Bonus Reviews: "V/H/S 2" (2013) and "Blood Red Ox" (2022)

Horror Bulletin Bonus for Week 196

For this week’s bonus films, we’ve got a completely unrelated set of movies for you. We'll look at the surprisingly good followup to the hugely successful original "V/H/S" film. Then we'll watch a new Bolivian LGBT horror film called "Blood Red Ox."

Don’t forget, the first week of each month, we publish ALL our reviews, including the bonus content, in our monthly “Horror Bulletin” print magazine (also available as an ebook). If you don’t have time to read the website or email, here’s one more option for you! The new issue is out now!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JN2WBJ8

V/H/S 2 (2013)

• Directed by Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans

• Written by Simon Barrett, Jamie Nash, Timo Tjahjanto

• Stars Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott, Adam Wingard

• Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

• Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s another anthology of short tales, even better than the first one was. The effects are excellent, the gore is juicy, and the stories and acting are all very good.

Synopsis

As in the previous film, this is an anthology.

Tape 49

Two detectives, Larry and Ayesha, record a guy having an affair and blackmails the guy to pay them more than his wife, the client. They then move on to a woman who hired them to find her missing college kid.

They break into the old house and find a room full of TVs, all tuned to static. Is this the house from the first film? He explores the house while she checks out the computer. There’s a guy who recorded himself talking about a recent find of a “special” film. She plays the tape.

Phase I Clinical Trials

Herman has had surgery to implant a bionic eye. They warn him he may start to see things that aren’t there; it records everything (Kevin noticed immediately that it records audio too). We get everything else from his point of view. He then goes home and wanders around doing normal things. Wait– is there someone in his bed? Nope. Hallucination. Then he sees a blood-covered man in his bedroom.

He calls the doctor and tells him what’s going on. He sees a little girl in his hallway next. He ends up spending the night hiding in the bathroom.

He ends up sleeping all day, but Clarissa from the doctor’s office comes around toward evening. She says that she was born deaf and got a cochlear implant. She says she heard a little crying when she came in. She explains that she, and now he, can sense things others can’t. She warns him not to interact with them, as that just encourages the dead.

Clarissa says she knows how to make the ghosts go away, and she strips down and has sex with Herman. Night falls, and there’s someone in Herman’s bed again– the little girl! Before long, the place is crawling with dead people.

A Ride in the Park

Larry tells Ayesha to keep watching the tapes; she may find a clue to the missing kid’s whereabouts.

Mike, a bicycler, is planning on a ride in the park, and he has a helmet-cam. He comes across a woman screaming for help. She then starts puking blood. He hears moaning from the woods. It’s a bunch of zombies! The woman turns on him and bites him. We soon see the biker puking up blood and dying as well, but all through his zombie-helmet-cam.

A couple more bikers find the body, which starts moving after a few minutes. Before long, there are three biker-zombies. We soon see how hard it is to be among the walking dead.

When Larry returns to the video room, Ayesha is having a nosebleed. She sends Larry to the drugstore for some medicine. While she waits, she puts in another tape…

Safe Haven

A man with a camera crew interviews a cult leader. We then cut to security cam footage of life inside the cult’s compound. Malik, Lena, and the camera crew come to the compound for interviews. A girl there gives Lena a necklace, but she throws it away.

They set up for an interview with “Father,” the leader. Lena has some kind of attack and goes to the restroom. Lena goes into a classroom, and two weird women scare her. Lena tells Adam that he has gotten her pregnant, and Malik, his actual fiancee hears all this on the monitor.

The clock rings, and the Father announces that the time has come. Everyone needs to drink every drop from the cups given them. Father pulls a knife on the cameraman, and Malik finds something nasty in the basement. Just when you think you have the whole cult-thing figured out, it goes completely off the rails.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction

Larry returns to find Ayesha dead. He finds a tape marked “watch,” so he does just that…

Some boys “raid” one of their sister’s slumber party, and they see things they shouldn’t. The sister and her boyfriend get the camera and plan revenge. Suddenly, aliens attack and abduct everyone.

Back at the video-house, Larry watches a tape of the missing kid shoot himself in the head, get back up, and go out the door. Maybe Ayehsa isn’t as dead as he thought…

Commentary

The gore effects are pretty spectacular here.

Actually, all five segments in this are really good; it’s easily the best of the series, and far better than the original. The wraparound story wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be. The weakest of the bunch was the final segment with the aliens, but it was pretty good as well.

Blood Red Ox (2022)

• Directed by Rodrigo Bellott

• Written by Nate Atkins, Rodrigo Bellott

• Stars Mazin Akar, Kaolin Bass, Andrea Campovono

• Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes

• Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It begins weird and interesting but gets too strange and disjointed after a while. It does conclude by explaining what’s gone on, but it seems too late at that point. The cinematography is beautiful, and there are lots of “good-looking men in briefs” scenes, but overall the Horror Guys didn’t dig this one too much, with one giving it a weak thumbs-up and the other a thumb leaning downward.

