by Sara Michelle Fetters - SGN A&E Writer

A group of hooligans (Calvin Reeder, Lane Hughes, Kentucker Audley, and director Adam Wingard) who get off on recording themselves doing all sorts of mayhem are hired to break into the home of an elderly gentleman (Frank Stack) and steal on old VHS tape an undisclosed benefactor sees as valuable. Inside the dilapidated abode they discover a treasure trove of recorded material, all of it despicable in nature and featuring a collection of tales of various people - knowingly and unknowingly - attempting to evade death.

Thus begins the found-footage anthology horror film V/H/S. Sprung from the minds of six up-and-coming genre directors (including the aforementioned Wingard, who previously helmed festival favorite A Horrible Way to Die), the film is a sporadically terrifying journey into the unknown, filled with chaos and carnage of all shapes and sizes. Inspiration for each short runs the gamut from The Shining to Friday the 13th to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all of it told in first-person fashion with the requisite amount of shaky-cam required for seemingly every film that takes up the found-footage battle cry.

It's as hit-and-miss as you'd expect, some of the shorts working far better than others - Wingard's umbrella piece is sadly the chief misstep. But when the movie connects, when it slaps the center of the bull's eye, this little piece of anthology fear is seriously gruesome fun. I jumped out of my seat on a number of occasions, grabbing my chair's armrests a time or two more, and by the time the film was over my knuckles were just as white as I hoped they'd be before the film began. It's a wildly uneven ride, to be sure, but for those willing to take the ride the hypnotic horrors found within are certainly worthy of discovery.

The best shorts come from directors Ti West (The Innkeepers) and Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs). West's revolves around a pair of lovebirds (Swanberg, Sophia Takal) who go on a road trip through the Midwest videotaping as the go, and encounter a strange young woman (Kate Lyn Sheil) who may or may not be stalking them. Swanberg's, written by Simon Barrett (A Horrible Way to Die), involves a woman (Helen Rogers) who enjoys video chatting with a male admirer (Daniel Kaufman) and comes to believe abnormal paranormal occurrences are taking place within her seemingly quiet apartment.

Both manage to create of a feel of uneasy dread that had me on the edge of my seat. Better, each short builds to a spellbinding conclusion I more or less didn't see coming, West's particularly so, and like the best freaky-deeky Twilight Zone-inspired anthology pieces of pop entertainment they're as thought-provoking as they are unsettling.

Others, like Glenn McQuaid's (I Sell the Dead) bit entitled 'Tuesday the 17th' - and obviously inspired by every summer-camp slasher film ever made (along with a gentle nod to A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Ring) - start out promisingly enough but don't go anywhere of merit, descending into chaos and madness leading to unsatisfying conclusions. Still, overall, each of the six shorts (including Wingard's) manages to create just the right mood of fear and despair to keep me interested. I wanted to know what was going to happen next, which story would get to me, each director showcasing their particular set of skills within the found-footage confines with remarkable confidence.

V/H/S isn't for everyone. It's dark and nasty to the extreme, pushing its R rating to the absolute breaking point. But for genre fans, even with the uneven nature inherent to most anthology films, this 116-minute horror opus fits the bill nicely, the thrills and chills in parts certain to stick long after the last VHS cassette runs out of tape.

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