Beautiful, moving film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Having watched VHS and VHS 2 on a whim late one insomnia fueled night, and with no prior knowledge of them, I was pleasantly surprised by both. So had fairly high hopes for round three. Unlike the first two there were no good segments in this collection, not one. I love horror movies and have sat through many howlers in my time (I have seen all the Howling films) but this may well be one of the worst as it had such potential. The plot (what there is of it in these films) was ridiculous and made very little sense. The acting was really sub par too with no real convincing character development. When character development was attempted it seemed really forced and irrelevant. Such a sad finish to what started out as quite an original and entertaining trilogy. I wonder if they will make a fourth and redeem themselves?

This installment really strayed from the original two that came before it. It isn't really an anthology of found footage, rather a collection of short POV films. It lacks the originality of the first film, and lacks the quality of shorts of the second film.The wraparound story just wasn't very intriguing enough to care about. I can kind of understand what they were going for but was so poorly executed such that the spliced up scenes made little sense."Parallel Monsters", the second short is probably the only one worth watching, it has a creepy-comedic vibe to it, but it feels more like a dark-comedy than a horror.TL;DRThe film is watchable, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. A real downgrade from the previous two films that came before it.

While a viral virus outbreak seems to be spreading across the internet superhighway, as the film follows a teenage young man biking through a city searching for his love who seems to have been kidnapped in an ice cream van (that has seen better days), we are privy to a series of recorded episodes where characters face incredible, supernatural events.The first tale doesn't follow the found footage format religiously as the fourth wall of the popular subgenre is broken as pieces of it are shot by a "cinematic camera". It involves a trailer park magician-wannabe named Dante (Justin Welborn) who finds a demonic black cape (supposedly discarded by a frightened Houdini!) and exploits what it can do for great success. He records his cape's magic tricks and what the cape allows him to do with his hands and mind when wearing it. However, the cape is a carnivore (I can't make this stuff up!) and demands human nourishment (!) in order for Dante to be given access to perform with its magic. So a number of magician assistants wind up missing, and Dante records (why?) the process of the cape's feeding from them! In found footage, the obviousness of recording events which defy common sense, reeking of implausibility, finds its way into another example of the genre. You just kind of have to accept that what we mostly *wouldn't* record will be in order for us to experience what the characters do. This tale is a special effects showcase where the cape does some amazing things. Arial stunt work (climbing walls, the cape teleporting a person from one place to another and a rabbit from one place to another), bodies of a police task force suffering crushed bones without actually being touched by Dante, a rabbit being split open by Dante with him just moving hands right above it, the cape "eating" victims, and Dante performing fireball maneuvers that develop and fly from just his hands and mind making them appear; the tale has plenty of effects work to dazzle. The stunning red head, Emmy Argo, is the assistant who might just get the upper hand on Dante due to how much he likes her. Her boyfriend's fate is particularly ghoulish. Irony of the cape's feeding habits doesn't stop at just Dante's victims…he had better watch out as well! The second tale deals with parallel alternate universes *meeting* as two scientist Alfonsos (Gustavo Salmerón) discover each other after building successful dimensional machines in their basements. Exhilarated by their mutual encounter, the two Alfonsos decide to cross over into each other's worlds for a fifteen minute visit. One of the Alfonsos realizes that the alternate universe he crossed over into isn't necessarily to his liking…it seems the people in this universe are a bit biologically different (that is an understatement!). The horrifying addition to this is the alternate Alfonso has a particularly unique penile difference from his counterpart which might have bit of an overbite! Alfonso's alternate wife, Marta (Marian Álvarez), might just also have a biological, anatomical overbite all her own! Just its premise is creepy and unsettling enough to leave quite a Cronenbergian impression hard to forget (even if you *want* to unsee it!). The creation of the basement teleport machines certainly cause more harm than good to their creators! The third tale features skateboarders traveling to Tijuana for the ultimate experience, but the perfect location to vert presents more than they bargained for: true Mexican occultists in Day of the Dead skull makeup and attire arrive to attack them! An arm pulled from one of the boarders causes blood to leak on this chalk symbol which seems to awaken something evil. Eventually the occultists who die at the hands of the boarders awaken as ghouls! Even a monster seems to emerge thanks to the black magic that responds to the blood of the boarders! Mostly seen through the cameras hooked onto the helmets, with one boarder shooting from a hand-held, this features gruesome violence from skateboards, animal bones, and even a sword! The most virtuoso and exciting use of the POV approach of found footage. The stoner characters aren't exactly ingratiating, but they sure defend themselves well (well, two of them do!).Other found footage additions include a woman whose nude recording was posted on a website getting revenge on the blogger in a taxi and a Spanish harlem gangster soirée erupting into chaos when the lead hood gets enraged by the fork-stabbing of his pet dog! The wraparound story isn't anything to write home about. It has a young man chasing after a van (a van dragging a biker across a paved road is nuts!), eventually finding it with no one inside, perhaps left with a decision to make which could affect the entire city, maybe even the world!

