VHYes (2019)

VHYes review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

There’s something wonderfully experimental in tone to VHYes. It utilizes the chaotic nature of videotaping, television, and media satire in a manner both absurdly hilarious and strangely frightening. There's an almost indescribable sensation evoked from this film that reminded me of those nights spent up all night watching TV. You surfed through channels hoping to catch something unique. You taped broadcasts and sometimes found something you didn’t intend to tape at all. It’s a nostalgic twinge that really unearthed a sense of tingling terror on the back of my spine. But if that emotion doesn’t come over you, the film is very funny as well.

The premise is framed around found footage in 1987. 12-year-old Ralph is using his parent’s wedding tape to capture footage around his neighborhood and record shows off the television. The staging tells a story of its own, highlighting how Ralph’s parents are getting divorced, ever so often cutting back to their wedding based on Ralph’s filming. His scenes of childhood being lost are both cathartic and tragic.

In between all of these are scenes Ralph has recorded from television and these scenes are darkly amusing. Thomas Lennon (Reno 911) plays an infomercial host who constantly clashes with his co-host about their relationship, growing more passive-aggressive with each product showcased. Kerri Kenney-Silver (also from Reno 911) hosts a Bob Ross-style show where she paints landscapes that just happen to feature spaceships and her sexual fantasies about basketball players. She also hosts a nighttime program where she watches you sleep. Mark Proksch (What We Do In The Shadows) hosts a show akin to Antique Roadshow where he observes old items and values their worth. Sometimes he mistakes something as simple as a bowl for an old-fashioned medical device for heart surgery. Sometimes he just gets frustrated when somebody brings in a standard metal chair.

There’s a lot of winking humor present in the late-night edited-for-television porno that appears. One porno centers around the topic of climate change and try to make a point about “hot winters.” The host of these programs seems to try to stress this point as well and it’s ridiculously comical watching the bad acting in between semi-serious observations on the world. This continues in another porno where Swedish aliens come to Earth to discuss immigration in between sex.

There’s also a spooky story at play as a true-story show depicts a sorority burned down when a magic show was misinterpreted for witchcraft. Ralph and his best friend decide to check this place out for ghosts and manage to find a freaky television that traps them in a world of all the weird television consumed. This aspect is somewhat telegraphed in an earlier sequence when some writer is interviewed who suggests that VCRs can distort our reality. One would assume she’s speaking more metaphorically but a film as wild as this is bound to take that literally.

VHYes is certainly not going to be everybody’s cup of magnetic tape in how it tries to present itself as a scattershot anthology of skits amid a 1980s ghost story. In its own weird way, it’s a breezy bit of nostalgia with a lot of genuinely funny and scary moments. Where films like V/H/S stumble around to find horror in the format, this picture manages to find such thrills as well as laughs with a fantastic ensemble cast to boot.