It takes a village to ruin a movie.
Four found footage stories helmed by six different directors make up the third in the V/H/S series of anthology horror films.
“Vicious Circles” centers around a twenty-something guy who can’t stop filming everything. He has a beautiful girlfriend who really digs him for some reason, but he’d rather tape than touch her. Later he gets obsessed by a high speed chase that goes right by his house. Why do you care? You don’t. Let’s move on.
In “Dante the Great”, a loser who wants to be a magician finds a cape that has demonic powers or some such nonsense. He uses the cape to propel his career to the heights of Vegas. Wow. Everyone loves him and he can attract any woman he wants despite the fact that he’s scruffy and about 5’5″. Dante is so skeevy it’s hard to believe anyone finds him all that charismatic. Also, he keeps killing people. At one point, this film becomes a poor man’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Magician’s Assistant with Dante and his co-star literally climbing the walls. Meh.
Oh, this one. “Parallel Monsters” has two guys named Alfonso inventing portals into other dimensions at the exact same time. When they decide to visit each other’s worlds, things go predictably wrong. Weird body horror is the only surprise here.
They save the best one for last. “Bonestorm” tells the story of skate punks who like to film themselves doing stupid things on wheels. After they’ve annoyed everyone in California, they decide to hit Tijuana to get beers and fireworks and Chiclets. They get lost and end up in a dry, paved sewer bed where they skate and film and say dude a lot. The boys disturb a pentagram and soon a satanic cult attacks them. The next six hours of the eighty-one minute film are the dudes trying to escape the hooded skeleton guys. Yawn.
The “Vicious Circles” story weaves through the whole film so we are treated to Camera Guy riding a tiny bike really fast chasing a serial killer in an ice cream truck. It sounds much better than it is. Honestly, you’re better off watching one and a half episodes of House Hunters.
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