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Bros On Film (aka VHS)
[quote name="Fullofkittens"]There's some buzz around this movie being some kind of glorious return to the good old days of scary horror anthologies. Don't believe the hype. What we have here is a loosely-grouped set of short films all based around a common theme of "bros with shaky cams". The <i>alleged</i> premise is that a bunch of ridiculous bro caricatures bust into a house to steal a VHS tape that they can use to blackmail someone. Upon entering, they find a dead body in a chair in front of a TV surrounded by VHS tapes. Which is the right one? I guess they'll have to watch them all!!!!! And of course they're all crazy stuff that cannot be unseen *snore*. I got complaints about this movie. COMPLAINT #1: Nothing against having a dumbass Cryptkeeper intro, but they went just a little too far with it. They keep showing a guy going WTF in between each video, but in the reality of the connective Bros In A House movie, these movies are theoretically supposed to be real. If you saw what was in the first video and you thought it was actually real, you wouldn't go "whoa DUDE!" and then put in another tape. You would freak the fuck out and grab every guy you came with, replay the movie, then run the fuck outta there. It would have been better if they just played the shorts back to back after the intro and then said "boo! Something kills all the bros." But no. COMPLAINT #2: Again with the Bros In A House connective tissue movie: they are there to grab a VHS tape to blackmail some guy... but not a single person knows what's on the tape or who is to be blackmailed. So... what are they even doing? Are they going to watch 200 movies and then decide which one is the blackmailiest? Some guys are walking around in the basement looking for... what? More tapes? The connective movie doesn't make any damn sense at all. Ok, here's mini reviews of the shorts: <b>Amateur Night</b> If you've seen any marketing for the film, this is the one you know about, and it goes down pretty much like you'd imagine. Some bros take some hos back to a hotel with a plan to secretly film them and sell it as porn... but one of the girls is not what she seems. ^_____^ <b>Second Honeymoon</b> Ti West made the excellent <a href="http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?action=viewPost&pid=141490">House Of The Devil</a> and has since been squandering the goodwill he generated there with the so-so <i>The Innkeepers</i> and now this piece of boring garbage. Something bad happens to one bro on his vacation, the end. <b>The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger</b> If you do decide to watch <i>VHS</i> don't read any spoilers about this one. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read about it beforehand. <b>10/31/98</b> In terms of direction, this is probably the one that kept with the theme the best and it actually seems like it was a VHS camcorder recording which brings me to COMPLAINT #3: Just how bad do people think VHS camcorders were!? Every time somebody pans a camera more than an inch, it's accompanied by a blast of static and tracking noise in the image. It's obviously special fx added in post. If you were like me the first thing that intrigued you about this film was "ooh, a shaky cam movie whose theme is short movies filmed on VHS camcorders! I'm in!" Nope. These were all made with digital cameras and then they added... authenticity... by using fx to pretend that their digital cameras were the WORST CAMERAS IN HISTORY. Also, two of the shorts were explicitly not done with camcorders. >:( Anyways, <i>10/31/98</i> doesn't really make a whole lot of sense when you think about it, but in terms of the direction it's the best in terms of looking right, better acting, well placed fx, etc. Like all the others, it's about as scary as 10 minutes of an episode of <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i>... <i>Amateur Night</i> is still the most enjoyable, though, due to tits and gore. I just remembered COMPLAINT #4: I'm pretty old and decrepit these days but I still think I could fall down 2 stairs and not get a compound fracture. NOT THESE BROS. <b>OVERALL:</b> If this was an anthology of student films made by people you knew personally, it would be pretty good. As it is, I expected a bit more out of this thing. I mean for fuck's sake if you're going to make a movie anthology based on the theme of "VHS" then use short films that explore that theme, that seems like a baseline.[/quote]