USA. 2023.
Total Copy
Director – David Bruckner, Screenplay – Evan Dickson, Story – David Bruckner & Evan Dickson, Producer – Narineh Hacopian, Photography – Alexander Chinnici, Music – Ben Lovett, Makeup Effects – Russell FX, Creature Designer – Keith Thompson, Production Design – Jessie Clarkson.
Jordan Belfi (Dr Pike Spratling), Miller Tai (Dr Gary Newell), K.T. Thangavelu (Dr Margaret Porter), Kelli Garner (Dr Sarah Greyson)
No Wake
Director/Screenplay – Mike P. Nelson, Producer – Brianna Lee Johnson, Photography – Nick Junkersfeld, Music – Stephen Lukach, Makeup Effects – Beki Ingram & Ryan Schandlee, Production Design – Christopher Gasser.
Alex Galick (Rob), Anna Sundberg (Robin), Chelsey Grant (Kelly), Toussaint Morrison (Drew), Tyler Noble (Kevin), Anna Hashizume (Anna), Tom Reed (Jared)
God of Death
Director/Screenplay – Gigi Saul Guerrero, Producer – Raynor Shima, Photography – Luke Bramley, Music – Blake Matthew, Special Effects Supervisor – Toshiro Hernandez, Makeup Effects – Juma SFX (Designer – Juan Mendez), Production Design – Fey Unda. Production Company – Luchagora Productions.
Gabriele Roel (Lucia De Leon), Florencia Rios (Karla), Ari Gallegos (Luis), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Gabriela Maldonado), Marcio Marino (Eddie), Felipe De Lara (Miguel), Gerardo Onate (Javier)
TKNOGD
Director – Natasha Kermani, Screenplay – Zoe Cooper, Story – Zoe Cooper & Natasha Kermani, Producer – Tim Wu, Photography – Julia Swain, Music – Jeremy Zuckerman, Special Effects – Magee FX, Inc., Production Design – L.B. Minnich.
Chivonne Michelle (Ada Lovelace)
Ambrosia
Director/Screenplay – Mike P. Nelson, Producer – Brianna Lee Johnson, Photography – Nick Junkersfeld, Music – Stephen Lukach, Makeup Effects – Beki Ingram & Ryan Schandlee, Production Design – Christopher Gasser.
Evie Bair (Ruth), Renee Werbowski (Renee), Mike Lester (James), Justen Jones (Uncle Jeff), Lauren Anderson (Aunt Susan), Bonnie Sorenson (Carol), Jennifer Edwards (Barb), Murray Nelson (Adam), Christopher Gasser (Cousin Christopher)
Dreamkill
Director – Scott Derrickson, Screenplay – C. Robert Cargill & Scott Derrickson, Photography – Brett Jutkiewicz, Music – Atticus Derrickson, Visual Effects Supervisor – Jose Gallo, Special Effects Supervisor – Tom Ceglia, Production Design – Ariel Vida.
James Ransone (Bobby), Dashiell Derrickson (Gunther), Fredoy Rodriguez (Detective Wayne), Britt Baron (Karen)
Plot
Total Copy:- Scientists at a laboratory examine a creature they call Rory. As they watch, it begins to transform and shift its shape into one of the scientists. No Wake:- A group of friends go water-skiing at the lake. While out in the boat, someone begins to shoot and kill them with a sniper rifle. However, those killed make a return to life. God of Death:- An earthquake strikes during a live tv news broadcast in Mexico. As the emergency workers try to get the survivors out as the building collapses around them, they are forced to go down into the tunnels beneath the building where they discover the Aztec god Mictlan has been awakened. TKNOGD:- During a piece of performance art, Ada Lovelace attempts to summon the new gods of cyberspace. Ambrosia:- As she comes of age, Ruth is inducted into the new family ritual where she is required to kill seven people. Dreamkill:- A detective’s son Gunther is brought in to the station for questioning over the fact that he has been recorded having placed videotapes in the mail to the police. The tapes depict murder scenes – but before the murders occur. As Gunther explains, he has been having troubling dreams and now these have started to manifest on videotape.
