V/H/S

Presumably, no one watches an omnibus film with expectations set higher than 'mixed bag of varying quality' and horror anthology V/H/S does nothing to change that. It consists of six horror shorts from six different filmmakers; five found-footage films being watched – as a wraparound framing film establishes – by a group of petty crims hired to track down a certain videocassette in an abandoned house containing many to sift through.

To the film's detriment, none of the shorts exactly run the gamut. Several feature footage filmed amidst a group of intolerable fratboy douchebags out for a night of debauchery, and only a few of the shorts – particularly the first – manage to use the found-footage form in a particularly artful, un-gimmicky manner. That first segment (directed by David Bruckner) is the film's clear standout, creating an overwhelming sense of dread based on an accumulation of offhand ominous behaviour tics that only a sober observer would notice, displayed by one female pickup during a guy's night out. The second film, from horror maestro Ti West, assumes the form of a young couple's travel diary that becomes increasingly fraught with mutual paranoia, and like West's House Of The Devil and The Innkeepers, confirms him as a master of the slow-burn freakout.

V/H/S proves frontloaded after these two chapters; elsewhere, there's mildly rousing haunted-house hijinks, a risible Friday the 13th-esque lakeside slasher (redeemed by one inspired touch), and a fairly creepy segment that takes place entirely through Skype conversations, which nonetheless invites one to ponder where Skype-recordings-to-VHS transfers can be purchased. Meanwhile, the nostalgic texture of old videotape is curiously unexploited – suddenly, Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers seems ripe for reappraisal. Most damningly, the women in each segment end up more degraded than the film's titular format; each cast as incarnations of pure evil or subject to a leery male gaze, or both. You wonder how rigorous the pre-production period was, before each filmmaker went off to do their separate thing, as repetition proves to be V/H/S' main undoing. The compilation's highpoints make it hard to dismiss as a whole, but there's no individual section that wouldn't benefit from isolated viewing.