GODZILLA
Dir - Gareth Edwards
Overall: MEH
Comparing Gareth Edwards' major-budgeted Godzilla relaunch to say Cloverfield which took such a concept, went with the hand-held camera angle, and very successfully put the viewer in the fly on the wall seat, this film has no such effective tension. For a "giant monster destroying metropolitan areas" movie, it is yet another stock and generic one with nothing more to offer than brand recognition and updated special effects. Running over two hours and featuring about six minutes of actual monster footage, the majority of Edwards' Godzilla is just lame, emotionally barren characters doing things lame, emotionally barren characters do in disaster films. Families get separated, the military has bombs and only bombs as their answer to everything, every five minutes something incredibly convenient happens to our protagonists to put them in direct contact with monster shenanigans, children are at risk, scientists look concerned, people hug at the end, etc. So many marks are hit and all would be forgiven if the actual monster money shots were way more frequent and interesting. Instead, this is just the same shit different movie.
Dir - John Erick Dowdle
Overall: GOOD
On the one hand, John Erick Dowdle's third found footage horror film in seven years As Above, So Below is a cliche ridden, heavily flawed bit of work. While the premise is quite interesting, the story does not have much going for it and is basically there as an excuse to feature as many randomly creepy things as possible. Yet those creepy things are quite memorable to say the least. The film takes place in an ideal setting for a horror movie that helps one look past the boo scares and some of the cheap genre tricks. Since said drawback are undeniably there though, it is more successful as fun, supernatural horror movie window dressing than it is at having a properly compelling narrative. Its unnerving details are impressive and the hand-held camera, guerilla style framework is more complimentary than not since generic, scary music and the like is nowhere to be found. Dowdle's Quarantine remake is probably better overall and his The Poughkeepsie Tapes certainly worse, but this one fits in the average category and is highly worth viewing at least once to see all the weird, spooky stuff transpiring while enjoying your popcorn.
Dir - Nacho Vigalondo/Marcel Sarmiento/Gregg Bishop/Justin Benson/Aaron Scott Moorhead
Overall: MEH
Three entries in and each V/H/S movie has followed the same format while offering up the same results. As is the case with all anthology films, one can easily pick out their favorite moment as well as their least. Unfortunately, most of V/H/S: Viral is in the "least" category. The linking segments in these films have all been various levels of terrible, the one here most of all. It is a distracting, incredibly confusing mess with zero redeeming factors, made worse by the fact that it takes up the most screen time and seems unavoidable. Besides that, there are only three additional stories which is less than the first two installments in the series. "Dante the Great" takes more liberties with the found footage formula than perhaps any other in history so far. Presented as a documentary, most of what we see seems to be screaming at us from the heavens "Who in the hell is filming all of this?". "Bonestorm" has a nifty premise, but it is ultimately stupid and features a cast made up entirely of obnoxious skateboarding punks that you want to be murdered as soon as you see them. Which leaves the only good segment in "Parallel Monsters", helmed by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo. Truth be told though, it only seems better due to the rest of the film being of such poor quality. The high water marks in V/H/S and V/H/S 2 are far higher than anything here so yeah, this is the weakest one by a pretty easy margin.
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