The V/H/S films have been the more popular among the spate of multi-director Anthology Films that came out in the 2010s. The gimmick of the series was that all of the episodes were made in the Found Footage format. The series has so far consisted of V/H/S (2012), V/H/S/2 (2013) and V/H/S Viral (2014). After a gap of several years, there was V/H/S/94 (2021), V/H/S/99 (2022) and V/H/S/85, made for the Shudder Network.
Unlike the other films, V/H/S/85 creates not so much a wraparound but a story that is interspersed between the others. This is Total Copy, which comes from David Bruckner who co-directed The Signal (2007) and the memorable Amateur Night episode of V/H/S, along with the full-length films The Ritual (2017), The Night House (2020) and the remake of Hellraiser (2022).
The story here is fragmentary, not always clear, but you get the impression that scientists have been examining something of unspecified origin (possibly alien?) that they call Rory that begins to absorb information and then change its shape to resemble one of the scientists. In the final section, it emerges as some kind of Lovecraftian entity, writhing with tentacles.
The first full segment in No Wake from Mike P. Nelson, who previously made Summer School (2006), the post-holocaust film The Domestics (2018) and the remake of Wrong Turn (2021). This works the best of the stories. We start out with a group of twentysomethings on a waterskiing trip. The general horsing around is unexpectedly shattered as someone starts shooting at the group and we see people abruptly having holes blown in their heads, jaws shot off at the like. This comes with an out-of-the-blue abruptness but the kicker is then the people suddenly get back up alive again. This works undeniably effectively, although the episode reaches an abrupt ending that leaves a whole stack of questions unresolved – what is causing people to be resurrected? Who was the shooter? And more importantly what happens next? One of these questions is resolved subsequently but you are left wanting to know more.
Gigi Saul Guerrero is a Mexican-born director who has made assorted short films and episodes of other anthologies including Aztech (2020), The Source of Shadows (2020), Satanic Hispanics (2022) and one feature film with Bingo Hell (2021), along with assorted appearance as an actress.
This ties itself to a specific 1985 event – the Magnitude 7 earthquake that struck in Mexico City on September 19, 1985, killing some five thousand people. The piece starts as a tv broadcast and moves to a survival work. Guerrero does a fine job of depicting a group of rescue workers fleeing through a collapsing building. This gradually segues over into horror as the group find themselves in tunnels beneath the building and the awakening of Mictlan (which in Aztec mythology is the underworld but here appears as some sort of deity). The later scenes push over into the realm of the admirably grisly.
TKNOGD comes from Iranian-American director Natasha Kermani who had previously made the horror film Lucky (2020). This is probably the worst episodes in any of the V/H/S films. Most of it looks like a bad piece of performance art where Chivonne Michelle cavorts around in a Virtual Reality headset. Her summoning of the god of technology comes with some cheap graphics that look lifted from Tron (1982), before the predictable appearance of one of the deities.
Ambrosia is the only of the episodes in the V/H/S films that follows one from another one. In this case, Mike P. Nelson makes it as a companion piece to No Wake where we see Evie Bair shooting the people at the lake with a rifle as part of an initiation into a family cult. Like No Wake, the piece leaves you with a host of questions – what the family are and what the initiation is all about? Like No Wake, this also ends with characters being resurrected, although we get no more explanations about what is happening than we did in the other episode.
The last episode Dreamkill comes from Scott Derrickson, the high-profile director of the likes of The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), Sinister (2012), Deliver Us From Evil (2014), Doctor Strange (2016) and The Black Phone (2021). Derrickson also brings family with him where his son Dashiell plays the troubled teen.
This starts well with Derrickson capturing a gungily authentic look of a rundown police station, before the eminently out there moment where Dashiell Derrickson is questioned about the videotapes and starts talking about his dreams being projected onto tv screens. This starts well and there is a jolt twist subsequently, but the episode meanders around after that point as though it had no clue where to go next. It is like far too many of the episodes in this entry – lacking a point or not enough time to tell a story that needed far more than it gets. It results in the weakest of all the V/H/S films overall.
Trailer here