Runtime: 82 minutes
Release Date: October 23, 2014
Rating: R
Director: A whole bunch of peeps
A guy and girl introduce us to the world of VHS Viral. They aren't that interesting but serve as the wraparound for the movie. He's obsessed with filming something that will go viral and sees his chance when a police chase happens right outside his apartment. When his girlfriend follows him, he spends most of the movie trying to chase her down.
Dante the Great is our first major story. Dante is something of a white trash loser when he finds a magic cape that turns him into a famous magician. Unfortunately, the cape is also home to a monster that needs fed hot young girls to survive. When his assistant discovers his secret, will she help him or turn the tables on him?
Parallel Monsters is the second story and the one that made me scream. Alfonso is working in his basement when his hot wife shows up and asks him to come upstairs. Though he agrees, he waits until she leaves before revealing his experiment, which is a portal into another world. Turns out that the man on the other side is his exact double, but when the two switch places, one will quickly find that the other world is nothing like what he expected.
Last up is Bonestorm, which is almost more annoying than the wraparound story. A group of what looks like spoiled rich kids with too much time on their hands spend way too long filming themselves skateboarding and acting like thugs before deciding to take a little trip to TJ. Once there, they find themselves stalked by a weird cult that they wind up attacking head on.
The VHS movies are a little hit or miss with me. Some of the stories stick with me, but others are pretty forgettable. After watching VHS Viral, I'm not sure I'll really remember any of these stories. Parallel Monsters was the most entertaining and had the most WTF ending of all of the stories, but I probably liked Dante the Great the most. Bonestorm lost me from the very beginning and had a hard time keeping my attention once it got going.
Vicious Circles, which is the wraparound story felt a little pointless when compared to the wraparound stories in the other movies. Instead of giving us a story and introducing us to actual videotapes, we got a guy racing around town on a motorcycle and using his cell phone to see footage. There was one gruesome scene where a guy got stuck on a runaway vehicle and had his feet drug along the ground that made me wince, and made my roommate, a guy I might add who studies nursing, to actually turn away from the television. The rest of the story was just kind of "eh" and I wasn't too crazy about the ending.
I get what the filmmakers wanted to do. They wanted to update the concept of VHS and make it fit more with the modern age. How many people really have a VCR in their homes now? More and more people now use YouTube and watch movies online, which fits with the theme of the movie. Unfortunately, it kind of felt to me like this was a movie trying too hard to appeal to teens and younger audiences, which wound up alienating me a little. I might not be a teen, but I still love my horror movies!
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