10) V/H/S
Director: David Bruckner/Glenn McQuaid/Radio Silence/Joe Swanberg/Ti West/Adam Wingard
Producer Brad Miska, Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief of my go-to horror site for news and reviews, Bloody-Disgusting, is obviously a man who loves his horror. So hearing he gathered some of the best and brightest up and coming genre directors together for an old-school anthology type collaboration was an attention-grabbing headline to say the least, and I can now say V/H/S does a pretty bang-up job accomplishing what goals Miska set out to achieve. It’s different tastes of horror mashed together in pretty enjoyable fashion, even if at times our directors seem to just be looking for reasons to insert a boob shot or two.
The idea for V/H/S revolves around our filmmakers only being able to shoot using non-traditional camera methods like a webcam or iPhone, obviously along with a VHS camcorder. You’re not getting crystal clear resolution or your digital 3D display, trading picture quality for a nostalgic throwback to horror films of yesteryear, also admittedly providing a good amount of character, and more importantly something different among the found footage horror genre.
Sadly, not all the shorts are on par, Glenn McQuaid’s Tuesday The 17th being the worst. Something about a glitchy killer you can’t see and tired writing doesn’t translate into entertaining horror, but I have to say the rest were each engagingly enticing. I’m going to go against the grain on this one and say Radio Silence’s 10/31/98 is my favorite short of the bunch. What can I say, creepy haunted house work really strikes my fancy.
9) The Devil’s Carnival
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
As the tag-line suggests, I couldn’t help but fall for Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich’s musical horror The Devil’s Carnival. Full disclosure, I also love the two collaborator’s first rock-opera effort Repo: The Genetic Opera, so I already had an inkling of what I could expect this time around.
There are obvious differences between the two, from a more classically musical tone used in The Devil’s Carnival and a more musician populated cast this time around, but all are welcomed with open arms. How could you not be excited with talented artists such as Ivan Moody (Five Finger Death Punch) and Emile Autumn partaking in the fiendish festivities?
Running at a brisk 56 minutes, loads of vibrant creativity bring us a hellish carnival scene in the brightest of fashions. From clowns to performers to workers, each “player” wonderfully embodies the helpless soul mentality of Hell’s population, looking to Moody’s Hobo Clown as a perfectly animated character to fit Zdunich’s zany world of Gothic carnies and entertaining headliners. Bravo Ivan, as the Hobo Clown’s main number is both an intoxicating watch and listen, giving us Five Finger Death Punch fans a completely new voice to applaud.
The Devil’s Carnival is a wonderful take on correcting the wrongs in one’s life, and in this case the ones that brought you to hell, asking its audience “What would you do with a second chance?” Would you waste it? Act on it?
I can promise Bousman’s second musically charged horror film is anything but the same old song and dance. Now if he can just stop wasting his time with films like 11-11-11…