Fresh and Exciting

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

V/H/S: Viral is a departure from the previous entries. We don't get the usual goofs looking through old VHS tapes. However the story that frames the movie ("Vicious Circles") doesn't make much sense. It involves a young couple. The guy decides to film everything, mainly his pretty girlfriend. When one of those LA car chases takes place in his neighborhood he sees his chance to film it and upload it so it'll go viral. Off he goes on his bike with cameras attached to his helmet. The chase follows a creepy old ice cream van that runs over people. For some reason the guy's cell phone mysteriously shows videos of his girl. Suddenly she appears on the street and vanishes as the van drives by.Then we move to the first independent segment--"Dante the Great." One day Dante discovers a cape which has powers. It's like it is a portal to a different dimension. So he starts doing magic with it and becomes famous. But the cops are on his tail because his assistants keep disappearing. It turns out the cape demands blood. But his new assistant has plans of her own.We go back to "Vicious Circles" for some more bike riding after the van/girl. Someone in the back of the van grabs another biker who gets dragged to pieces."Parallel Monsters" is about a Spanish guy who invents some large machine. When he turns it on and opens the door, it looks like on the other side is his mirror image. Another guy who looks just like him, holding a camera, and amazed at the machine. But it's not a mirror image. It's a parallel but inverted universe. They decide to go through the portal for every guy to explore the other guy's life. Their homes are identical except for a photo on a wall. One guy has a picture of him and his wife, the other a picture of a pentagram and candles. The first guy meets the other guy's hot wife. Apparently they were about to do something. In the middle of the living room is some bloody bag and two guys in underwear show up. When they ask the guy to go ahead and be the first, he hesitates so the other guys leave. The wife insists puzzled, so he leaves and runs into the two guys outside who go after him and suddenly their heads turn to light and develop creepy voices. When they take off their underwear it isn't pretty. Meanwhile guy #2 goes to the bedroom to see the other guy's wife who's sleeping, he too has something in his pants. Eventually they cross the portals again, but the first guy's wife isn't happy.The next segment "Bonestorm" features a bunch of dumb dope-head skaters who decide to drive to Tijuana. They buy firecrackers and as they walk/skate trough some riverbed run into some strange girl, see a corpse, an altar, a pentagram. The skate all over that stuff. Then one guy falls and bleeds over the pentagram. Now guys in hoods and corpsepaint appear and chant and slowly attack the kids who defend themselves with a gun, their skateboards, and the firecrackers, but the hooded guys buy now have turned into skeletons and still go after them.In the end the kid on the bike catches up with the van that has stopped. He gets inside and there are countless old TV sets. Suddenly his girl appears on screen and asks him to upload his videos. He declines so she starts hurting herself until he agrees.I didn't get to see "Gorgeous Vortex" that is included on DVD. Unfortunately this movie is not coherent enough. "Vicious Circles" doesn't amount to anything. Which is surprising given that Sarmiento has done some great things in the past. "Dante the Great" is a great story. Very entertaining and unique."Parallel Monsters" had a lot of promise but something doesn't satisfy. I don't know why they had to film this in Spain. It's still a good segment though."Bonestorm" is hampered by some real nasty characters that you can't care for. And it's also poorly filmed with cameras attached to the kids' helmets--pointing at their faces for some reason and that makes up most of the footage.I don't know if Gorgeous Vortex would have improved things. As it is, the arrangement of the stories doesn't help. Had they started with Dante and ended with Parallel perhaps I would have a better perception of VHS: Viral. But the ending as it is doesn't leave you with a good impression. At least we get sharp images and only a bit of unnecessary greenvision. I don't see a need for a further entry to the series.

I really enjoyed the first two films. A lot. I went into this expecting to be mildly entertained but I was horribly wrong. It felt like an R rated feature length episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark".I won't break it down into great detail. Mostly because it doesn't really deserve that level of attention. It doesn't even deserve this review but the masses must be warned.It was so bad.I won't spoil it but there was a part about magician cloak battles with horrible effects. There was a wraparound that was okay...ish.Then the ending credits came. Usually the best part of a horrible movie. Where you can let out a sigh of relief that all of it is finally over. But not VHS Viral. It bends you over & kicks you one last time. ( I had a much better analogy but I feel like it would be inappropriate by IMDb standards ) The fans of the previous films would probably still be sticking it out with this film, through it's entirety because they're waiting for the signature Death Set credits sequence. BOOM! Wrong baby! You get weird techno dance tracks to a nauseating light show.& that was VHS Viral. Writing this review has reminded me so much of how I wasted an hour & a half of my life on it, that I'm now changing my rating from 2 to 1.Don't watch this... ABCs of Death 2 was way better.

After V/H/S 1 and 2 were so surprisingly good I was disappointed to see the third was not being received as well. I went in with an open mind though hoping to be proved wrong. Sadly I wasn't.The only way to fairly review these films is to break them down into their segments:Vicious Circles - not sure exactly what was going on here to be honest. A confusing segment that might take a couple of watches to get my head around (I won't bother mind you). Dante the Great - the worst of the bunch. The excuse for the camera filming things was pathetic and the story was just embarrassing. A magic cape? How did they ever get past the stage of pitching this? Terrible acting, terrible story, terrible segment.Parallel Monsters - my pick of the bunch. An enticing set up and then a so-so execution. Could have been better, could have been worse. A good filmmaker could have done a lot with this segment. The potential was all there. Even so it's not bad.Bonestorm - another lame idea with no sense behind the story. This segment wasted an enormous amount of our time simply showing skateboarding tricks, only for the pay off to feel like a video game where the kids weren't even scared (so how are we meant to be?) and refused to run away. The monsters were creepy enough to make a good segment out of. Director Aaron Moorhead just failed to do so.I kept thinking to myself 'this just needs a master director to come along with a mind blowing segment and all else will be forgiven'. Then I come on here and see Rob Zombie was in talks to do a segment but they couldn't agree on how it was to be done. Are you kidding me! When this is what you have, you can't afford to be fussy. Give the man complete artistic freedom and he will likely save your film, at least to some extent. A real let down.

"V/H/S: Viral" was kind of crap, considering the 2 other movies in the trilogy.While the first two movies in the "V/H/S" series weren't amazing, they were at least entertaining, and were pretty good at the art of suspense (at least most of them were). They also kept to the title, and the entirety of both "V/H/S" and "V/H/S/2" looked like they were found on VHS tapes.Not "Viral" though.I guess they just decided to drop that idea, which was the first problem. The second and most apparent problem is that "Viral" is not scary. The three segments are imaginative, and maybe if they were lengthened, they could be a stand-alone movie. But they weren't scary. Not in the slightest. Some were bloody, but blood does not make a scene scary. And not to mention that they effects were lackluster. In the segment "Bonestorm", there is a part where the character "Filmer" gets his arm ripped off. But the effect looked so fake, that it was enough it make me laugh out loud. This was the effect of uninspired editing, which, now that I think about it, sums up this whole movie. Uninspired. If you are a fan of the "V/H/S" series, I say disregard this movie, and take V/H/S/2 as the last movie in the series. Because this will only leave you unsatisfied.