"V/H/S 2" is Very Uneven and More Freaky Than Scary, But It's Still Inventive and Fun

VHS 2 unfolds with the logic of a nightmare. Made up of four different segments that are part of a horror anthology, and told through a framing device with its own sense of quicksand freakiness. VHS 2 is told similarly to its predecessor. People stumble upon a large collections of strange videos and watch them, discovering they have some weird, horror-y stuff on them. Meanwhile, in the background horror stuff starts to occur in between video watching. However, VHS 2 is far better at using this framing device (It helps that there's a sounder reason for the people to be there; the man is a private investigator and the woman is his girlfriend). It doesn't stray too long on setting up the appearance of the videos (and the horror stuff here is far more unnerving and shocking in its own right). The videos are also far more consistent. This is helped by the fact that they're mostly much shorter. The different segments aren't really scary rather than super freaky and crafty. The nightmare logic is their strongest quality; we never know where they're going and that creates a sense of dread for the most part. By the third act things shift into high gear and everything that could possibly fall apart falls apart spectacularly. The different short films vary in quality but they all milk their shoestring budgets and have a lot of imagination. One features aliens, one the point of view of a person turned zombie, another a demonic cult, and the other technology gone awry and paranormal (All ideas that feel far more creative and rewarding than some of the shorts from the first film). The short film nature is actually a blessing; some of these segments aren't sustainable things and all of them devolve in the end into more atmospheric acts of disorientation than actual pieces of well-grounded horror. There's a lot of good ideas in the film, some nice special effects, and a pleasing sense of possibility. Though it's often lacking in terms of storytelling and the found fotoage aspect often plays against the film, there's a wonderful attempt to make us totally uncertain of where the story could go at any moment. 

Grade: B-