V/H/S/99, 2022.
Directed by Flying Lotus, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre, Johannes Roberts, Joseph Winter, and Vanessa Winter.
Starring Duncan Anderson, Verona Blue, Sonya Eddy, Ally Ioannides, and Melanie Stone.
SYNOPSIS:
V/H/S/99 harkens back to the final punk rock analog days of VHS, while taking one giant leap forward into the hellish new millennium. In V/H/S/99, a thirsty teenager’s home video leads to a series of horrifying revelations.
New York City has always been a great place to be a cinephile, but any genre fan living here can tell you that opportunities to check out the newest and best horror movies were strangely thin on the ground for a long time. Now in its seventh year, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival has finally given New Yorkers a fest to be proud of. Running for a week starting on October 13, this year’s festival featured multiple world premieres, shorts, a special program celebrating films from the French Extremity movement, and last Friday, the East Coast Premiere of V/H/S/99.
Has it really only been ten years since the first V/H/S? It feels like this series has always been with us. Featuring shorts by hipster-horror pioneers Ti West and Adam Wingard, the 2012 film is enjoyable enough, but as its hip cultural markers have been more or less completely absorbed by the mainstream, the movie’s somewhat obvious attempts to appeal to the VICE magazine set feel a little dated in 2022. But horror fans (myself included) have a seemingly bottomless appetite for anthologies. There are now five installments in the V/H/S series, and standout segments like Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s “Safe Haven” (V/H/S 2) and Chloe Okuno’s “Storm Drain” (V/H/S 94) make even the most forgettable installments feel like compulsory viewing.
For anyone old enough to remember 1999, V/H/S/99 offers some enjoyable moments of nostalgia, though it might make you reconsider whether there was much to be nostalgic about. There’s skateboarding and Jackass-style stunts, shameless sexual objectification of women, terrible pop punk music, and of course, a healthy serving of Y2K paranoia. With such dubious milestones to touch upon, it is no surprise that the shorts contained in V/H/S/99 are so uneven, but there are a few highlights.
The terrible deaths suffered by the annoying teens in Maggie Levin’s “Shredding” don’t come quickly enough, and Tyler MacIntyre’s “The Gawkers” will feel like familiar territory to anyone who has seen other films in this series. The tale of revenge after a sorority hazing prank gone wrong in Johannes Roberts’ “Suicide Bid” is formulaic but also like something out of a classic episode of Tales from the Crypt or, if we are sticking to the 1990s, a Christopher Pike novel.
The final episode in V/H/S/99 is from filmmaking team Joseph and Vanessa Winter, whose feature debut Deadstream is one of the most acclaimed horror releases of the year. “To Hell and Back” is a highly amusing story about two regular guys who are accidentally sent to the bowels of hell, where they encounter a damned soul who offers to help them get back to the earthly realm (Deadstream star Melanie Stone, very funny). “To Hell and Back” is a high point in V/H/S/99, but it doesn’t quite take the top prize.
The obvious standout in V/H/S/99 is “Ozzy’s Dungeon,” a hilarious and batshit insane offering from Flying Lotus. Done in the style of “Double Dare” meets “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” “Ozzy’s Dungeon” is a children’s game show where contestants compete in violent, nearly impossible challenges in hopes of having a wish granted by the mysterious, off-camera Ozzy. When a contestant is grievously injured and her psychotic stage mother vows revenge, things get very messy, and Ozzy’s true nature is revealed. This one is mean-spirited and gross, with no redeeming social value. It’s a must-watch.
V/H/S/99 is not the best in the series (for that, I’d probably go with V/H/S/94), but it’s an appropriately squishy and obnoxious tribute to the dimwitted Y2K era. And if the nineties aren’t your speed, no need to worry, because V/H/S/85 is coming to Shudder next year.
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival runs from Thursday, October 13 to Thursday, October 20th. V/H/S/99 comes to Shudder on October 20th.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Caitlin Crowley
