V/H/S 2012

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: A low-budget horror anthology with segments both ghastly and moronic ... Read more

Doug Knoop, Seattle Times: [A] too-long, violent horror anthology ... Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: All told, V/H/S brings some cohesion to the Wild West of indie horror filmmaking, and seems destined to become a key artifact of a DIY era. Read more

Ethan Gilsdorf, Boston Globe: "The Blair Witch Project" meets mumblecore. Read more

Drew Hunt, Chicago Reader: This horror anthology collects six shorts of varying quality, all purported to be found footage. My favorite is Ti West's Second Honeymoon. Read more

Eric D. Snider, Film.com: Cinema's first found-footage horror anthology suggests that there's still some life left in these old tropes. Read more

Justin Lowe, Hollywood Reporter: Refreshingly, V/H/S promises no more than it delivers, always a plus with genre fare. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: At nearly two hours, the gimmick punctures a hole in itself, causing ambience bleed-out. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The film also plays to the strengths of the found-footage format, proving that sometimes the scariest things are the ones you can barely see. Read more

Bruce Diones, New Yorker: All of the short films are genuinely unnerving, and the point-of-view camerawork is, at times, startling. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: This indie compilation has enough inventive chills to interest any horror fan. Read more

Sara Stewart, New York Post: "V/H/S" puts the majority of today's mainstream "scary" movies to shame; perhaps the solution is to cut them all down to about 15 minutes, and fund them on a shoestring. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: No one should be expected to endure 115 minutes of this nonsense. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Two hours of nausea-inducing shaky cam footage that fails to tell a coherent or engrossing central story. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: What's the point? None of the segments is particularly compelling. Strung together, it's way too much of a muchness. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: An ingenious hybrid: part Godardian art film, part abstract video experiment, part sleazy shocker, and all self-castigating interrogation of what film-theory types call the "male gaze." Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: This anthology of "found footage" horror featurettes is predictably hit-and-miss. Read more

Kevin C. Johnson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Hardcore horror lovers will soak up the gruesome morsels. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: I came, I saw, I hunkered. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, The Atlantic: The mostly played-out found footage aesthetic has its limitations, and V/H/S doesn't escape all of them. But the collected directors do manage to make many of those limitations into the films' strengths. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Mainly, the omnibus film feels undercooked, even on the grounds of its forced technological setup. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: The segments vary in quality and the whole overstays its welcome at nearly two hours. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: In too many of the shorts, bad acting quickly undermines the "authenticity" the aesthetics labor to achieve. Read more

Sean O'Connell, Washington Post: "V/H/S" probably sounded great in the pitch meeting, but it loses all luster through some shoddy execution. Read more