Anyone else like this better than V.H.S. 2?
I can understand where the haters are coming from, just from the "shaky cam" thing alone.
Regardless, I really liked it as far as horror anthologies go. In fact, every single complaint for V.H.S. can be thrown at the original TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VAULT OF HORROR and HEAVY METAL. In the end, the wrap around is just an excuse to justify showing a handful of short stories. Whether those stories are any good... well that is the question.
Even so, I think what I liked about this over the sequel was how small and contained the stories were especially the 2nd one.. yeesh, you could see that on DEADLY WOMEN or any of those Investigative Discovery shows), like stories told around a campfire. The second one had the zombie biker segment (which I liked the best) and the death cult, both of which implied that the "end of the world" was transpiring. The problem is that the rest of the movie completely forgets about it (not to mention that stupid jokey end shot with the zombied kid from the 1st film).
I also found it interesting that it seemed that V.H.S. 2 re-purposed the stories from the 1st film as well: you had the cult episode (the haunted house compared to the asian death cult); you had the glimpse of ghosts episode (the "Emily's baby" story compared to the mechanical eye story); you had the more fun/goofy episodes with the FRIDAY THE 13th riff and the zombie biker and you had the demon/succubbus episode versus the alien abduction one.
In the end, V.H.S., like a good campfire story or a good haunted house, served it's purpose well (to give me a good jump, or creep me out a bit), at least for myself.