With Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott, Adam Wingard, Hannah Hughes. Far from the one or two camera setups usually found in the genre, cameras are everywhere in Safe Haven. Looking for some great streaming picks? For all the problems I have with it, found-footage does possess a certain confrontational element that makes for great horror, and few shots embrace that like the moment when Father dives on a helpless cameraman and cuts his throat – effectively, cutting the viewer’s throat, since we see the shot from a button camera hidden in the victim’s shirt. ( Log Out /  Strap yourselves in, because this one’s gonna be heavier on the historical context than usual. ( Log Out /  Loved VHS 1 & 2. To be blunt, I’m almost certain the movie cheats a bit; on my rewatch for this article, I couldn’t pick out any specific places where there absolutely could not be a camera, but there were at least a few where I think Evans put getting the shot he wanted over making sure that shot made strict logical sense. Nacho Vigalondo's "Parallel Monsters" isn't bad either. Cookies help us deliver our Services. It's not necessary but the first one is fucking dope, New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Two best friends see their trip of a lifetime take a dark turn when one of them is struck by a mysterious affliction. "The Raid" is a martial arts/action movie that kicks a lot of ass. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Overall I enjoyed the VHS films. It is as hilarious as much as everything else we want in a zombie flick. The progenitor of this genre is often said to be 1999’s zeitgeist-exploding microbudget masterpiece, The Blair Witch Project, although more learned students of exploitation cinema will often point to Ruggero Deodato’s unbelievably grueling 1980 gorefest Cannibal Holocaust as its true origin. Also included in this film is a first person zombie attack and alien invasion. I've seen The Sacrament, The Last Exorcism, and The Conspiracy, but I don't know of any other movies in this same vein. 31 of 62 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? I really like the vhs franchise, hope there will be more, Agreed, and it was directed by Gareth Evans, who revisited the idea of cults with supernatural backgrounds in Apostle on Netflix, which is really good (although it has been quite polarising - some people find the first hour too slow.). Reply. Hope you enjoy! And it doesn’t help that V/H/S/2 frontloads its absolute worst material before you get to Sanchez’s passable segment and Evans’ outstanding one. I want to recommend anthology movie VHS 2 to this sub specifically the short Safe Haven in it.

When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of the victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back.

Having a rough life? And more importantly, once shit starts to get real, the short moves at such a breakneck pace that you don’t have time to start poking holes in it. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Somewhat surprisingly, this managed to address a few of the big flaws with found-footage as a genre; for one, it taxes one’s suspension of disbelief a lot less when these protagonists are carrying their camera through precarious situations for 20 or so minutes as opposed to feature length (it was also the first found-footage movie I saw that brought hands-free devices into the mix, making for a less contrived shooting style as well as exploiting the inherent skeeviness of stuff like Google Glass). Anyway, fast forward to 2012, enter V/H/S. And his plans for it were big, indeed. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. A 26-chapter anthology that showcases death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty. Dedicated horror fans will probably know what this is, but for the cheap seats: Found Footage movies, as the name implies, present themselves as an assemblage of footage found by a third party and shot by a (usually) dead or missing, (usually) amateur filmmaker. I’m not gonna bury the lede any more than I already have: I’m sick to fucking death of found-footage movies. These are only some of the words that describe VHS 2. ( Log Out /  Movies. Some of them are okay – The Blair Witch Project still holds up both as a watershed moment in horror history and a genuinely unnerving scary movie, Cannibal Holocaust, for all its moral and aesthetic flaws, is still enough to leave anyone shaken, and Paranormal Activity has its moments. A television reporter and cameraman follow emergency workers into a dark apartment building and are quickly locked inside with something terrifying. Directed by Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans. Vhs was one of the most surpising movies I've ever watched. I want to recommend anthology movie VHS 2 to this sub specifically the short Safe Haven in it.

What are the differences between the R-Rated and Unrated Version? By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. Can’t remember if it was in the first or second film but I loved the one in the woods where”something” is killing them one by one but whenever it appears on the camera it’s all blurred and fuzzed out. What we see in Safe Haven then is Evans being given a chance to really cut loose, and he does so with aplomb. It feels kind of unfair, really. It is a compilation of terrifying short films which, first of all, are very well made and are all insanely scary.Entertaining, intense. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. On arriving, they notice some of the expected Jonestown-esque eeriness: matching white uniforms, unsettling singalongs, Blair Witch style fetish dolls, and the deeply uncomfortable implication of child abuse (exposing this last aspect appears to be the film crew’s chief motivator). The first of these two is A Ride in the Park, a fun if insubstantial short by Blair Witch co-director Eduardo Sanchez making use of the irresistible high-concept gimmick “zombies with go-pros.” The second, in a whole other league than Ride and indeed anything in the V/H/S franchise is Gareth Evans’ Safe Haven (hey, it only took me 700 words to get to the point).

Change ), Gareth Evans Retrospective Part 4: V/H/S/2: Safe Haven (2013), Gareth Evans Retrospective Part 3: The Raid: Redemption (2011), Gareth Evans Retrospective Part 2: Merantau (2009), Gareth Evans Retrospective Part 1: Footsteps (2006), Pre-Code.Com: Reviewing Every Film, 1930 to 1934. Is it ok? Still, it had a higher batting average than a lot of anthology movies, and though it was inarguably about 20 minutes too long, each segment genuinely felt like it brought something to the table, even the perfunctory wraparound, and overall it made for a satisfyingly creepy watch. So, the plot: set, as with Evans’ last two films, in Indonesia, a documentary film crew headed by Malik (Oka Antara) is interviewing a mysterious cult leader only referred to as Father (Epy Kusnandar) in a restaurant. (2013). And so, Safe Haven was one of the best horror movies of the 2010s, but unfairly trapped within an otherwise lackluster movie. On the one hand, there’s no real market for standalone short films anymore (if there ever really was), so Safe Haven stood its best chance for being seen by fitting snugly in the modern cult favorites that are the V/H/S series. Yeah it's really really good. One particular image used in the film’s promotional campaign, of our last hapless survivor standing before the bloodied Father and wielding a crowbar, could easily have come out of a particularly well-rendered first-person-shooter.

Indeed, apart from two segments, it’s borderline unwatchable.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier entries in this series, Evans is no stranger to horror imagery. An elderly woman battling Alzheimer's disease agrees to let a film crew document her condition, but what they discover is something far more sinister going on. ( Log Out / 

Having dispensed with the found-footage movie’s weaknesses, Evans shows a keen grasp of its strengths. VHS 2 is a sequel to my favourite horror film, VHS.