V/H/S/2 Information

V/H/S/2 (originally titled S-VHS) is a 2013 American anthology horror film. It features a series of found-footage shorts. It is the sequel to the film V/H/S.

The film was rushed into production in late 2012, and premiered January 19, 2013 at Park City's Library Center Theatre as part of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, much like its predecessor. The sequel involves a largely different group of directors: Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Timo Tjahjanto, Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale, and franchise returnees Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard.

The film had a VOD release date set on June 6, as well as a theatrical release date set for July 12.

Synopsis

Tape 49/frame narrative

This story follows two private investigators, Larry and Ayesha, as they investigate the disappearance of a young male college student. Upon entering the student's home, they discover a large stack of TV sets and VHS tapes, and a laptop with a still-recording video on it. They stop the recording and go to the beginning, where they see the boy talking about how strange the VHS tapes are. Larry investigates the house and tells Ayesha to watch the tapes.

After watching the first tape (Phase I Clinical Trials), Ayesha questions its legitimacy. The student on the computer mentions the tapes need to be watched in correct sequence "to affect you." Ayesha watches another tape (A Ride in the Park), after which Larry finds her asleep with her nose bleeding. After being woken, she says she has a migraine. Visibly ill, she asks Larry to go get medicine, and plays another tape after he leaves (Safe Haven). Upon Larry's return, he finds Ayesha dead, and a VHS tape with the word "WATCH" written on it in lipstick. He watches it (Slumber Party Alien Abduction), confused, and also watches the rest of the boy's laptop recording, getting it all on camera. The boy goes on about how the tapes mess with your mind and how he'll make a tape of his own. He then commits suicide by shooting a revolver beneath his chin. His body sits there a moment before he stands up and shuffles out of the room with his lower jaw blown off. As he hides, the two investigators (Larry & Ayesha) enter and stop the recording.

All of a sudden, Ayesha comes back to life and attempts to strangle Larry. Larry struggles with her and suddenly breaks her neck. He takes the camera and flees from the undead Ayesha. He hides and shoots her with his gun. Unknown to Larry, he finds that the undead college kid is with him. The college kid kills Larry, then takes the camera, and gives a thumbs-up, having accomplished his goal.

Phase I Clinical Trials

A man, the patient, is sitting in a doctor's office and the doctor is examining his camera. The camera is in the man's eye, which has been installed after a car accident took his sight from that eye. The doctor informs the patient that everything will be recorded and monitored for research purposes. The man, hesitant, asks if there's a way to turn the recording off but the doctor says no. On his way out of the clinic, the man sees a woman who stares at him intently as she passes.

After returning home, the patient is playing video games and gets up for tea. He returns to find his game controller far from where he had left it. He hears a crash and finds the tea kettle on the floor. Later, he sees what appears to be a body lying beneath the sheets of his bed. He pulls away the sheets, but no one is there. He then finds himself face to face with a bleeding man. He hides in the bathroom but when he returns, he sees the man again, this time with a young girl. He flees to the bathroom again and is disturbed by repeated knocking on the door.

The patient sleeps in the bathtub overnight. The next morning, everything is back to normal, though his room seems to be in more disarray than the night before. Later, the woman from the hospital visits him. She tells him that her name is Clarissa, and she was the recipient of a cochlear implant, and began to sense things similar to what the patient has been experiencing after the operation. A man appears at the window and the patient tries to alert her to his presence, but she says she knows he's there. He's her uncle who died several years ago. She urges him not to pay any attention to "them" and that the more attention they get, the stronger and more dangerous they become. She tells him to calm down and initiates sex as a distraction.

The patient awakes and sees Clarissa sleeping. When he again finds the young girl he saw before, he flees and finds that Clarissa is being drowned in his pool. He tries to help but Clarissa dies. He runs back inside to call 911 but is greeted by the dead man. Panicked, he grabs a straight razor, and removes the eye from its socket. Afterward, the intruder picks up the eye, then shoves it deep down the patient's throat. The eye camera stops filming.

