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V/H/S: Viral

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V/H/S: Viral
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Written by
  • Marcel Sarmiento
  • T.J. Cimfel
  • David White
  • Gregg Bishop
  • Nacho Vigalondo
  • Justin Benson
  • Todd Lincoln[a]
Produced by
Production
companies
Distributed byMagnet Releasing
Release dates
  • October 23, 2014 (2014-10-23) (VOD)
  • November 21, 2014 (2014-11-21) (US)
Running time
81 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesEnglish
Spanish
Box office$82,409[1]

V/H/S: Viral is a 2014 American found footage horror anthology film produced by Bloody Disgusting, The Collective, Haxan Films, and Divide/Conquer. The sequel to V/H/S/2 (2013), it is the third installment in the V/H/S franchise and features three found footage segments linked together by a fourth frame narrative written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, Marcel Sarmiento, Gregg Bishop, Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead.[2] An additional segment was filmed, written and directed by Todd Lincoln, but was cut since it did not fit with the overall theme of the film.[3][4]

The film was released on demand on October 23, 2014 and made a limited theatrical release in the United States on November 21, 2014. It grossed $82,409 in box office and $263,906 in home sales.[5][6] A prequel, V/H/S/94, was released on September 26, 2021.

Plot

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The film is presented as an anthology of three short horror films, built into a frame narrative which acts as its own fourth short horror film. Each short film is linked together with the concept of found footage as each segment is from VHS tapes that went viral after being uploaded to social media from Kyle's laptop.[b]

"Vicious Circles" (frame narrative) — Prologue

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  • Directed by Marcel Sarmiento
  • Written by T.J. Cimfel, David White and Marcel Sarmiento

The frame narrative focuses on Kevin, an amateur videographer who constantly shoots footage of his girlfriend Iris. She claims to enjoy it, but then grows annoyed with Kevin's obsession with filming her.

That night, an ice cream truck in a car chase arrives in their neighborhood and Kevin witnesses the live broadcast on television. He sees the opportunity to create a viral video but is too late to shoot footage as the truck speeds past his house. Iris receives a mysterious video call and wanders outside in a daze while the truck runs over a police officer that had asked Kevin to back away from the road.

Kevin notices Iris has suddenly disappeared; he chases after the truck when images of a panicking Iris broadcast to his cell phone. Meanwhile, people in the neighborhood begin to receive strange images on their phones that turn them violently insane.

"Dante the Great"

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Untalented illusionist John McMullen discovers a cloak that was once owned by Harry Houdini. He learns that wearing the cloak grants him the powers to perform actual magic and takes the stage name "Dante the Great" to perform his newfound abilities in front of large audiences, becoming immensely famous.

John also learns that the cloak requires regular human sacrifices to work and hires female assistants to videotape the cloak devouring them. He uses his powers to summon and kill Clay Bowland, the abusive boyfriend of his latest assistant Scarlett Kay. She discovers John's tapes inside a secret compartment in his dressing room and alerts the police, though John uses his powers to escape custody. While Scarlett is interrogated, John summons her from the police station. A SWAT team bursts in to arrest John, but he manages to kill them all with magic. Scarlett duels John over the cloak but is overpowered.

Before John can kill her, Scarlett uses a trick he taught her to immobilize him and prompts the cloak to devour him instead. Scarlett burns the cloak, only to find it hanging on her closet door that night. As she investigates, a pair of giant, shadowed arms reach out from inside the cloak and grab her as the footage ends.

"Vicious Circles" — First interlude

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Back in the frame narrative, Kevin and the police continue chasing the truck. Some teenagers attempt to film the chase from atop a nearby bridge; one of them stares at his phone in a trance while his nose bleeds. Another teenager slips and falls from the bridge when he gets too close to the edge. He lands on the road and is killed when a vehicle runs over him.

Kevin is halted by a group of cyclists, but they end up helping him pursue the truck when their leader is caught on it, has his feet shredded to the bone, and is ultimately killed.

"Parallel Monsters"

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Spanish inventor Alfonso works late on his newest project—a prototype interdimensional portal. When he activates it, the portal reveals what appears to be his garage. Alfonso witnesses a copy of himself looking at him, revealing that the portal has successfully opened a gateway to a parallel universe.

