V/H/S/85

Conceptual, the lion's share of the short tales in the V/H/S/85 anthology focus around the portability of these analog cassettes and their cameras, a selling-point that allows them to be absolutely anywhere. The relative lightness of the equipment also affords sustained, point-of-view framings to be used as the primary means of revealing, or even withholding, horrors located within this middle-chapter of the 1980s. Mike P. Nelson's segments, No Wake and Ambrosia, are broadly similar in that they both detail camcorded, home video clips that slowly slip out of the amateur videographer's control, with Ambrosia's firearm-focused cotillion being the stronger of the two. Gigi Saul Guerrero's God of Death follows a television studio cameraman as he, along with a dwindling rescue team, attempt to escape a collapsing building. Here the manoeuvrability of the format, in increasingly outlandish developments, becomes a joke in of itself thanks to a bleeding technician's stubborn refusal to stop rolling. 

Director David Bruckner's Total Copy is the wraparound, bleeding in and out of the other stories. VHS is utilised here as a cheap library fodder by egotistical scientists as they chart the development of an amorphous, mucus monster. Natasha Kermani's TKNOGD also makes overtures to personal posterity, with the titular tapes employed to capture a community theatre performance. Kermani's segment, although often visually striking thanks to its static set-ups, is the least convincing largely because it invokes consumer-level VR, a uniquely 90s obsession. As if to underline this incongruity, passage into the realm of a digital deity is also achieved using only lightly dressed, and very obviously modern, augmented reality devices. The largest amount of the film's runtime is apportioned to Scott Derrickson's Dreamkill, not only the most dramatically satisfying segment but also the episode that best grapples with the unintended consequences of video tape: these anonymous black cassettes were the perfect way to smuggle any kind of visual contraband. This intrusive, ever-present technology could enter even the most unassuming family home, concealing genuinely transgressive material. From films that had bypassed the censor's scissors altogether to duped pornography or even Mondo documentaries, spliced with footage of genuine atrocity.