V/H/S 2 AND THE ANTHOLOGY HORROR MOVIE AS MORALITY PLAY

Saw V/H/S 2 sequel to V/H/S.  While it had a bigger budget and bigger visuals than the first film, I didn’t find the stories as interesting.  Out of the four stories and the wraparound narrative, the second story, which was about zombies, was the best.  It was short and tight and slightly moving and an interesting take on the well worn zombie tale.  The first story, another well used idea that of the eye transplant revealing ghosts, was also decent.  The third story, which was the longest and had the most spectacular effects, didn’t make a lot of sense.  The fourth story was a big nothing as was the wraparound story.

While it is nice to see the anthology horror story coming back, one thing that the V/H/S movies lack that classic anthology horror movies from Hammer and other British studios is the morality play.  That is, the sense of repayment for some past bad thing the character has done.

This was of course the foundation of the EC comics of the 1950’s and also the Twilight Zone and Night Gallery TV shows.  British films like THE VAULT OF HORROR and TALES FROM THE CRYPT (both adaptations form EC comics) as well as DR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, ASYLUM (my personal fave) etc generally had someone do something evil or in some way disturb a supernatural force or engineer their own demise in a grimly ironic way.

The morality play was important because it invested the audience in the story – gave them a reason to watch because you saw the character, understood him, and wanted to see what would happen.  In a film where the horror is random, each segment becomes random and the result ends up being all about the gore and the special effects.

But that being the case I still think the first V/H/S film was very good.  I wrote about it here http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/08/three-films-absentia-iron-sky-vhs.html