The two Alfonsos greet each other, overcome by curiosity, and discover that they appear to be completely identical. Both agree to trade places and cross through the portal with their own cameras to explore and document each other's universes for fifteen minutes; the original Alfonso explores his parallel house and meets the parallel copy of his wife Martha, who introduces him to two men both named Oriol. In the living room, a pornographic snuff film plays on the television and a sack of organs is displayed in the center.

When the parallel Martha prompts the original Alfonso to perform a satanic ritual with the Orioles, he leaves the house and sees a large blimp with an inverted cross that blares demonic chanting; it is revealed that the two universes hold differing dominant religions and, when he attempts to record the blimp, the original Alfonso is confronted by the Orioles. Their eyes and mouths turn bright red, and one of them takes his pants off to reveal a fanged penis-like creature.

In the original universe, the parallel Alfonso discovers the original Martha asleep and takes photos of her before unveiling his own monstruous genitalia, scaring Martha awake. In the parallel universe, the original Alfonso stabs Oriol's penis with a screwdriver and flees back to the house. The parallel Martha takes off her robe to reveal that she has a similarly fanged vagina. The original Alfonso punches her and flees back to the portal, where the parallel Alfonso—covered in blood—stabs him and returns to his universe.

However, the parallel Martha, mistaking her parallel husband, knocks him down and lets her vagina to devour him for punching her before the original Alonso closes the portal. The original Martha appears and, also mistakenly believing that her original husband attacked her, furiously stabs him to death as the footage ends.

"Vicious Circles" — Second interlude

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Kevin continues chasing the truck as it repeatedly circles the neighborhood and begs the police to help him save Iris. Meanwhile, a group of Hispanic gangbangers are holding a barbecue to celebrate one of their own being released from prison. The honor guest sees a police helicopter broadcasting the chase and assumes that his girlfriend has turned him in.

Suddenly, the music playing on the radio warps and turns operatic; the guests become insane and kill each other with forks. As Kevin and the truck pass, a gas tank ruptures in the chaos and explodes, setting the neighborhood on fire.

"Bonestorm"

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Skateboarders Jason and Danny perform various stunts in hopes of making an epic skateboard video. Their videographer Taylor pushes them into increasingly dangerous circumstances to injure or kill themselves so he can film the aftermath and sell it as a snuff film. Taylor also suggests they continue filming in Tijuana, remembering that he heard about a prime skating location for them to finish their video. He calls out their friend Shaun, who joins them in their trip to Mexico by paying everything with his father's credit card.

After enjoying themselves and buying fireworks, the quartet subsequently become lost and run into a mysterious woman. Once they find an old flood control channel, Taylor encourages them to perform more stunts. When Danny injures himself and bleeds on a large pentagram drawn on the ground, his blood quickly boils and the woman they met earlier suddenly appears.

As Taylor introduces himself, the woman tears his arm off and a group of cloaked cultists—who were using the channel for demonic worship—attack the group. In the ensuing fight, Shaun is fatally stabbed and bleeds out while Taylor is set on fire by exposure to the cultists' blood, which spontaneously ignites. When a monstruous roar sounds, the dead cultists rise as reanimated skeletons and mount a second attack; Jason and Danny use the fireworks they bought earlier to destroy the skeletons.

Seeing an opportunity to escape, the duo proceed to skate back toward the border as the creature the cultists were summoning appears from a storm drain, picks up the wounded Taylor and mauls him to death along with his camera as the footage ends.

"Vicious Circles" — Third interlude

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Citywide news broadcasting the chase warn that several fires have broken out across Los Angeles, with people killing each other after witnessing strange images on their phones. Kevin still continue chasing the truck and tries to get a taxi to stop, but the driver refuses because he is helping his friend—a porn director—to film a striptease with a young woman in the backseat.

Suddenly, the woman pulls a gun on him, revealing that the director had previously been sold her pornographic footage to her ex-boyfriend, and the exposure had ruined her life. She forces him to strip by threatening to shoot his crotch until the director fights back; all three are killed when a police car flips through the air and crushes the taxi.

