The film is presented as an anthology of four short horror films, built into a frame narrative which acts as its own fifth short horror film. Each short film is linked together with the concept of found footage as each segment is from the VHS tapes that were found by Brad, Rox, Zak, and Gary.[a]
The frame narrative focuses on private investigators Larry and his girlfriend Ayesha, who are requested to investigate the disappearance of college student Kyle by his mother. After breaking into Kyle's room, they find several VHS tapes and a laptop that contains footage from acts of a criminal gang.[b]
Ayesha discovers the laptop is still recording and Larry tells her to watch the tapes while he inspects the house. As Ayesha puts the first tape in the VCR, a glimpse of a strange figure peers from the shadows.
Middle-aged Herman Middleton is fitted with an ocular implant after his right eye is damaged in a car accident. The doctor informs Herman that he may experience some "glitches" as the implant is still in experimental stage. As Herman leaves the clinic, he notices a young woman staring at him intently.
At home, Herman plays video games, then goes to the kitchen for a cup of tea. He returns to find his game controller far from where he left it and his teakettle suddenly breaks. Herman also sees what appear to be a figure lying under his bed's sheets; when he pulls the sheets backs, the bed is empty. He looks up and comes face to face with a bleeding, undead person. Herman calls his doctor to address the problem until he sees the person again, this time with a young undead girl.
Herman is forced to sleep in the bathroom overnight and, the next day, the woman from the clinic visits him. She identifies herself as Clarissa, saying she is experiencing a similar situation. Clarissa explains that she was born deaf and had a cochlear implant installed in her ear that gave her the ability to hear ghosts frequencies. Herman tries to remove his ocular implant, but Clarissa claims that doing so will only keep him from seeing ghosts, not getting rid of them.
Clarissa also explains that the ghosts will get more dangerous the longer one pays attention to them; an overweight, bloodied man appears behind Clarissa and Herman alerts her about his presence. She says she already knows he is there and that he is her uncle. Clarissa then has sex with Herman to divert his attention away. That night, Herman awakens to find the young girl in his bed and flees, before he witness Clarissa being dragged into the pool by an unknown entity.
Despite his efforts to save her, Clarissa drowns. Herman locks himself in the bathroom and uses a straight razor to cut out the ocular implant in a desperate attempt to escape from the ghosts. As Clarissa's ghost and her uncle appear behind him, Herman unwittingly runs into the young girl and the bleeding person, who strangles him to death, grabs the implant—still attached to the razor—and shoves it deep into Herman's throat as the footage ends.
"Tape 49" — First interlude
Back in the frame narrative, Ayesha discuss the tapes' legitimacy with Larry. He tells Ayesha to continue watching the tapes while Kyle's recording on the laptop explains that the tapes must be watched in a proper sequence "to affect you". Ayesha fails to notice the figure in the hallway behind her and puts another tape in the VCR.
Shortly after answering a call from his girlfriend Amy, cyclist Mike affixes a camera to his helmet and goes on a bike ride through the woods of a local park. He abruptly comes across a terrified, blood-covered woman who begs him to help her boyfriend before she vomits blood. Mike sees several zombies approaching them until the woman suddenly turns into a zombie herself.
She bites Mike on the throat before he kills her. Mike staggers through the woods, heavily bleeding; he also vomits blood and dies. Two bikers—a man and a woman—come across him and call emergency services, but Mike reanimates, kills the man and bites the woman before she runs off into the woods. The now-zombified woman returns before she and Mike begin eating the man until he reanimates. The three zombies invade a young girl's birthday party and kill several people, some of whom also reanimate.
Mike chases a father and his daughter before he gets stabbed in the eye with a fork. As Mike sees his reflection in a window, a man with a shotgun is overwhelmed and eaten by the zombies. Mike is hit by a truck and, as he falls, accidentally pocket dials Amy. Upon hearing her voice, Mike enters into a semi-conscious state until he regains his humanity. He takes the shotgun and commits suicide to avoid infecting anyone else as the footage ends.
"Tape 49" — Second interlude
Larry re-enters into Kyle's room and finds Ayesha staring at the television in an hypnotized state, with her nose bleeding. She is woken from her trance and says she has a migraine. Larry leaves to find some medicine as a seemingly entranced Ayesha inserts another tape in the VCR while the figure from earlier crawls out from the shadows and watches her.
A film crew—interviewer Malik, producer and Malik's fiancée Lena, Malik's best friend Adam, and cameraman Joni—infiltrate a cult in Indonesia to film a documentary about their mysterious activities with numerous hidden cameras. They are invited inside the cult's compound by a woman known as "Madame". The crew find the walls adorned with bizarre symbols, schoolchildren in classrooms, and woman dressed in white garments; they also meet and interview the cult's leader, a man referred to as "Father".
During the interview, Lena becomes ill and steps out. While he searches for a spare camera battery, Malik overhears a private conversation between Adam and Lena in which the latter reveals that she is pregnant with Adam's child. In the basement, Adam finds a woman with her womb carved out and strapped to a chair. She awakens, screams and convulses, causing him to run away.
