Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here with another AICN HORROR: ZOMBIES & SHARKS column. While I had mixed feelings about the third installment of the V/H/S franchise, I will recognize that there’s a lot of fine talent behind the film. That’s why I wanted to toss five questions to the five directors behind V/H/S VIRAL. Here’s what each of them had to say. And below that is my review for V/H/S VIRAL!
AMBSH BUG (BUG): How did you come up with your segment in V/H/S: VIRAL?MARCEL SARMIENTO (MS): For me it was a great opportunity to try to do something different with an established brand. The wraparounds of the first two films followed a similar structure, and i wondered if we could shake things up and instead be a lot less literal and maybe give an audience more 'bang for their buck' between segments. One of the best things about all these anthology projects is how they allow directors to explore crazy ideas without much interference and take risks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work out so well, but that’s part of the charm. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
The idea was to fashion a wraparound story that was continually propelling the overall story forward in a very active way. Keep it moving at all times. Instead of a slow down – a calm between segments – with the mechanics of the “VHS tape” setting up the next segment – my idea was to move "out of the room" and into the world and beyond.
BUG: Found footage films require quite a few hurdles to leap while making them in order to convey the reality of the situation. Which did you find to be the most difficult to make in your segment?
MS: I think in general found footage is very hard to pull of now. It’s no longer the novelty it used to be, and if anything, an audience is set up to feel like they are observing things more than experiencing things simply based on how incredibly inundated we all are by our own "found footage” in our daily lives, in everything we do with social media, and so on. I found the hurdles to be entirely subjective and difficult to overcome emotionally. The mechanics not so much. But what’s so encouraging is how cool the segments still came out. I think everyone took it to a new level here, and that was exciting to see. I think by somewhat abandoning the rules, you can still achieve "the feeling" and tell compelling stories in the format.
How is this film indicative of your previous work in film?
MS: I don’t think it is very indicative, which is why I was excited to do it, to try something different. I tend to really love visuals and atmosphere, and this was a study in how to make things look a bit mundane and “everyday” to fit the “gopro” style. Maybe it was indicative in that I had a young guy tear up. I seem to always have some guy crying in my films!
BUG: If you had a camera and something crazy/dangerous/scary happened, would you keep filming or drop the camera and run?
MS: I would most certainly run, but I’d probably also take the camera with me!
BUG: What was your favorite memory involving renting/watching/recording a VHS tape as a kid and what was your favorite film to watch on VHS?
MS: I started making short films using VHS, editing tape to tape, trying to get those cuts not to have static. I was obsessed with the brands of tapes, the VX vs the EX and Super EX and so on. I spent a lot of time finding the right VHS tapes to use to shoot and edit. I think FUJI were my favorite. The reality is they all were probably made in the same warehouse somewhere and just slapped on with different labels. But those blank tapes were an obsession and I had hundreds. So I probably watched those half blank tapes more than any actual movie rental VHS tape. Now even those are long gone...
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): How did you come up with your segment in V/H/S: VIRAL?GREGG BISHOP (GB): My segment is called "Dante the Great"… it’s about a Magician’s Assistant who discovers that the Magician she works for has conjured a demon that provides him with real magic powers in exchange for human souls.
The idea came from an article in 2007 about a police raid on David Copperfield’s warehouse (which ended up just being some crazy girl trying to extort money from him)… but it served as a springboard for: What if a famous magician was dabbling in black magic and actually making people disappear? I thought it was an interesting concept and something I had never seen before.
BUG: Found footage films require quite a few hurdles to leap while making them in order to convey the reality of the situation. Which did you find to be the most difficult to make in your segment?
GB: There are blessings and curses to the found footage format. On the plus side, the footage can be extremely visceral and have a real immediacy to it. As a filmmaker it allows you to do longer takes and steal intricate shots that add a ton of production value that you usually wouldn’t be able to get with a larger crew in tow.