"Gorgeous Vortex"

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  • Directed by Todd Lincoln
  • Written by Todd Lincoln

The short follows a sinister, shadowy organization that is tracking a serial killer. It was cut since it did not fit in with the film's overall theme—and mainly due to not being found footage. However, it is included as an extra in the film's Blu-ray and DVD release, which starts after the end credits.[7]

"Vicious Circles" — Epilogue

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As dawn breaks, Kevin finally catches up the truck inside an empty drainage basin with body parts strewn on the ground around it. He examines the driver's seat only to find a pair of disembodied hands duct taped to the wheel. When Kevin examines its back, he finds several televisions stacked atop each other[c] and a laptop that is uploading VHS tapes to social media.[d]

Iris appears on one of the screens and demands that Kevin uploads his footage to broadcasters. He refuses and explains that the tapes are driving people insane all over the city, but when Iris begins to brutally mutilate herself, Kevin relents and pushes a button to upload the footage. With the deed done, Iris' image taunts him and he exits the truck to discover her corpse—Iris has actually been dead the entire time—slumped against the truck with a phone stuck in her mouth.

Kevin retrieves the phone and it goes into selfie mode; he watches the screen and his nose starts to bleed. As Beethoven's Ninth Symphony's sounds, the closing shot is a view of Los Angeles skyline with fires burning throughout the city, smoke billowing up, lights flickering on and off, and news helicopters circling overhead, thus fulfilling the grander threat introduced in the tapes.

Cast

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"Vicious Circles"

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  • Patrick Lawrie as Kevin
  • Emilia Ares as Iris
  • Steve Berens as Cop
  • Stephanie Silver as Eva
  • Angela Garcia as Carolina
  • Gary Sugarman as Lewis
  • Celia K. Milius as Grandma
  • Garrett Bales as Spooked Guy
  • Val Vegas Gabriela
  • Jorge Marquez as Carlos
  • Chad Guernero as Uncle Alberto
  • Noelle Ann Mabry as Lulu
  • Kenny Burns as Taxi Driver

"Dante the Great"

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  • Justin Welborn as Dante the Great
  • Emmy Argo as Scarlett Kay
  • Dan Caudill as Detective Hughes
  • Stephen Caudill as SWAT Leader
  • Nathan Mobley as Theatrical Critic
  • John Curran as Blackstone
  • Susan Williams as Dante's Mom
  • Gregg Bishop as Documentary Director
  • Michael Aaron Millgian as Clay
  • Matt Peevy as SWAT Officer
  • Randy McDowell as Harry Houdini
  • Carrie Keagan as herself
  • Jessica Luza as Girl in Shower
  • Greyson Chadwick as Houdini Girl #1
  • Amanda Baker as Houdini Girl #2
  • Amanda Hall as Magician Assistant #3
  • Blair Redford as himself

"Parallel Monsters"

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"Bonestorm"

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  • Nick Blanco as Danny
  • Chase Newton as Jason
  • Shane Brady as Taylor
  • Cristián Toledo as Shaun
  • David Castro as Chanting Man
  • Angel Sala-Belen as Skull Face
  • Jawed El Berni as Skull Face
  • Michael Flores as Skull Face
  • Alexandra Besore as Dark Fairy Woman
  • Natalia Ferreiro as Creepy Woman
  • Jonez Jones as Bone Face
  • Conrad K. Pratt as Bone Face
  • John Oravec as Hobo in the Park

"Gorgeous Vortex"

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  • Jayden Robison as The Empress
  • Cheyenne Scarborough as Masked Person
  • Jackson James as Masked Person
  • Mark Stephen Ward as Masked Person
  • Taylor West as Ritual Room Woman
  • Jade Gotcher as Ritual Room Woman
  • Tiffany Hamill as Ritual Room Woman
  • Temple Hull as Ritual Room Woman
  • Kasey Landoll as Ritual Room Woman
  • Niousha Khosrowyar as Ritual Room Woman