While Father is interviewed, a bell chimes, and he suddenly announces the "time of reckoning" over the intercom. After Joni repeatedly interrupts the announcement, Father cuts his throat out with a box cutter while the cultists begin a mass suicide via poison and gunshots. Malik is shot dead by a cult member and Lena is abducted by several women in surgical apparel. Adam attempts to rescue Lena until an explosion knocks him back. He watches a figure crawling across the ceiling and tries to enter into the fiery room, only to be intercepted by Father, who is covered in blood with the cult's symbol inscribed on him.
Father tells him "the time has come" and explodes into blood and organs; Adam finds Lena on an altar with the symbol carved into her skin. He kills Madame but is unable to save Lena as the demon the cult worships—which resembles Baphomet—tears its way out of her body. The cultists and schoolchildren, including Malik and Joni, rise from the dead and turn into zombie-like ghouls who proceed to attack Adam. He flees outside to his car and drives off, only to be rammed by the demon and gravely injured.
Adam crawls out of the car before the demon looks down and calls him "Papa", revealing that it is, in fact, his own child. The camera malfunctions while Adam laughs hysterically as the footage ends.
"Tape 49" — Third interlude
Larry returns to Kyle's room with medicine, only to discover that Ayesha is dead after she committed suicide with her gun. A tape with the word "WATCH", written with lipstick, lies beside her before a dazed Larry picks it up and puts it into the VCR.
Brothers Gary and Randy attach a camera to their dog, Tank, to film videos at their lakeside house. Their parents leave on a romantic getaway so they invite their friends Shawn and Danny to harass the brothers' older sister Jen and her boyfriend Zack. While the quartet ambush Jen and Zack with squirt guns at a nearby lake, they fail to notice a grey alien hiding beneath the water.
That night, the quartet startle Jen and Zack while they are having sex by blaring loud music and flashing lights. A deafening noise is heard, but they do not notice it. In retaliation, Jen attaches another camera to Tank to catch Gary masturbating with a pornographic film. The noise is heard again and the power goes out. Zack grabs Jen's father's gun after he sees a figure outside the door, but is suddenly abducted by an alien, along with others of its kind.
The aliens attack the group and seal them in their sleeping bags in an attempt to drown them in the lake. Shawn and Danny are abducted while Gary, Randy, Jen, and Tank run into the woods. After Tank inadvertently alerts the aliens through his barks, the group run toward what they believe to be police sirens, which turns out to be a trap set by the aliens, who abduct Randy.
Gary, Jen, and Tank flee to a nearby barn, where Jen is also abducted as Gary and Tank escape up a ladder. As the aliens close in on them, Gary is suddenly pulled into the air by the alien ship's tractor beam. He is unable to hold on to Tank's leash, and the dog falls to the ground. Mortally injured and unable to move, Tank whimpers while he and the camera both slowly die as the footage ends.
"Tape 49" — Epilogue
Larry watches the laptop footage, where Kyle explains that he and his mother want to make their own tape. Kyle then shoots himself in a on-camera suicide attempt but survives—with his lower jaw shattered—and runs off moments before Larry and Ayesha arrive. As Larry tries to leave, an undead Ayesha suddenly rises and attacks him.
In self-defense, Larry breaks her neck and rushes into other room while Ayesha chases him on all fours. Larry hides in a closet and fatally shoots Ayesha when she finds him. Hearing a strange gurgling sound, Larry learns Kyle has been hiding there the whole time and is strangled to death. Afterward, Kyle gives a thumbs up to the recording and uploads the tapes on social media—as he and his mother's plan has been successful—before turning off the camera.
For the first short, originally the part had been written with James Rolfe in mind, but had to decline due to working on The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie).[5] The film was rushed into production in late 2012,[6] and premiered on January 19, 2013, at Park City's Library Center Theatre as part of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, much like its predecessor.[7]
The film was released via VOD on June 6, and theatrically on July 12.[8] Dance punk band The Death Set recorded a song, "6 Different Ways To Die", for the film's credits.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 68 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.2/10.The website's consensus reads: "It's as scattershot as its predecessor, but V/H/S/2 rounds up enough horror filmmaking talent to deliver a satisfyingly nasty — albeit uneven — dose of gore."[9]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 49 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[10]
Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The scares are as hit-or-miss as the filmmaking".[11] Dennis Harvey of Variety called it "rip-roaring good time for genre fans".[2]
On July 10, 2013, Rex Reed was the subject of controversy due to a scathing review, in which he admitted having walked out at the end of the first segment.[12] His review criticizes parts of the film that happened after he supposedly walked out, but his references are imprecise. For example, he describes segment Slumber Party Alien Abduction as "a sleepover invaded by psycho kidnappers [as opposed to aliens] told from the perspective of a GoPro camera attached to the back of a dog" or summarizing segment A Ride in the Park as the tale of "a mountain biker pursued by flesh-eating zombies [rather than turned into one himself early on]".[13]
↑ Identified as Brad, Rox, Zak, and Gary from V/H/S (2012).
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