One of the challenges with the found footage format is that you usually have an invisible lead character, because that character is often behind the camera filming… which is a problem because you want your audience to connect with that person. That’s one of the reasons I decided to do something different that hasn’t been done in the V/H/S franchise and shoot the film in a mock documentary format. Using footage from multiple sources (security cameras, interview, news footage, etc) and putting it all together. That way, I could really dive into the characters, really open the movie up, and give the film an energy.
Also, there’s misconception that since this is part 3 in a franchise that the budget was higher than the previous movies, but actually the opposite is true. The VHS movies are still produced independently and are made as low budget short films. There’s a great making-of featurette on the V/H/S VIRAL blu-ray where we break the magician’s code and show you all the tricks we pulled to give the illusion that we had a much bigger budget than we actually did.
BUG: If you had a camera and something crazy/dangerous/scary happened, would you keep filming or drop the camera and run?
GB: Self-preservation kicks in for sure… I feel like we’d all drop that camera and RUN!
That’s one of the biggest challenges of the found footage format, right? Justifying the camera. How many films have we all seen with the lead character’s in danger yet they are still filming? I’m always yelling at the screen: “PUT THAT CAMERA DOWN AND SAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND!” Amiright?
BUG: What was your favorite memory involving renting/watching/recording a VHS tape as a kid and what was your favorite film to watch on VHS?
GB: My favorite films to watch on VHS are my favorite films to watch today, regardless of the format. E.T., STAR WARS, JAWS, INDIANA JONES, BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE GOONIES are some of my favorite movies of all time.
As a kid, I used to edit myself into different movies using a VHS camcorder and a VCR. I would take a movie on VHS, like Indiana Jones, and dub a scene to a blank VHS tape. When they’d cut to a close up of Indy, I’d go out and shoot a close up of me (I’d get the wardrobe and background as close as I could) and cut it into the movie VCR to VCR so it would appear as though I was Indiana Jones. By doing that as a kid, I inadvertently taught myself filmmaking techniques and learned a lot about the craft of making movies. Plus I was giving Harrison Ford a run for his money (that’s a lie).
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): How did you come up with your segment in V/H/S: VIRAL?NACHO VIGALONDO (NV): It often happens like this: I have a bunch of old ideas flying around, like the portal in the basement, and when I try to shape it as a V/H/S segment, new stuff comes, like the satanic/Cronenberg/kinky element. Initially it was a plain scifi story. I found interesting to adapt the mirror universe concept to the found footage language. And, at the end, the fact that this is a horror anthology pushed me into doing horror, which is the most exciting side of the whole thing, I think.
BUG: Found footage films require quite a few hurdles to leap while making them in order to convey the reality of the situation. Which did you find to be the most difficult to make in your segment?
NV: It´s an easy answer: Duplicating both universes, building the whole symmetry with a single location and multiple visual tricks. Every shot was a challenge. It was one of my already famous head-scratching shoots where the script supervisor goes nuts.
BUG: How is this film indicative of your previous work in film?
NV: It´s easy to find links to my first feature film, TIMECRIMES, and some of my short films, like "Saving the world." I always love to explore the identity as a theme in all my stories, and this segment, in which a guy confronts himself, is perfect in that sense.
BUG: If you had a camera and something crazy/dangerous/scary happened, would you keep filming or drop the camera and run?
NV: Like Bioy Casares my favorite writer once said: It´s impossible to know in advance whether you're a brave person. Who knows!
BUG: What was your favorite memory involving renting/watching/recording a VHS tape as a kid and what was your favorite film to watch on VHS?
NV: My favorite VHS tape was "Evil Dead II." It was impossible to buy at the time in Spain so I convinced a video store to sell me a copy for rent that was already partially wasted by viewings. It was so bad on screen, but I was so desperately in love with the movie.
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): How did you come up with your segment in V/H/S: VIRAL?JUSTIN BENSON (JB): We're known for our quiet, character-centric conceptual horror, but we've always wanted to do something completely balls-to-the-wall insane, like a fever dream. Like Mortal Kombat meets Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, enveloping young skater culture with violence-obsessed gaming culture at once (while not judging either). We sat around and spitballed the craziest ideas we could come up with, and when we pitched the Collective this was the one we all loved the most. Found footage films require quite a few hurdles to leap while making them in order to convey the reality of the situation.