Synopsis

We open on a woman with a rifle in her mouth. She pulls the trigger. Amat wakes up; it was a weird dream. He and his boyfriend Amir get off the plane. They have been together for three or four years, and this is Amir’s hometown. Amir is writing a book about a local water factory. They stop at a place where an injured ox is lying in the road; someone hit it with their car. The driver, Amancaya, gets out and shoots it to put it out of its misery. Credits roll.

They get home, and Amat is still upset about the Ox. Amir reads a book about God making a bull and a fish named Bahamut. Amaru is Amancaya’s brother, and he stops over for a visit. Along with him is Americo, the owner of the dead Ox, who is very cold toward Amir and Amat. They all go to a local celebration, and Amancaya sings. As she sings, we get flashes of her and others covered in blood, which may or may not be hers.

That night, Amat has a nightmare. He gets a glimpse of a big horned demon in the house, and the head of the ox is in the kitchen. He admits to Amir that he has had these dreams since childhood. They went away for a long time, but now they’re back. Amir blames the alcohol and the jetlag.

In the morning, we see that Amir has a wedding ring in his pocket, presumably for Amat. They head over to the water factory, with Amaru guiding them. Amat gets naked and jumps into a freezing cold mountain spring. There was a fire there in 2017, and Amaru’s mother was killed. The “water factory” they keep talking about is a rainforest.

That night, Amat says he’s going to write a story about a woman who shoots a bull in the face. Later, the two men dance and make out.

We flashback to a time when Amat blames Amir for cheating on him, as if he doesn’t remember the previous night. Then Amancaya calls and offers Amir a job. When Amat gets home, they argue some more. We get more flashes of people covered in blood. The next day, Amat doesn’t even remember who Amir is and threatens to call the cops. Amaat has some real mental issues. Amat shaves his head, starts a fight with Ami, and runs out into the woods.

As bald, naked, bloody Amat runs through the rainforest, and screams. He runs out in front of Amaru and Amancaya’s car in the dark, and they hit him. He has the shadow of the devil behind him in the trees. Amancaya gets her rifle and puts it to his head, just like the ox. She pulls the trigger.

Amir wakes up in the morning and can’t find Amat; he’s got several bruises from the fight. He tells Amaru about Amat, but Amaru doesn’t seem worried.

A woman with a nosebleed comes to the door. She says Amat sent her. Amat does show up, and she asks Amir to go away for about an hour. Amanda says that she has been Amat’s therapist for years; he has schizophrenia. He thought he was getting better, so he stopped taking his meds. Amat says there’s a clinic he needs to go to.

Amir says he shouldn’t go; he can fix Amat’s problem with love. Amanda says, no, that’s not enough. Amat accuses Amir of wanting to get rid of him.

Not long after, Amir picks up Amro, Amancaya’s boyfriend and takes him home for the night. Except he met him in Bolivia, and now they’re suddenly in the United States. Sometimes it’s summer and sometimes there’s snow on the ground. And there’s desert. He doesn’t know where he is. Neither do we, for that matter.

Amir wakes up in Bolivia again, and there’s some kind of ritual in progress. The devil is there, and all kinds of weirdness is happening. Amancaya runs in saying the forest is on fire. She points her gun at him. The devil grunts behind Amir.

We get a rerun of the scene with the therapist, but this time, Amaru answers the door, and they’re talking about Amancaya, who has schizophrenia. Amaru doesn’t exist; she made him up.

They find Amir in the bathtub, and he seems to have had a schizophrenic break. The therapist tells the paramedic (and us) that Amancaya and Amir went to the same psychiatric institution in New York, and they both imagined people. They’ve both been calling each other incessantly for a long time. In the final scene, we see Amancaya standing in the airport with a sign waiting for Amir; he’s never actually gone to Bolivia at all– this was all a hallucination.

Commentary

The devil is really buff; that’s all I’ve got to say about that. They do say he’s a tempter…

Don’t you hate it when a story or show ends with “it was all just a dream– None of it was real!” Yeah, that’s what this is.

The first half hour is promisingly weird. It went from a basic drama to “what the hell is going on” quickly. Eventually, the therapist showed up to explain things, which I thought would clear things up, but it only made it worse. Kevin had to point out to me later that Amir had never even been to Bolivia. That was all fantasy. All he had ever done was talk to Amancaya on the phone. Essentially, everything and everyone in the film other than Amir was his hallucination.

There’s a lot of quiet whispering in the background in many scenes that I mostly couldn’t make out; it probably means something. I feel like I completely didn’t even understand the film, even though I was obviously watching closely. Kevin notes that he thinks he “got it” more than Brian, but found it pretty depressing in conclusion. What’s worse than your friend/lover/brother being imaginary? Two people whose friend/lover/brother are imaginary with their psychoses overlapping each other. They made us care about these characters and then we found out they don’t exist.

The landscaping and cinematography are beautiful. It’s got lots of guys wandering around in briefs, so there’s that, but otherwise, the plot is scrambled drivel that makes no damn sense at all.

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