V/H/S/94 is the fourth in the popular series of found footage anthology films, which all revolve around some hapless person, or persons, coming across a collection of VHS tapes and discovering the disturbing content recorded on them.This one takes place, as the title suggests, in 1994 where a SWAT team are raiding a warehouse, which is the headquarters of a bizarre religious cult, who they believe are involved with human trafficking.
Finding the cult members to have all commited ritualistic suicide, they proceed to sweep the building, where they encounter a series of TVs and projection screens, playing various disturbing films, which form the basis of the 4 grisly stories that make up the film.
The first, STORM DRAIN, follows a local TV news crew investigating reports of a Rat-Man creature that supposedly lives in the drains underneath Ohio. Only to discover it's never wise to ignore local legends.
Next, THE EMPTY WAKE, a young girl at a funeral parlour finds herself stuck in the building after hours when a flash storm and a tornado warning traps her inside, only to discover the dead body in the casket she's minding may not be willing to be interred just yet, with some wry humour and gore that should appeal to fans of Re-Animator.
The third film THE SUBJECT clearly seems to have been influenced by those Guines Pig films from the early 90s. Taking place somewhere in East Asia, the police raid the laboratory of a mad scientist they believe to be responsible for a number of dissapearances, only to find that the bizarre creations he's been working on may not let them leave.
Lastly TERROR seems to be a bizarre mash-up of Vampire lore and Monty Python, as a group of redneck survivalists think they've found the ultimate weapon to use against the Government, in a bizarre stranger they have captive, who seemingly cannot die and whose blood produces positively explosive results. What could possibly go wrong???
Of course the real twist comes in the wrap-around story with the SWAT team, who discover that whatever horrors where in the films playing in the complex, a fate potentially even more horrific awaits them...
Whether you will like this will of course depend on your love of found footage films, of which I'm not really a fan of to be honest.
That being said, V/H/S/94 isn't a bad film, and found it passed 90mins quite well. If you liked the other films in the V/H/S series, I'd say pick this one up.
Extras on the Blu-Ray include....
Film makers commentary track
Seperate audio commentary for "The Empty Wake"
Behind the Scenes Feature
San Diego Comic-Con panel
Behind the Scenes Picture Gallery
Special Effects Feature (showing how they designed the creature for "Terror")
"The Empty Wake" - Visual Effects breakdown
Hail Raatma! (a look at the Ratman suit from the first story)
6x Deleted/Extended Scenes
Bonus "Veggie Masher" commercial (full length phony advert, partly shown during "Storm Drain")
V/H/S/94 is out now on UK BD and DVD.
Buy the UK DVD from Amazon.co.uk
