V/H/S - Cult Laboratories

“Grade A terrifying. One of the scariest movies in recent memory.”

An Anthology Of Horror!

29th Nov. 2012

Yesterday we polled horror fans on Facebook, asking them to vote for their favourite Portmanteau movies. The anthology format has proved to be an enduring one in the world of horror cinema, from the earliest days through the 80s and 90s VHS boom and onto V/H/S which crossbreeds the anthology with found footage to create something new and fresh.

You can also check out an extended list of portmanteau horror flicks - including V/H/S - over at LETTERBOXD

Our Facebook top five were,in descending order, the British EC comics adaptation Vault of Horror, East Asian weirdfest Three: Extremes, the 70s classic Asylum, the 80s re-boot of a classic American TV mystery show - Twilight Zone: The Movie and in a not entirely unpredictable result at number one, George A. Romero's tongue-in-cheek tribute to the explicitly violent horror comics of his youth - Creepshow.

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“Grade A terrifying. One of the scariest movies in recent memory.”

The classic anthology horror movie is given a contemporary and brilliantly visceral spin by some of the hottest new directors working in the genre today.

Key talent:

Director Adam Wingard (You’re Next; A Horrible Way To Die), David Bruckner (The Signal), Glenn McQuaid (I Sell The Dead), Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes The Stairs) and Ti West (The Innkeepers; Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break; The House Of The Devil).

Synopsis

A small group of misfit friends and petty crooks are hired by a mysterious man to break into a derelict suburban house with the sole purpose of finding and stealing a rare videotape. Their only clue to identifying the tape in question is, “You’ll know it when you see it.”

However, on arrival at the house they soon realize the job isn’t as straightforward as they imagined. In one room they discover the lifeless body of a middle-aged man sitting in an armchair, facing a wall of television sets and a stack of VHS cassettes. A similar bounty of tapes is found in the basement, none of which bears any obvious markings to suggest it is the prize they are seeking. As they search through the tapes, playing them in turn, they are treated to a succession of graphic and apparently genuine video recordings, each one more shocking and bizarre than the last.