V/H/S/94

V/H/S/94 is the 5th overall addition to the V/H/S franchise. Following V/H/S: Viral, 94 goes back to its roots, following a similar storyline of the original. The film starts with a SWAT team conducting a drug-bust. The team is followed by a cameraman who is filming the bust, giving the sequence a Cops-like feel to it. The SWAT team explores the building and finds the macabre aftermath of cult-like ritualistic killings. They find various people sprawled throughout the building dead with their eyes gouged out. In front of them are TVs playing static. One of the televisions spontaneously starts to play a newscast and the film begins from there.

I’ll go into each short individually, but as a whole 94 doesn’t have clarity or a centralized storyline. The story told takes the viewers to a cinematic dead-end. As mentioned above, the plot follows a similar structure to the original but unlike the OG, it doesn’t really tell a story. The four segments end up being just random stuff happening with little to no connection to one another or to the overall story.

Storm Drain

Storm Drain is the first story of 94, giving the movie a strong start. The short story is about a local legend named Rat Man. Rat Man is rumored to be some sort of humanistic monster who of course must resemble a rat. This shorts follows reporter, Holly Marciano, and her cameraman, Jeff, as they interview local residents who have claimed to have seen the aforementioned Rat Man. Holly and Jeff encounter odd balls who relay various accounts of their encounters with Rat Man; ranging from idiosyncratically funny to menacingly bizarre. The Rat Man is believed to live in the sewers, leading Holly to believe that he’s simply a homeless man who is need of help. Holly has dualistic motivations – first, she wants to highlight the homeless population living under the city, and secondly, she aspires for a Nobel Peace Prize for her revelations. The duo trek into the sewers ands see signs of homeless folks living down there. Among them are signs of children, which is particularly disturbing. They eventually run into a man covered in black goo who appears to be in some sort of fugue state and can only murmur “Ratma”. Shit takes an even zanier turn as the man starts to vomit black goo, causing the twosome to get the fuck out of Dodge. Unfortunately, the duo is soon knocked unconscious by unseen assailants. Holly and Jeff are taken to a lair reminiscent of what is seen in the beginning of 94. It’s revealed that Rat Man is actually “Ratma” and it is some sort of deity that is tied to a cult, leading me to believe that the short is connected to the bigger overall story. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The short ends with Jeff being murdered and Holly being rescued and resuming her career as a reporter. She behaves bizarrely her first day back on air, culminating in accidently burning her co-host to death with the same vomited black goo seen from earlier. The short ends with her signing off stating “Hail Ratma”.

The Empty Wake

The second short of the anthology is The Empty Wake. This segment follows a woman named Hailey on her first night of work at a funeral home as she oversees a wake. Hailey is left alone as a violent thunderstorm wails outside. The deceased is a man who appears to have no family. Combined with the late hour and the raging storm, no one except for one strange man who leaves just as quickly as he enters, attends the wake. Strange happenstances take place throughout the night, causing Hailey to dial her boss out of panic multiple times throughout the evening, believing the dead man is actually an undead man. Hailey’s incessant calls annoy her boss to the point that he gives her an ultimatum: get through the night or get lost. Hailey tries to soldier through the disturbing night, but the storm knocks the power out and the corpse, whose name is revealed to be Andrew, is reanimated and attacks Hailey. She tries to escape, but unfortunately the doors have been barred closed. This, combined with the darkness and small setting give the short a claustrophobic effect. The segment put a lot of effort into the build-up of Andrew’s reanimation and dedicated a lot of its runtime to freaking Hailey out with escalating suspense. This was a good decision and gave necessary anxiety, but the onscreen horror didn’t last very long. The cat-and-mouse game ended rather quickly which was a letdown. This segment had a lot of potential but it somewhat reneged on the buildup by not delivering a more fleshed out chase sequence. Andrew is revealed to have committed ritual suicide for a cult, which is likely the same cult as mentioned in the previous segment. Unfortunately, this connection doesn’t lead anywhere in the overall story, which in retrospect hurts this segment.

The Subject

The Subject is by far the most popular segment of 94. Returning to V/H/S is Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto, who directed Safe Haven from V/H/S 2. The Subject is the most unique entry of 94, and arguably of the entire franchise. The short follows a depraved yet brilliant surgeon, who is kidnapping his patients and performing macabre surgeries on them in his pursuit in creating the perfect human-machine hybrid. The experiments are bizarre, to say the least, as he is using live humans as guinea pigs for his wicked experimentations. After dozens of failures, the surgeon, Dr. James Suhendra, finally has his break throughs with Subject 98 & Subject 99, a young man and young woman, respectively.

Suhendra’s exploits have made the news and a military team kicks down his door soon after his newfound success. Instead of apprehending the madman, they shoot him dead. The unit tries to free the other survivors, but instead, inadvertently trigger an explosion as a part of Suhendra’s contingency plan. Following this explosion, Subject 98 wakes up and begins a murderous rampage while Subject 99, quietly escapes.

