V/H/S/94

The V/H/S saga reached a high point in 2023 with V/H/S/85. This Nineties-set instalment, which features work from accomplished directors Jennifer Reeder and Chloe Okuno, was made two years earlier, but some fans will only be getting their hands on it now. Unfortunately, whilst it gets closer to the spirit of early entries in the series and may be seen by some fans as a welcome return to form, it’s unlikely to win over anybody new.

Whereas V/H/S/85 was firmly rooted in the relevant time period and engaged with the condition of the medium at that time, there’s relatively little here to tie it to ’94. Most of the trends it picks up on from that era still apply today, beyond the fact that apes themselves have largely disappeared, so it’s not clear why the title has been chosen. Rather than focusing on anything temporally relevant, the five stories comprising this anthology are bound together by a theme of armed raids, which runs through three directly and has a bearing on the other two. The trouble with this is that whilst it can be done well, imitation VHS found footage is really not the best medium for that. Each segment might have looked okay on its own, but when they’re all stuck together, viewers end up spending an inordinate amount of time watching fuzzy images of people running round corridors shouting incoherently, and frankly that’s boring.

Let’s take a look at those stories. The first one sees a SWAT team uncovering the mess left behind by a literally underground snuff fetish film cooperative. It’s well suited to the introductory, wraparound job it has to do, but there’s very little to it, and Reeder’s fans will be disappointed to find that it lacks her customary flair. This may be because a lot of her skill lies in building up atmosphere and that’s too easily lost when a story is told in snippets in between other works.

Story number two concerns a local news reporter and her photographer investigating small torn claims that a ‘rat man’ is living in the sewers. The satire is nicely done here, with good work from star Gina Louise Phillips, but unfortunately the supposedly scary section quickly runs out of places to go and the cute comic ending (which looks far more Eighties that Nineties) can only do so much to redeem it. it is at least more interesting than story number three, in which director Simon Barrett attempts to induce chills as we watch a lone funeral home assistant wait in vain for people to arrive at a wake on a dark and storm night, but mostly just succeeds in testing viewers’ patience en route to the ending that everyone expected from the outset.

The fourth story comes closest to capturing the spirit of the Nineties with its body horror, unhinged scientist making monsters plot, and some of the special effects here are quite well done, but mostly it just feels like watching an old video game, and it goes on far too long. The final segment is similarly overextended, which is a shame, as there’s a great little idea at the heart of it and a fun moment which might remind viewers of a certain early work by Peter Jackson. It centres on a far right militia scheming to attack a public building and, as such, highlights one of the difficulties with building an anthology around this kind of theme today. There’s just too much similar horror in the real world. Films like this need to be sharper and wittier and more creative, because if all you want is to watch confused military or pseudo-military types running through decaying buildings until they get shot, you can just turn on the news.

The film has its moments. In between two of the films there’s an advert for a piece of kitchenware which perfectly understands its subject and delivers some welcome humour. The rest feels, overall, lacking in spirit and energy – the sort of thing that really would, back in the day, have gone straight to VHS.