V/H/S is kind of like "Creepshow" meets "The Blair Witch Project" and IMHO it works out pretty well. Our main story (and set up from which to tell the rest of the stories) centers around four no-good wannabe punks. They spend their days committing juvenille crimes like vandalizing private property and terrorizing women. We feel little sympathy for these guys as they look to be at least in their late 20s but are committing petty crimes one would expect teens to commit. Anyway, they are hired by some mysterious porn broker to break into a house where an old man lives and steal a certain VHS tape. What is on the tape? They don't know, but sure as heck going to make copies of it so they can later profit even more from this theft. They find at least a dozen tapes, so in order to find the one they're looking for they begin playing them all. One by one, each tape tells a POV story and are seemingly unrelated. It left me wondering where the old guy gets these tapes.

The first tape they check shows the story of three college age guys through a new pair of spy-cam glasses. Their aim is to find some unwitting female night club patrons, take them back to their motel room and film themselves having sex. One of the girls they choose seems a bit odd, and as she shows more and more signs that tell the guys she isn't quite normal, we learn she has the designs on one of the guys in particular. The second tape shows the rather dreary second honeymoon of a couple of twenty-somethings as they tour the American Southwest. One night a mysterious woman knocks on their motel room door asking for a ride. When the husband declines, someone begins stalking them. A fortune the wife recieves earlier does all the foreshadowing we need. On the third tape we are shown the story of four youths who are going into the woods for the day to swim in an old-fashioned swimmin' hole. The catch is the girl leading the expedition has a secret, rather selfish reason for bringing the others. I don't think I'm too far over the line by saying this story seems to be influenced by "The Marble Hornets" web series. The fourth tape features a series of web-cam sessions between a couple of young lovers. The girl begins thinking her apartment is haunted and asks her boyfriend to be her moral support and record different rooms of her apartment via his web cam. The truth, however, is something that may even be too far out there that the writers of "The X-Files" couldn't have thought it up. The last tape shows us a group of guys who haven't outgrown their love of Halloween. When they get to a house they think a costume party is being thrown at they find the place deserted, except the lights are all on and they can hear voices upstairs. As they explore the house, some strange occurences make them believe they actually entered one of those funhouses that crop up every Halloween. Once they find the source of the voices, up in the attic, they realize what they were experiencing was no funhouse gag but something very supernatural, and before they can leave the house it'll get a whole lot worse.

As another reviewer said, this is a wild movie. I happen to love the POV subgenre of horror movies (when it's done right) and given that with an anthology you won't have that much time for character development (or even story development for that matter) and given some of these stories leave more questions than answers this was a fun, entertaining film. Be warned: if you like your movies squeaky clean with minimal profanity, little graphic violence, no drugs and no nudity, this film is NOT for you. I also hope, like another reviewer said, they meake a sequel of this movie soon. The premise is easy to set-up, and given the number of VHS tapes that were in the house that we didn't get to see, the possibilities are limitless, even if the budget isn't.

Seeing this on both Netflix and Amazon, and having a name I was unfamiliar with, I figured it would be just another low budget horror flick, but I was wrong. I was expecting to turn the movie off within 10 minutes, but ended up watching it all while wanting more when it ended. Sure... there are a few small things I would have done to change it, particularly at the end - something happens that I've seen in the movie Grave Encounters, it was something cheesy, in my opinion. But for the most part, this is really interesting and freaky. It is definitely worth AT LEAST a one time watch.

V/H/S is the latest first person/found footage style film that is dominating horror right now. This film is billed as the scariest thing ever of all time. Let me put that rumor to rest right now - while there are a few effective segments, most are so poorly done that laughter should be the most common reaction.

V/H/S is like the animation classic HEAVY METAL in that there are several separate segments directed/produced by different groups of people. As in HEAVY METAL, the V/H/S segments are related in tone and genre and its also clearly aimed at teenagers and early 20-somethings.

But unlike METAL, V/H/S doesn't have a plot device interweaving between the different stories to link them together. Instead it uses what amounts to a "master tape," which is supposed to be the result of one group of kids video taping the other various tapes once they find them.

The end result is something like TERROR TRAIN or TALES OF TERROR, except much more uneven. It's pretty clear that the various directors (9 in all I think) had different skill sets and perhaps different budgets as the effects are also very uneven between the various stories. The segments aren't helped by the video meant to link them all up - it's poorly acted and the characters go through a series of "No one would ever act that way, ever" moments that would make any teen slasher movie from the '80's proud. The success of this "master" segment is crucial to whatever chances this film had of something more then a mis-mash of unrelated stories, but unfortunately it's one of the worst.

Which is too bad because there are 3 effective segments. One in particular is quite good. But at over two hours long, this movie needs a serious pair of scissors. There's maybe 45 minutes of quality stuff, maybe a half hour of barely watchable footage, and 45 minutes of God-awful first student film quality crap. Almost worse then including footage which should have been cut, V/H/S doesn't even have the sense to leave the best 3 segments for last. The faux VHS effect doesn't help things either, as the segments are obviously not shot in that now ancient format (if they all were, it might have actually helped).

Still, for all its many flaws, it does try hard. It's filled with violence and nudity and one really good story. That will probably be enough to make it a hit with teens who have finally grown tired of torture porn.

BOTTOM LINE: 2 they should have hired a real editor out of 5 stars