It’s been said before, but the story takes on a first-person video-game shooter style from this point forward. It feels like the viewer is playing Halo. Amplifying this even further is that both Subject 98 and 99 are equipped with weaponry reminiscent of Gears of Wars. There’s a cyborg arm like Mega Man, mechanical blades, and attached guns with nigh unlimited bullets. The POV changes to Subject 98 as he kills the majority of the military unit in increasingly violent ways. The point-of-view switches over to 99 as she comes to the realization of what’s befallen her. The surviving military unit run into her and begin shooting at her and in self-defense she retaliates by murdering them with her newly equipped weaponry.

Subjects 98 and 99 are both victims. 98 has the most on-screen kills but he can’t be blamed for any villainous behavior because he was kidnapped and turned into a monster against his will. Same as 99, who really only killed in self-defense. The Subject raises interesting moral dilemmas for the horror genre as most horror stories are black-and-white. Horror villains are frequently inherently evil who are almost universally 100% at fault for their villainy. Subjects 98 and 99 killed because they were experimented on and irreparably transformed into monsters. They’re products of a cruel and depraved creator who turned them into killers. The Subject is a story that makes you redefine what you consider a monster and the definition of humanity.

The Subject is the best story of 94 because it’s the only short of the film that tells a full story. We don’t see the background of Suhendra that led to him becoming the sadistic experimentor nor do we know what he’s intending to do with the machine-humans, but it’s not necessary for the plot. Unlike the first two shorts, and the fourth and final, which fail to do so, there’s enough story told in the short that we get a full picture of what’s transcribing. The Subject is a story with just as much heart and question-raising as action. The action is very good, and the questions are poignant, making The Subject the strongest entry of the film.

Terror

Terror had the potential to be the best segment of the film, but it’ll have to settle for second place. Reeling off the insurrection on January 6th, a story like Terror is relevant as ever. The militia group depicted, First Patriots Movement Militia, are the 1994 Proud Boys. The FPM are planning to bomb a government building, a la Timothy McVeigh who did the same in 1995, a year after when the short is set. The FMP have a wild card on them – they plan to use vampire blood. The vampiric blood has explosive properties when sunlight touches it. The white supremacist group plan to take advantage of this by siphoning copious amounts of the blood from a vampire that they have captured.

The film begins with them killing a supposedly normal man. With the nature of VHS, I thought that this was the makings of a snuff film. The man is killed and resurrected multiple times, so we soon find that this is no normal dude. This was a good twist that makes you wonder what the fuck is going on. The group tests the blood and sees that it works, so they throw a party in celebration and end up pissy drunk.

The next act is a bit clunky. The group gets too drunk and overnight security doesn’t occur, resulting in the emergency bell sounding, signaling the vampire escaped. This isn’t shown, so we don’t know how the vampire got away because we never see the segment from its POV. Regardless, it or he, has escaped and has begun killing its (or his) captors. The action and horror that takes place from this point onward keeps it from owning the top ranking in the film.

Adding the vampire to the story and using its blood for biological warfare is a great touch that I don’t think that I’ve seen in horror cinema before. This is unique and realistically shows the extent of which far-right racist groups would go for hate. The segment would have been stronger, however, if it focused on the militia group’s mission. The segment lost its balance by shifting into a traditional vampire story. Far-right terrorist groups are much scarier than vampires in 2021, so leaning heavier into those would have made this story significantly more powerful. The vampire chase-and-kill segment was alright but it’s something that we’ve seen before. We haven’t seen a horror film about a radical white supremacist group. Terror had an opportunity to tell a completely unique story, but unfortunately fell into familiar tropes. Regardless, it’s still an entertaining segment that’s enjoyable, but it should have been a bit longer. Its unable to capitalize on an otherwise promising premise.

Holy Hell (Epilogue)

This is where I thought that the film would come together but instead it fell apart. Holy Hell felt forced, is without cohesion, and the cult storyline isn’t explained at all. Holy Hell culminates with two members of the SWAT team, Petro and Nash, turning on them and revealing themselves as snuff film proprietors who are looking to extend their collection. They end up beating the last remaining member of the SWAT team to death, filming it of course, and thus ending the film. This was an astronomical disappointment as the film led me to believe that the cult suggested in it would be central to the storyline. Instead, it wound up being nothing but a ploy to make the film creepy. There was a cult in Storm Drain and in Holy Hell, so I assumed that there would be a connection, but not only was there no connection, but both storylines failed to reach a definitive location.

Overall, the film looked a lot better in the trailer than the final product. The Subject is the strongest entry of the film and one of the most idiosyncratic things you’ll watch all Spooky SZN. The remaining 3 entries didn’t deliver on their promises. Storm Drain, The Empty Wake, and Terror all felt like they needed to be 15 minutes longer, which for an anthology has to be a cardinal sin. The three shorts ended up feeling rushed, having to blitz their way through a story that needed fuller fleshing out to present itself properly. Every story told had strong premises but unfortunately, three of the four bit off more they can chew and didn’t have enough time to sufficiently compact their stories in a compressed amount of time.

----- 5.4/10