Film review: V/H/S , a 'found footage' horror

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V/H/S

The "found footage" horror movie is living on borrowed time, though V/H/S is refusing to let it die. A portmanteau of six short films by different directors, its linking story concerns a bunch of petty thieves who break into a derelict house to retrieve a videotape for a client.

What they find isn't edifying: the house's owner dead in a chair surrounded by TV screens and a cache of old cassettes. One of the house-breakers plays the tapes and, well, there's the movie.

David Bruckner's story of an amateur porn film gone horribly wrong has some bite, possibly helped by its placing high up the order.

Ti West offers a sinister squib of a couple on a road trip and the evergreen creepiness of motel rooms. But being strung together only highlights the sameyness of the material, the shakycam, the heavy breathing, the sudden flurries of terror.

There's nothing here you haven't seen done better in Vacancy, Paranormal Activity or even Sinister.