V/H/S: Viral (2014)

Number Rolled: 45

Movie Name/Year: V/H/S: Viral (2014)

Tagline: Mayhem goes viral.

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Length: 81 minutes

Rating: R

Production Companies: The Collective Studios, Bloody Disgusting, 8383 Productions, Crafty Apes, Bishop Studios LLC, Sayaka Producciones Audiovisuales, AM Films, Studio71

Producer: Roxanne Benjamin, Justin Benson, Gary Binkow, Gregg Bishop, Theo Brooks, Dan Caudill, Vince Cupone, Beck Engle, Adam Hendricks, Nahikari Ipina, John H. Lang, David Lawson Jr., Brad Miska, Aaron Moorhead, Nils Onsager, Tom Owen, Morgan Patterson, Andrew Reyes, Sten Saluveer, Marcel Sarmiento, Manuel Sanchez, Christopher White, Zak Zeman, Matt Daneri

Director: Justin Benson, Gregg Bishop, Todd Lincoln, Aaron Moorhead, Marcel Sarmiento, Nacho Vigalondo

Writer: T.J. Cimfel, David White, Marcel Sarmiento, Gregg Bishop, Nacho Vigalondo, Justin Benson, Brad Miska, Todd Lincoln, Aaron Moorhead, Ed Dougherty

Actors: Patrick Lawrie, Emilia Ares Zoryan, Stephanie Silver, Val Vega, Angela Garcia, Chad Guerrero, Jorge Marquez, Steve Robles, Gary Sugarman, Noelle Ann Mabry, Justin Welborn, Emmy Argo, Dan Caudill, Michael Aaron Milligan, John Curran, Susan Williams, Randy McDowell, Carrie Keegan, Cory Rouse, Marian Alvarez, Gustavo Salmeron, Nick Blanco, Chase Newton, Shane Brady, Peter Villalba, Jessica Landon, Kelly Misek Jr.

Stunt Doubles: Nabuco Donosor, Alissa Valente Feucht

Languages

Speech Available: English

Subtitles Available: English

Blurb from Netflix: During a police chase, amateurs rush to shoot videos they hope will go viral, unwittingly casting themselves as victims in cyber story.

Selina’s Point of View:

I still hate shaky-cam. It’s always been necessary for the V/H/S series, though. Up until now, that hatred didn’t boil over onto the series.

The problem is that the V/H/S series greatly relies on the framing device to tie its stories together and, because of that framing device, the found footage aspect is necessary. It becomes an actual part of the stories and elevates them to new heights.

This film was different.

It’s like the creators of V/H/S: Viral completely forgot about a framing device and just stitches something together at the last minute to throw in-between the segments. I’m sorry, but that’s not how something like that works; especially if you’re trying to tie together stories in an anthology. There needs to be that definite, solid story that makes the rest of it fall into place like puzzle pieces.

This was just a hot mess.

Even the theme got muddled. There was a supernatural aspect, but then it was about social media, but then it was supposed to be a punishment kind of thing… really? Make up your damn mind. It’s like they took all the stories that weren’t good enough for the first two and said, “eh, this works. Print it.”

It pains me to say how lazy and awful this film was because I rather enjoyed the first two.

This is just another case of people going too far with sequels and fucking up the whole brand.

Cat’s Point of View:

I was fervently hoping that this third movie would improve on the series and would avoid some of the pitfalls that the prior V/H/S movies fell into. Alas, I do not have good news to report here.

I enjoyed this the least out of the three. However, even with that said, there were two segments that I found tolerable and semi-interesting – ‘Dante the Great’ and ‘Parallel Monsters.’

Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes, Extraterrestrial, Open Windows), director of the ‘Parallel Monsters’ segment, is no stranger to anthologies. He was the director of the ‘A is for Apocalypse’ segment of The ABCs of Death (2012). If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you might recall that I absolutely loathed that film experience. As a strange yin to that yang, though, he is also the writer and director for the recently released Colossal (2016), which is a movie I really want to watch.

The story that tied all the anthology shorts together was disappointing. There was too much craziness with showing the compromised video effects, the shaky cam was bananas, and it didn’t even make sense. I got the general gist of it but it just wasn’t clear how the different segments tied into that story.

I sincerely hope they don’t make another of these. I’d feel compelled to watch it in spite of the fact I hold little hope for improvement. As it stands, I have no intention of watching this one again.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 39%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 14%

Selina’s Rating – 1/5

Cat’s Rating – 1.5/5

Trust-the-Dice’s Parental Advisory Rating:

P.S. During part of the credits the movie plays in rewind behind the colors.

Movie Trailer: