To me, this movie is perfection.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

If you have seen the first two, then the third will probably be a let-down. V/H/S Viral follows the same anthology premise as the first two but the stories don't flow as easily. "Vicious Circles" was the most confusing for me. "Dante the Great" was one of the best. "Bonestorm" visually great but not the best story. "Parallel Monsters" had potential but went a bit overboard wtf.It seems in the third they tried to push the creativity and it didn't work, not for me anyway. The cast is a solid as the previous installments but the stories aren't as easy to grasp and at the end you're kinda wondering what the hell went on. I thoroughly enjoyed V/H/S/ 1 and 2 and was excited for the third, but it lost something this time around. Unfortunately it wasn't good enough for me to want to buy the DVD for the surprise "Gorgeous Vortex" segment.

This installment really strayed from the original two that came before it. It isn't really an anthology of found footage, rather a collection of short POV films. It lacks the originality of the first film, and lacks the quality of shorts of the second film.The wraparound story just wasn't very intriguing enough to care about. I can kind of understand what they were going for but was so poorly executed such that the spliced up scenes made little sense."Parallel Monsters", the second short is probably the only one worth watching, it has a creepy-comedic vibe to it, but it feels more like a dark-comedy than a horror.TL;DRThe film is watchable, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. A real downgrade from the previous two films that came before it.

V/H/S: Viral is a departure from the previous entries. We don't get the usual goofs looking through old VHS tapes. However the story that frames the movie ("Vicious Circles") doesn't make much sense. It involves a young couple. The guy decides to film everything, mainly his pretty girlfriend. When one of those LA car chases takes place in his neighborhood he sees his chance to film it and upload it so it'll go viral. Off he goes on his bike with cameras attached to his helmet. The chase follows a creepy old ice cream van that runs over people. For some reason the guy's cell phone mysteriously shows videos of his girl. Suddenly she appears on the street and vanishes as the van drives by.Then we move to the first independent segment--"Dante the Great." One day Dante discovers a cape which has powers. It's like it is a portal to a different dimension. So he starts doing magic with it and becomes famous. But the cops are on his tail because his assistants keep disappearing. It turns out the cape demands blood. But his new assistant has plans of her own.We go back to "Vicious Circles" for some more bike riding after the van/girl. Someone in the back of the van grabs another biker who gets dragged to pieces."Parallel Monsters" is about a Spanish guy who invents some large machine. When he turns it on and opens the door, it looks like on the other side is his mirror image. Another guy who looks just like him, holding a camera, and amazed at the machine. But it's not a mirror image. It's a parallel but inverted universe. They decide to go through the portal for every guy to explore the other guy's life. Their homes are identical except for a photo on a wall. One guy has a picture of him and his wife, the other a picture of a pentagram and candles. The first guy meets the other guy's hot wife. Apparently they were about to do something. In the middle of the living room is some bloody bag and two guys in underwear show up. When they ask the guy to go ahead and be the first, he hesitates so the other guys leave. The wife insists puzzled, so he leaves and runs into the two guys outside who go after him and suddenly their heads turn to light and develop creepy voices. When they take off their underwear it isn't pretty. Meanwhile guy #2 goes to the bedroom to see the other guy's wife who's sleeping, he too has something in his pants. Eventually they cross the portals again, but the first guy's wife isn't happy.The next segment "Bonestorm" features a bunch of dumb dope-head skaters who decide to drive to Tijuana. They buy firecrackers and as they walk/skate trough some riverbed run into some strange girl, see a corpse, an altar, a pentagram. The skate all over that stuff. Then one guy falls and bleeds over the pentagram. Now guys in hoods and corpsepaint appear and chant and slowly attack the kids who defend themselves with a gun, their skateboards, and the firecrackers, but the hooded guys buy now have turned into skeletons and still go after them.In the end the kid on the bike catches up with the van that has stopped. He gets inside and there are countless old TV sets. Suddenly his girl appears on screen and asks him to upload his videos. He declines so she starts hurting herself until he agrees.I didn't get to see "Gorgeous Vortex" that is included on DVD. Unfortunately this movie is not coherent enough. "Vicious Circles" doesn't amount to anything. Which is surprising given that Sarmiento has done some great things in the past. "Dante the Great" is a great story. Very entertaining and unique."Parallel Monsters" had a lot of promise but something doesn't satisfy. I don't know why they had to film this in Spain. It's still a good segment though."Bonestorm" is hampered by some real nasty characters that you can't care for. And it's also poorly filmed with cameras attached to the kids' helmets--pointing at their faces for some reason and that makes up most of the footage.I don't know if Gorgeous Vortex would have improved things. As it is, the arrangement of the stories doesn't help. Had they started with Dante and ended with Parallel perhaps I would have a better perception of VHS: Viral. But the ending as it is doesn't leave you with a good impression. At least we get sharp images and only a bit of unnecessary greenvision. I don't see a need for a further entry to the series.

VHS2 is one of the best horror films I've seen in recent memory. It tightened the overlong editing of the first movie and added genuinely creepy moments. I was looking forward to watching VHS: Viral after seeing VHS2, because I thought they'd gotten a solid pattern down. But no.No, instead you get skateboarding teens looking "totally rad" while fighting a group of cultists (seriously.) And then, after fending off the angry mob, the 15-year-old boys skate home.VHS: Viral offers four stories: the magician story, the multi-universe story, the aforementioned skateboarding brats yarn, and a wraparound that ties all these vignettes together. These stories all stink except for "Parallel Monsters," which is good enough to warrant its own film.If you can, watch "Parallel Monsters" without wasting your time with the rest of this sequel.