A Ride in the Park

This segment is shot almost entirely with a "Go Pro" camera mounted on a helmet. A man, the cyclist, tells his girlfriend he loves her on his cellphone. As he is riding his bike, a woman jumps out into the middle of the road. She's covered in blood and is screaming hysterically. He tries to help, but she collapses and vomits. As three growling people approach them, the woman suddenly becomes feral and starts to bite and claw at him. The cyclist kills her before running from the zombies. Injured, he falls and loses consciousness.

Later, a man and a woman are cycling. Upon seeing the fallen man, they notice it looks like he's been bitten. The cyclist attacks the man and starts eating the woman. He returns to the man and begins to disembowel him and eat his entrails. The woman joins him and starts eating him as well. The man sits up, and the three of them shuffle away into the woods. The footage switches to a camcorder recording a young girl's birthday party. When a zombie bites into a man's neck, chaos ensues. People grab weapons, but most of them are quickly subdued. The cyclist chases a man who is piling children into a minivan. The man stabs him with a large meat fork, and scrambles into the van. The cyclist is shot by a man who shoots two others before being overwhelmed. The cyclist walks towards the sound of a crying woman, but is hit and run over by a fleeing SUV.

After the cyclist struggles to remove the meat fork from his skull, his girlfriend calls him. The cyclist holds up his phone, and his girlfriend says that he must have dialed her by accident and tells him that she loves him. The cyclist crawls toward the shotgun, puts it in his mouth, and pulls the trigger.

Safe Haven

A news crew goes into an Indonesian cult to report the goings-on. It is alluded to that the "father" or founder of the cult sleeps with the children to "purify" them. The interview hears a conversation between his fiancée and his best friend, both of whom are crew members, and finds out that she's pregnant with his best friend's baby. Inside, a bell tolls and the father starts talking about how "it's time." He gets on an intercom and tells everyone that the time of reckoning has finally come. The camera guy interrupts and the father stabs him in the throat with a box cutter. He continues to talk and the women of the compound pass around pills and liquid.

Downstairs, the best friend has wandered into the room he was strictly told not to enter. He finds a surgical room covered in blood and a woman, presumably dead, lying on a bed with her legs apart as if she were giving birth. She wakes up and starts screaming, and he flees. When he returns, he sees that the school of children are now dead and the fiancée is being taken by the women toward the surgical birthing area. The interviewer rushes to help his friends and bursts into a room where men are standing in a circle, holding guns. The men proceed to shoot themselves. Two men enter then, one running as if frightened out of the suicide. Behind them, a man comes and shoots him. The best friend sees the show host being held at gunpoint by one of the cult leaders. The man shoots the host and then shoots himself.

The best friend runs after the fiancée but is quickly stopped by an explosion from the room she was taken to. From there, a deformed demon crawls out and disappears. The best friend runs into the father, who is covered in blood. The father concludes a satanic ritual and then blows up. The guy enters the room and finds the fiancée lying on the same bed he'd seen the first woman in. He sees her stomach undulating as if there were something inside. Her stomach stretches until a horn finally rips through her belly. A large horn-headed creature comes out of the woman's stomach and starts howling and slaying everyone it encounters. The shocked friend turns around and desperately runs out of the building. Behind him, he can hear devilish roars and menacing stomping sounds. The friend, the only survivor, sees that the people who killed themselves have now become zombie-like ghouls.

He runs toward a car, starts it and tries to escape the compound. As he drives away, thick fog comes from behind his car and the demonic howls get closer. Something then hits the side of his car and rolls it over. Bloody and bruised, but still alive, the man crawls out of the car that's being stomped, but as he gets his head out the car window, he observes the horned beast. The demonic creature grunts the word "Papa" to which the man starts laughing hysterically, as he realizes that the beast is his "child".

