15 Greatest Horror Films Of The Decade (So Far)
9. V/H/S
The found footage genre, as great as it can often be, certainly has its limits. It usually requires a long, drawn out first act with the characters just filming themselves goofing around, and that can get pretty tedious after a while. But although V/H/S is another found footage film, it brilliantly gets around that problem by also making itself an anthology.
The premise here is that a group of characters discover a bunch of VHS tapes with crazy, supernatural footage on them, and they start combing through the tapes looking for one in particular.
The movie then turns into a series of five of those tapes, meaning it's essentially five, 20 minute short films. Because they're so brief, these segments have to be concise and get to the scares quickly, so you're really getting the climaxes of five other horror films packed together into one package. There's no drawing things out here.
It's like a grab bag of the horror genre, and you never quite know what you're going to get. The wraparound segment is a little weak, but each of the shorts is excellent and distinct enough that if you don't like one segment, you'll probably enjoy the next one.
V/H/S is both terrifying and a really fun time, and a definite must see for any fans of the genre.