House Of VHS (2016)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Florie Auclerc-Vialens, Ruy Buchholz, Morgan Lamorte
Directed by Gautier Cazenave
Those friggin VHS tapes just continue to plague the casual viewer over the long run, don’t they? I particularly thought it was enough of a pain in the ass when some pimply-faced rental store clerk wanted to whack me with a $1.00 “no-rewind” fee, but that’s neither here nor there. The issue right now is with director Gautier Cazenave’s House Of VHS, so get ready to get your head-cleaners ready to run, cause this might get a bit dirty.
The film focuses on a group of six pals from different corners of the globe, and a “relaxing” weekend getaway at a home in France with, you guessed it: a VHS player that has some stories to tell. Our American installation (Petur Oskar-Sigurdsson) – sounds American, right? – well, he’s complimented by an Australian fellow (Buchholz), an Italian girl (Vialens), a French lad (Lamorte), a Belgian lass (Delphine Lanniel), and last but not least, a British gal (Isabel McCann). Together the sextet undergo the usual issues of a coming-together weekend…who’s gonna hop in the sack with whom, you know, the important stuff – the biggest flaw here is the build-up of this six-pack: there’s absolutely ZERO depth to these characters, and by the time something begins to happen (which takes forever, by the way), you really couldn’t give a squirrel’s nuts as to who gets the short end of the stick. Once the videotapes are played, and the hokey stories begin to unfold (goofy, campy shorts like “Sasquatch Returns” and “Attack Of The Two-Headed Invaders” are on the menu), the film attempts to travel into the horror-scheme of things…attempt failed.
I’m just going to cut right to the chase here and save a lot of people a lot of time with this one: the performances are downright horrendous, the situations the characters are put in are innocuous, and ultimately this turns out to be an overall mess of a film, if that indeed is what you’d like to refer to it as. The whole “haunted video” thing is becoming vastly overcooked, and if you’re going to offer up something to an audience that’s already been force-fed to them, you might at least want to make it taste halfway appetizing. If it’s a retro-feel that you’re looking for, skip this VHS altogether, and opt for something on laserdisc, trust me, it’s less painful to endure, and you’ll be free from rewind fees.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