Release

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The film was released on demand on October 23, 2014, and was released in select theaters on November 21.[8] The home-release on Blu-ray and DVD was on February 17, 2015, through Magnet Releasing.[9] The film premiered on Netflix on March 20, 2015.[10]

Reception

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On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 33% of 33 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "V/H/S: Viral is hardly a sensation as it cycles through the franchise's least frightening vignettes yet."[11] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 38 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[12]

Peter Debruge of Variety described the film as "three playful yet thoroughly disposable experiments in short-form p.o.v. cinema".[13] Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Lacking the originality of the first film and the superior entries of the second, V/H/S Viral spirals downwards towards the same sort of obsolescence as the home video format that provides its title."[14] A. A. Dowd of The A.V. Club rated it D+ and called it "slapdash and ineffectual".[15] Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian rated it 1/5 stars and wrote, "Besides one bright spot involving razor-sharp genitals, this horror compilation is bereft of thrills, scares or creativity."[16]

Shawn Macomber of Fangoria rated it 3/4 stars and wrote that the change in tone from previous entries in the film series will alienate some fans but is a "welcome breather".[17] Brad McHargue of Dread Central rated it 4/5 stars and wrote, "The shorts that comprise V/H/S Viral are inventive enough to make up for the blunder that is Sarmiento's wraparound, even if each one breaks the found footage 'rules' in egregious ways."[18] Luke Owen of Flickering Myth writes “Dante the Great has some amazing visuals, a wickedly fun fight scene and an amazing style. Both Vigalondo's Parallel Monsters and Bishop's Dante the Great deserve to be in a much better anthology horror movie.”[19]

Sequel

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Main article: V/H/S/94

In June 2020, it was announced that a fourth installment of the V/H/S franchise was in development, titled V/H/S/94 and written by David Bruckner. V/H/S/94 had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 26, 2021, and opened to positive critical reviews, with the initial reactions being that it was a "return to form" for the series.[20]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b "Gorgeous Vortex", written and directed by Todd Lincoln, was cut from the final film, but included on the extras in the home release.
  2. ^ As depicted in V/H/S/2 (2013).
  3. ^ The televisions were taken from the house to which Brad, Rox, Zak, and Gary entered in V/H/S (2012).
  4. ^ The laptop belongs to Kyle from V/H/S/2 (2013).

References

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  1. ^ "V/H/S Viral". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  2. ^ Magnet, Epic Catch Horror Anthology Threequel ‘V/H/S: Viral’
  3. ^ Secret ‘V/H/S: Viral’ Segment Revealed!
  4. ^ Horror Anthology ‘V/H/S: Viral’ Picked Up by Magnet Releasing
  5. ^ "V/H/S Viral". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  6. ^ "V/H/S: Viral (2014) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  7. ^ Bloody Disgusting
  8. ^ 'V/H/S Viral' Unspools This October! -
  9. ^ Exclusive Tease of Bonus V/H/S: VIRAL Segment GORGEOUS VORTEX
  10. ^ ‘V/H/S Viral’ Is Now Available On Netflix Instant
  11. ^ "V/H/S: Viral". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved September 30, 2023. Edit this at Wikidata
  12. ^ "V/H/S: Viral". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved September 30, 2023.
  13. ^ Debruge, Peter (October 17, 2014). "Film Review: 'V/H/S Viral'". Variety. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  14. ^ Scheck, Frank (November 21, 2014). "'V/H/S Viral': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  15. ^ Dowd, A. A. (November 20, 2014). "The V/H/S franchise goes Viral—and down the tubes". The A.V. Club. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  16. ^ Hoffman, Jordan (November 21, 2014). "V/H/S Viral review – aggravating and essentially plot-free, but that won't scare off horror fans". The Guardian. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  17. ^ ""V/H/S VIRAL" (Movie Review) | FANGORIA®". February 19, 2015. Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  18. ^ McHargue, Brad (September 20, 2014). "V/H/S Viral (2014)". Dread Central. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  19. ^ Owen, Luke (August 26, 2014). "V/H/S Viral (2014)". Flickering Myth. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  20. ^ V/H/S/94, retrieved September 28, 2021

Further reading

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