I haven’t been a huge fan of the V/H/S series and, in fact, gave Viral the highest score and that seems to be a very unpopular opinion. But I thought this new film, while uneven, a pretty good continuation and the best of the batch.

The new film continues the anthology series using crappy VHS film techniques as its hook (as is standard). A found footage film, we get four independent stories with one frame story.

While I thought the first and third story were very good, all four stories adhere to a strict ghoulish blood splattered charm. This movie is gleefully gory with a pretty admirable use of practical effects. Practical effects augmented with copious cgi gore which isn’t the most convincing… though it helps they can hide some of the imperfections behind the VHS grain. But even those dodgy effects have their charm. it’s clear someone wanted to blow up heads and explode bodies and this was their maniacal chance.

The third story was a techno-machine-gore free-for-all first person carnage fest and was a hell of a lot of fun and makes the whole freak show worth watching. Mad scientists, SWAT teams, and goopy gory machine/man/gore hybrids galore. It’s a good thirty to forty minutes of the run-time and rarely lets up.

Otherwise, the segments were up and down (all hail the ratman!) but, I think, if you are into extreme horror with copious practical and/or CG blood effects then this is worth watching. If it had been more consistency in story and pacing, I’d have loved to give it a higher score. But you know if you’re the kind of person who wants to watch it so, by all means, check it out.

Score: 76