Found footage horror. Been there, done that. Or have we?

Containing five short stories from acclaimed indie directors, with a sixth wrapped around it, V/H/S may well breath new life into this tired sub-genre. Fresh from success and acclaim at Sundance, this indie horror now aims to scare the bejesus out of the rest of the planet. And if this Red Band trailer is anything to go by, we may need to take a change of undies with us to the cinema.

Producer Brad Miska has brought together a who’s who of indie talent for this project, including Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die), Ti West (The Innkeepers), David Bruckner (The Signal), Joe Swanberg (Silver Bullets), Glen McQuaid (I Sell The Dead) and newcomers Radio Silence – who are a club of filmmakers.

The wrap-around story’s pretty simple: a group of misfit teens are hired to burgle a house and steal a video tape, but when they get there they find several tapes – each containing frightening footage. From there it starts to get strange and more than a little warped. It’s hard to describe but imagine if the Spanish horror [REC] meet the Japanese horror Ring and they both moved into a house tenanted by Paranormal Activity. I think you get the idea…

(Note: this is a Red Band trailer, so there’s blood n’ guts, swearing and a little nudity – good indie horror stuff.)

http://youtu.be/eGDLtkLIEjQ

Floating doors, burnt handprints, ghostly children, mangled bodies, switchblades, creepy teenage girls… this has it all! I’m a huge fan of the original Ring, so tapes with spooky images already creep me out. And V/H/S looks to take things to a whole new level. I’m loving what I see so far.

I hope it all comes together nicely – reports from Sundance suggest it does. With The Cabin in the Woods coming our way in July, it looks like us Kiwis are gonna get some good scares in 2012.

V/H/S is a POV, found footage horror film from the perspective of America’s top genre filmmakers. In V/H/S, a group of misfits are hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house in the countryside and acquire a rare tape. Upon searching the house, the guys are confronted with a dead body, a hub of old televisions and an endless supply of cryptic footage, each video stranger and more inexplicable than the last…

Directed by Adam Wingard, Ti West, David Bruckner, Joe Swanberg, Glen McQuaid and Radio Silence, the film star Calvin Reader, Lane Hughes, Adam Wingard, Hannah Fierman, Mike Donlan, Joe Sykes, Drew Sawyer, Jas Sams, Joe Swanberg, Sophia Takai, Kate Lyn Sheil, Drew Moerlein, Jason Yachanin, Helen Rogers, Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillet and Paul Natonek.

V/H/S doesn’t have a New Zealand release date yet, but expect one to be scheduled soon.