Slumber Party Alien Abduction

The segment begins with a group of boys who are making home videos with a camera attached to their pet dog. Throughout the segment, the resident family is shown to live on an open property with a barn, all of which is close to a large lake. The mother and father of the sister and one of the boys, Gary, are shown leaving for a vacation. Shortly after their departure, the sister is shown arriving with her boyfriend and their friends. The brother and his friends plot to disrupt the sister's company with an assortment of water guns and water-filled balloons. The next scene shows the boys attacking the sister and her friends down on the lake's dock. The boy with the camera at one point dives into the water and a humanoid figure is briefly seen reaching for him until the image is disrupted by the angered boyfriend diving into the water. Later that night, the boys once again plan to disrupt the sister and her boyfriend who are now alone in the sister's room. The boys barge in with loud music and strobe lights, thus angering the couple again. During this scene a loud train-like horn is heard as the power in the house fluctuates but the occurrence is ignored. The boys are shown running away from the house toward the lake as they film the angered boyfriend and sister chasing after them. While hidden, the boys notice circular flashing lights down by the dock. The lights disappear and the boys are caught by the boyfriend and the sister who now retrieve the camera. The next scene shows the sister and the boyfriend in possession of the camera. The couple notices that the boys are sleeping downstairs and there is a pornographic film being played on the television. The couple attach the camera to the family dog, which wanders over to one of the boys who is still awake and masturbating to the film being played. The boy is interrupted and the couple enters, laughing at the situation that has now been filmed. The scene is quickly interrupted by a bright flash of light coming from outside and a loud horn blasting throughout the house. Frightened, the group of friends and the couple notice the silhouettes of slender, long-armed, humanoid figures right outside the glass doors that quickly disappear when the bright light dims. The boyfriend returns with a shotgun after momentarily leaving the room. He is shown leaving the room to encounter whatever the group saw outside the doors, but is seen being tackled by a dark figure. The sister is next shown following the boyfriend with a strobe light, and the group is quickly attacked by what are now seen as "greys". Gary and the dog with the camera are then trapped in a sleeping bag and seem to be dragged from one of the greys. Gary and the dog are dragged to the lake but are finally rescued by the group who seemed to lose the greys. Gary is unconscious and the group attempts to perform CPR on him when they get him out of the water and on to the dock. While the group attempts to revive Gary, the strobe light shows the greys climbing out of the water and slowly crawling toward the group on the dock. The loud horn resonates through the area once again, which seems to revive Gary from his short spell of unconsciousness. The remaining group run off into the woods in an attempt to once again lose the greys. Hiding among the trees the camera shows the greys and what appears to be a spotlight from their craft searching through the woods, but the group is discovered when the dog barks at the approaching greys. The group once again runs off through the woods and notice what seems to be police lights and sirens. The group runs toward a clearing where they think the police have arrived but are once again interrupted by a flash of light and the loud horn noise. The police are not there and the lights and noises were, in fact, coming from the greys' craft. Realising this, the distraught group is then picked off by the approaching greys. The last ones, the sister and Gary, along with the dog, run toward the family barn. The sister locks the barn door but the greys enter through the back. The sister directs Gary to climb up a ladder into a loft with the dog. The sister is seen being attacked and taken by two greys before she can climb up the ladder with Gary. A grey is then shown climbing up the ladder in an attempt to seize Gary. The greys are shown breaking into the dark loft and loud jet-like noises coming from what appears to be the greys' craft are heard. The roof of the barn is ripped off and Gary, still holding the dog, is seen being lifted into the air. Gary's grip on the dog breaks and Gary disappears into the sky while the dog plummets toward the ground. The camera falls off the dog's neck and shows him shaking, covered in blood, and severely injured. As the dog stops breathing, the video ends.

Reception

According to Rotten Tomatoes, 68% of critics have given the film positive reviews, based on 41 reviews. The movie currently holds a 6.4/10 score on IMDb based on 5096 votes. Most critics have reacted well to this installment, stating that the movie does not only beat its predecessor in quality, but also in entertainment. IGN gave it a 8.2/10, and most critics agree that the best segment is "Safe Haven", directed by Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto.