I have been a fan of the VHS found footage series since it first hit the scene. The concept is amazing – found video cassette tapes with footage of horrific events on them – even if the films didn’t really fully take advantage of the conceit. Each of the films has been a mixed bag where either the wraparounds don’t work as well as the rest or the segments aren’t as interesting as the wrap. Even so, there is something really fun about this franchise as an anthology project.
And heck, we don’t get may anthos these days, do we?
With 99 we find the franchise righting the ship after a very uneven third entry and a very good fourth. Here though we find that there are more misses than hits and the film just feels…cheap.
The wraparound makes no real sense to the entirety of the film and adds nothing as an overarching story, only playing out towards the end yet not being the final segment of the film, which is really weird. The stories, all told in the year 1999 and each of them try their best to capture the culture of the time. It’s achingly cringey as it hews very closely to the era’s foibles but also feels obvious and exaggerated. As if they are making a parody or caricature of the era. You have the Jackass wanna-bes. Yo uhave the mean girls, you have the apocalypse cult of Y2K. These are all window dressing though and nothing more.
And that’s fine.
It gives it a setting.
A place and time.
I wish there had been a Y2K segment as it seems so obvious but so it goes.
The segments we do get all have moments, all have glimmers, but they all also have lots of problems. The first story, about a girl band that dies in a fire shows the space they died and it sure doesn’t look like it is burned out, and it seems odd that there is electricity on as well. The characters are painful, and that’s something that is rampant through the whole film – annoying and cloying characters.
There’s a story about mean girls that doesn’t do anything you don’t expect. It’s so by the numbers that it feels almost like a the bad joke that keeps getting repeated over and over until the audacity of its repetition becomes funny.
The story about a very ’90s game show is interesting but is overly long and disjointed, seeming to tell two stories at once and neither is satisfying. There are aspects of it too that feel too much akin to the ’90s smarminess of art house cinema, time I will happily not re-live.
The segment about teen boys again feels obvious in its portrayal of creeper boys doing creeper things. It feels too like a lesser version of an earlier films segment which was much better. Here too there’s a reliance on a CGI gag that overstays its welcome very quickly.
The final segment is the best one, hands down, and the most ambitious, though it too feels as if there are two stories playing out. Even so, there’s a lot to like here.
The thing with this series is that it doesn’t need a lot of effects or a big budget to work. It needs solid stories and inventive ways to make the films plausible. I wish there was one overarching tie in narrative as far as a wraparound. It’s interesting to see different ideas play out but these are FOUND footage and in some cases, well, no one was gonna find the footage.
It’s a watchable entry in an up and down franchise. I am ever the optimist with the movies as the concept is SO good but man, they can get far afield.
There are a lot better options out there so proceed only if you’re a diehard or a big fan of the franchise or directors.
2 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 