BUG: Which did you find to be the most difficult to make in your segment?
AARON MOOREHEAD (AM): The good news is that while ours still has an element of reality, we embraced the fact that it's rare-to-impossible nowadays for any found footage film to be treated as real. So we went the opposite way, and made it just as insane as possible so people would be along for the ride. The hardest thing for us, really, was finding the right actors. Instead of putting out a casting call for actors that could skate (that would result in EVERY actor in LA who has ever picked up a skateboard responding that they're a pro skater). We ended up trawling skate parks for talented skaters with an interesting style, and being total weirdos we asked for their name and number and if they "wanted to be in a movie" to audition them. Luckily the actors from "Bonestorm" responded and we got the authenticity it needed. Those kids are incredibly talented and we're externally grateful for what they shared with us.
BUG: How is this film indicative of your previous work in film?
JB: Well, even though it's a short film that's got a focus on visual, visceral thrills, we still made a relationship between two friends be the crux of what ends up happening. It's also got an original mythology, some sort of mix between a Dia de los Muertos cult and an ancient Latin curse with flame blood and a giant monster thrown in. There's this whole back-story about the genesis of this organization being around the 1500's when the Spanish explorer Cabrillo made first contact with the indigenous cultures of what is now Mexico -- it's where the swords and sort of more western occult trappings came from. Obviously this wouldn't tonally fit in our fun little piece, and would be a pretty clunky piece of exposition, if it were declared within the film, but it did inform visual and auditory elements to give a fun layer of mystery.
BUG: If you had a camera and something crazy/dangerous/scary happened, would you keep filming or drop the camera and run?
AM: We would keep filming from a safe distance -- that footage would have a monetary value. Luckily in BONESTORM our boys' GoPros were strapped to their heads and it made more sense for them to keep filming than not.
BUG: What was your favorite memory involving renting/watching/recording a VHS tape as a kid and what was your favorite film to watch on VHS?
AM: My aunt and uncle invested a lot of money and time in renting stuff from Blockbuster, copying the tape, and keeping it in an extremely large library that was about a quarter of the size of Blockbuster itself (but it was all blank exposed tapes with a handwritten label, you can imagine how strange that looked on racks and stacks against the wood paneling of the entertainment room). They were OG bootleggers. And as convenient as it seems, the ONLY movie I can remember watching of those low-quality bootlegs (besides MORTAL KOMBAT) was another anthology horror, THE TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE, which we had to sneak around to watch because it was deemed too scary for us. But the tape that got worn down I watched it so much was my taped-off-network-TV-with-commercials-and-all STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE.
JB: Me and my friends used to rent surf, skateboard and snowboard videos from the local board shops, dub them for everyone, then return. By all accounts the action sports industry did pretty well in the late 90's, but it would have done a little better if my childhood friends didn't know how to connect 2 VCR's.
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): How did you come up with your segment?TODD LINCOLN (TL): I was walking in the parking lot of an upscale suburban shopping plaza and the idea came to me. I had already begun to explore merging visual elements of Fashion Photography and Horror Films and this story was the perfect fit.
BUG: Found footage films require quite a few hurdles to leap while making them in order to convey the reality of the situation. Which did you find to be the most difficult to make in your segment?
TL: My segment, “Gorgeous Vortex”, is not found footage. It’s an Experimental, High Fashion Horror Film. Purposely disruptive and divisive. Like catching evil transmissions from an one-dimensional fever dream. I felt it was time to burn the forest for regrowth and maybe push the horror genre forward a little bit.
BUG: How is this segment indicative of your previous work in film?
TL: There may be unconscious stylistic choices that have some details in common with my past commercial / music video / short film work. But I set out to make something completely different. “Gorgeous Vortex” pushed me way beyond… into uncharted territory. I’m not the same after this film. It haunts me to this day.
BUG: If you had a camera and something crazy/dangerous/scary happened, would you keep filming or drop the camera and run?
