You're Next (Adam Wingard, 2011)

7.5/10
As a festival crowd pleaser, You're Next probably would have been great fun. Watched at home, its impact feels diminished, and the disconnect between its existence as both a violent home invasion horror and a borderline-goofy black comedy becomes more emphasized and feels weirdly jarring. It's hard to tell how seriously the movie takes itself, especially when it features an absurd exchange like the following, which may set new highs of brilliant stupidity (spoilers within):
-"You never want to do anything fun. Come on, fuck me on the bed next to your dead mother."
-"This discussion is over."
You're Next mostly comes out looking better than it should the strength of the direction and score, which are both completely on point. The score in particularly is perfectly evocative of some of John Carpenter's best, or the poppy Italian synth stuff that was smeared all over every horror in the late 70's and 80's. The acting is solid all-around too and it's difficult not to root for its central hero/heroine. The humor, when it crops up, is sharp too. But it's not really a scary movie at all and I feel like the ending was a missed opportunity to do something cooler. All in all not bad and does some things very well but not as great as I'd hoped.

V/H/S (Adam Wingard, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, David Bruckner, Joe Swanberg & Ti West, 2012)

8.5/10
Anthology horror movies are commonplace at any genre film festival, and it's usually the same story - kinda fun, but always marred by inconsistency. V/H/S is indeed somewhat inconsistent, but on the whole far stronger than almost anthology film I've ever seen and one of the best horror movies I've seen in a while.
The central narrative segment concerns a group of friends who get paid to tape themselves doing stupid stuff - vandalism, sexually harassing girls on the street, etc. Their backer tells them there's more work for them if they steal a VHS tape out of an old man's house. They break in and find the guy dead in front of a group of televisions, a VCR and some tapes. The tapes that are popped in are the other segments of the film. I have no idea who did what but directors include popular names of current horror like Ti West, Adam Wingard and Joe Swanberg. Most of the segments are original, scary, gory, and fun - even the weaker ones are at least some combination of the three. The approaches to the 'found footage' aspects are quite interesting too. One movie is filmed entirely through "camera glasses", some are done on (what's supposed to be) VHS, some look digital, and one is even set-up to resemble a Skype conversation replete with desktop background (how something like this would get transferred to a VHS tape and left in this old man's house is a question the movie would prefer you not ask). The storylines and logistics might not always make sense and the acting is a bit sketchy at times, but there's a lot of originality on display and the movie is above all else a really good time. Highly recommended.