V/H/S: Viral is a departure from the previous entries. We don't get the usual goofs looking through old VHS tapes. However the story that frames the movie ("Vicious Circles") doesn't make much sense. It involves a young couple. The guy decides to film everything, mainly his pretty girlfriend. When one of those LA car chases takes place in his neighborhood he sees his chance to film it and upload it so it'll go viral. Off he goes on his bike with cameras attached to his helmet. The chase follows a creepy old ice cream van that runs over people. For some reason the guy's cell phone mysteriously shows videos of his girl. Suddenly she appears on the street and vanishes as the van drives by.Then we move to the first independent segment--"Dante the Great." One day Dante discovers a cape which has powers. It's like it is a portal to a different dimension. So he starts doing magic with it and becomes famous. But the cops are on his tail because his assistants keep disappearing. It turns out the cape demands blood. But his new assistant has plans of her own.We go back to "Vicious Circles" for some more bike riding after the van/girl. Someone in the back of the van grabs another biker who gets dragged to pieces."Parallel Monsters" is about a Spanish guy who invents some large machine. When he turns it on and opens the door, it looks like on the other side is his mirror image. Another guy who looks just like him, holding a camera, and amazed at the machine. But it's not a mirror image. It's a parallel but inverted universe. They decide to go through the portal for every guy to explore the other guy's life. Their homes are identical except for a photo on a wall. One guy has a picture of him and his wife, the other a picture of a pentagram and candles. The first guy meets the other guy's hot wife. Apparently they were about to do something. In the middle of the living room is some bloody bag and two guys in underwear show up. When they ask the guy to go ahead and be the first, he hesitates so the other guys leave. The wife insists puzzled, so he leaves and runs into the two guys outside who go after him and suddenly their heads turn to light and develop creepy voices. When they take off their underwear it isn't pretty. Meanwhile guy #2 goes to the bedroom to see the other guy's wife who's sleeping, he too has something in his pants. Eventually they cross the portals again, but the first guy's wife isn't happy.The next segment "Bonestorm" features a bunch of dumb dope-head skaters who decide to drive to Tijuana. They buy firecrackers and as they walk/skate trough some riverbed run into some strange girl, see a corpse, an altar, a pentagram. The skate all over that stuff. Then one guy falls and bleeds over the pentagram. Now guys in hoods and corpsepaint appear and chant and slowly attack the kids who defend themselves with a gun, their skateboards, and the firecrackers, but the hooded guys buy now have turned into skeletons and still go after them.In the end the kid on the bike catches up with the van that has stopped. He gets inside and there are countless old TV sets. Suddenly his girl appears on screen and asks him to upload his videos. He declines so she starts hurting herself until he agrees.I didn't get to see "Gorgeous Vortex" that is included on DVD. Unfortunately this movie is not coherent enough. "Vicious Circles" doesn't amount to anything. Which is surprising given that Sarmiento has done some great things in the past. "Dante the Great" is a great story. Very entertaining and unique."Parallel Monsters" had a lot of promise but something doesn't satisfy. I don't know why they had to film this in Spain. It's still a good segment though."Bonestorm" is hampered by some real nasty characters that you can't care for. And it's also poorly filmed with cameras attached to the kids' helmets--pointing at their faces for some reason and that makes up most of the footage.I don't know if Gorgeous Vortex would have improved things. As it is, the arrangement of the stories doesn't help. Had they started with Dante and ended with Parallel perhaps I would have a better perception of VHS: Viral. But the ending as it is doesn't leave you with a good impression. At least we get sharp images and only a bit of unnecessary greenvision. I don't see a need for a further entry to the series.