TL: It’s strange to think about it that way… because usually I’m the scary one that’s holding a camera and making people run. But to answer your question: It depends. If it’s an opportunity to capture some great injustice or a supernatural entity on video… then I might stand my ground and go for the gold. But if it’s an ordinary threat like a spider crawling on my arm… then I’d fucking drop the camera and run.
BUG: What was your favorite memory involving renting/watching/recording a VHS tape as a kid and what was your favorite film to watch on VHS?
TL: I have endless great memories of renting movies as a kid in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. From locally owned video stores like Sound Warehouse or Critic’s Choice Video… to the mega-chains, Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video. My Velcro wallet contained laminated membership cards to them all. I obsessively combed the aisles… renting and devouring as many styles / genres / decades of movies as possible. My friends and I gravitated the most toward the Horror section, because that’s just the most fun and you can almost never go wrong. Plus, horror movies go best with pepperoni pizza, sugary drinks and staying up as late as possible. I especially watched the hell out of VHS tapes such as JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING, THE LOST BOYS, JAWS, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, HALLOWEEN, PET SEMETARY, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3&4, ALIENS, and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSARE.
My family didn’t own a video camera, but my best friend had an old VHS camera and you had to plug its power cord directly into the wall. We discovered the camera had a stop-motion function… so we set up all of my Star Wars toys and made a deadly serious stop-motion movie. We deemed it Star Wars canon. I haven’t seen that video since right after we shot it. Recently I re-found the VHS tape in a storage unit. But I’m scared to watch, because it’s probably better than anything I’m making today.
I finally got a Sony Hi-8 video camera in high school. My favorite thing I’ve ever shot was with that camera. I recorded a visit with my great-grandmother and documented her going about her daily life and cooking my favorite pancakes.
BUG: Below is my review of V/H/S VIRAL!
New this week DVD/BluRay from Magnet Releasing!V/H/S VIRAL (2014)
Directed by Marcel Sarmiento ("Vicious Circles"), Gregg Bishop ("Dante the Great"), Nacho Vigalondo ("Parallel Monsters"), Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead ("Bonestorm"), Todd Lincoln ("Gorgeous Vortex")Written by Gregg Bishop, T.J. Cimfel, Ed Dougherty, Todd Lincoln, Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Marcel Sarmiento, Nacho Vigalondo, David White
Starring Emmy Argo, Amanda Baker, Dan Caudill, Stephen Caudill, Greyson Chadwick, Carrie Keagan, Jessica Luza, Randy McDowell, Michael Aaron Milligan, Nathan Mobley, Matt Peevy, Blair Redford, Cory Rouse, Jessica Serfaty, Justin Welborn, Rim Basma, Lindsay Clift, Laura Eschmann, Jade Gotcher, Tiffany Hamill, Jeanine Harrington, Temple Hull, Jackson James, Anna Kazmi, Niousha Khosrowyar, Kasey Landoll, Chloe Nichols, Kelsey Richaud, Jayden Robison, Cheyenne Scarborough, Faith Tollefson, Mark Stephen Ward, Taylor West, Nick Blanco, Angela Garcia, Emilia Zoryan
Find out more about this film here and on Facebook here
Reviewed by Ambush Bug
Having been a fan of the first two V/H/S anthologies, I was looking forward to this third installment which threatens to take the horrific first person POV segments viral and spread the madness world wide. And while this installment offers very little in terms of explanation behind the mysterious video tapes, it does provide three and a half (the half being the wraparound segment) stories of varying effectiveness.
The wraparound entitled “Vicious Circles” is a rather confusing chase sequence as a young couple find themselves involved in a cross town chase as an ice cream truck is being followed by police officers. While there are some interesting twists and turns, especially in the final moments of the sequence, Marcel Sarmiento (who did the memorable “Dogfight” sequence from the original ABCS OF DEATH anthology) seems to lose a couple of frames in between the other installments. Why do the cops disappear? How does the girlfriend get caught up in this mess? And what the hell is going on? None of these questions are really answered, making this time in between the other stories simply loud distractive filler rather than a really compelling story thread. A few more details and a bit more explanation would have made for a much more entertaining wraparound. And while the intimate and scary wraparounds in the first two films were some of the best scenes, this one is pretty forgettable.
The first installment by Gregg Bishop is called "Dante the Great" and filmed in handheld, but also cheats a bit by adding in some mockumentary footage as well. Betraying its own immediate sense of urgency style that often accompanies all found footage films, this one delves into the dark world of performance magic. While I found the story to be pretty compelling and a lot of the effects of Dante’s magic cloak are used in very creative ways, the use and misuse of the found footage motif in this one is distracting. Some of it is security cam footage, other computer screen cams, others are documentary style filmmaking, while others are cams on SWAT team vests. Incorporating all of those styles clutters and complicates things to an annoying degree, so while I love the tricks Dante did with his teleportation cloak and some of the scenes with the shadow monsters inside the folds of the cloak were really well done, this one clutters itself unnecessarily and fails because of it.
The best of the three stories is Nacho Vigalondo’s "Parallel Monsters" which delves a little bit into familiar territory as it involves the bending of time and space as Vigalondo did so amazingly with TIME CRIMES. Here an inventor opens a doorway to a parallel world which as first looks like a mirror image in his own world, but when he makes a deal with his other self to spend fifteen minutes in each other’s planes of existence, he realizes how different the worlds really are. This one goes into some dark and unexpected places and I loved every perverse moment of it. Vigalondo tosses out on bizarre twist after another. I want to be as vague as possible because the best part of this segment is how these twists appear so unexpectedly and unconventionally. Providing some of the most iconic images from this film, Vigalondo’s segment also surprisingly has a tie into his most recent film OPEN WINDOWS as an added extra treat.
RESOLUTION’s Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead do the impossible with "Bonestorm" and made me invested in the story of a group of skater punks out to cause chaos and film it all as they take their daredevil antics to Tijuana and run into some brujas and zombies. While I am not a huge fan of the skater culture, this short is vibrant and fun from start to finish as these kids turn into full fledged warriors as they have to fight to survive against monsters that can’t seem to be killed no matter how many times they shoot them, whack with their skateboards, or blow them up with fireworks. There are quite a few cheats here involving slo mo and stills done for effect of the violence, but I am willing to overlook it as this one oozes energy. Benson and Moorhead inject tons of humor, action, and gore into very little time seemingly with ease. Great segment.
Not included in the original theatrical cut is Todd Lincoln’s “Gorgeous Vortex.” This short appears as a special secret installment only found in the BluRay/DVD. I don’t know why Lincoln’s installment wasn’t in the theatrical cut. Maybe it wasn’t ready in time of distribution. Who knows? Maybe it’s because this one doesn’t really seem to follow the V/H/S format as unlike the rest of the films here, it isn’t found footage at all. And while some of the time, security cam footage is used, Lincoln delivers an eerie and surreal dream-like installment involving a supermodel-looking woman suffering visions of masked men, bound women, pigeons, bizarre examining machines, and a weird Montauk Monster-like thing. Mixed with all kinds of quick cuts and strange sounds, this dialog-less installment is one of the more visually pleasing and strange looking ones in the batch. Though the music video cuts and curiosities make it an outlier in the film, it still delivers a whole lot of perversion and creep, mixed with some tragic elegance. Lincoln’s definitely got an eye for mixing the strange and sensual. It just feels out of place in this film.While the additional entry after the credits by Todd Lincoln amps up the weird factor quite a bit in this film, V/H/S VIRAL does seem a lot more insubstantial than the previous two entries. And while this film doesn’t really come close to the intensity of the first two V/H/S films, there are still quite a few scares and chills making this one worth seeking out.
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/writer of wrongs/reviewer/interviewer/editor of AICN COMICS for over 13 years & AICN HORROR for 4. Follow Ambush Bug on the Twitters @Mark_L_Miller.Be sure to tell your comic shop to order his new comic PIROUETTE (out now!) from Black Mask Studios!
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