The anthology is primed to make a big comeback, and V/H/S is at the forefront. With the time honored tradition of the omnibus meeting found footage halfway, the film offers a new perspective on a classic subgenre, with some of horror's brightest newcomers behind it all. After months of post-Sundance anticipation, the film hits VOD tomorrow, August 30 from Magnolia Pictures and Magnet Releasing. FANGORIA spoke to the myriad of filmmakers contributing to V/H/S and below, you can take in our chat with A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE's Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, as we talk their wraparound segment, "Tape 56," filming our whole lives and much of the criticism directed towards V/H/S and its gender roles. 

FANGORIA: V/H/S is a film where its segments were crafted independently of one another, yet all manage to hint at similar themes throughout. One of them is this need to validate our modern existence through filming, did that play into the film during genesis?

ADAM WINGARD: I guess in a lot of ways, subconsciously, that’s the reason why everybody makes movies. I guess, maybe, the found footage thing brings that to more of a literal level, where you’re seeing people actively doing that. I was expecting you to go down the line of “guys who’re afraid of women.” That’s usually the first thing we get.

SIMON BARRETT: But that is a really interesting question. I think in these modern times where people will be out experiencing an event and posting about it, and checking in on Foursquare, and tweeting about it, taking photos for their Tumblr… I do feel like it’s indicative of a desire to get some sort of immortality. Look at the way anyone creates anything. The internet gives us an ability to have evidence of our existence and found footage kind of, it just seemed impossible to address people filming themselves and that kind of compulsive behavior without delving into that a little bit. I don’t know if we have more to say about that than just that exists [laughs]. It is interesting, but I don’t think we have a deeper grasp of that. It does certainly help you to make found footage movies now with everyone recording everything at all times.

WINGARD:  That’s usually the main obstacle with found footage. “Why are these people filming themselves, especially in dangerous or terrifying situations? Why do they keep rolling?” But, like Simon said, it’s gonna get easier to keep legitimizing as time goes on, because people are filming more and more of their regular lives, and equipment—like the video glasses and all that stuff—you don’t even have to be aware that you’re filming, it’s just going on. And so, it just legitimizes the whole genre even more as technology develops.

BARRETT: I am really intrigued by the compulsion to record and post online and stuff, but I do it, I’m not judging it. It’s this kind of fascinating thing.

FANG: It shows up in each of them in different forms. In Glenn McQuaid’s, there’s a sense of “no one will believe me otherwise,” and the Skype one is similar.

BARRETT: And he’s recording it, though he tells her that he’s not at times. That stuff, we definitely wanted to play with; people recording when they say that they’re not, that kind of voyeurism. And just I’m fascinated when I’m having dinner with someone and I look over and they’re checking in on Foursquare. I don’t understand how Foursquare works, but I’m fascinated by it.

FANG: I’m fascinated, as well. I’m fascinated by getting badges on GetGlue,  I don’t understand what that is.

BARRETT: Yea, we have a V/H/S sticker, and people are checking in and getting this V/H/S sticker, which is this weird—it’s not a real sticker, I guess? [Laughs] I truly do not understand it. Roxanne [Benjamin], our producer does that. We were at the CABIN IN THE WOODS premiere and she was checking in on Foursquare and I don’t judge it, I just genuinely am fascinated by—first of all, I don’t like people knowing where I am. And if I do want people to know where I am, that’s what Twitter and Facebook are for. I wonder what the next one is going to be? Probably, we’ll all just have GPS chips in our heads and we’ll be uploading everything we see.

FANG: You mentioned there’s a lot of debate over men being afraid of women in V/H/S, but there’s also this hint of everyone having a predatory nature when they get access to a camera.

WINGARD: I think it enhances that to the audience and that’s what makes people so much more sensitive about it.

BARRETT: Well, in terms of Feminist film theory, yea, these horror films are all shot from the male gaze and it’s inherently predatory. Obviously, we did want to directly address that. Bruckner’s segment, “Amateur Night” addresses it the best in that it’s a guy wearing spyglasses, trying to seduce these vulnerable women, and I think the way that short plays out is actually fairly feminist and subversive, but we’re definitely getting a lot of people that don’t agree with that take on it. I think possibly just because it contains those issues and is from the male perspective, people have a hard time seeing what he’s really trying to say with that. But, that’s their own thing. If someone comes out of the films and has a different feeling than what we intended, that’s ok.

WINGARD: I feel like people wouldn’t be having this reaction dealing with the so-called misogyny in the movie, if it hadn’t been a found footage movie. I think the found footage format itself makes it all the more visceral, and real and relatable. So, I think people who may already be looking for those types of things are going to look into it. I was talking to Simon today about, “What’s the opposite of misogyny?” There are other shorts in this movie that the guys are totally the villain.

BARRETT: I, personally, always thought that David Bruckner’s short was fairly empowering to women, but I just think because it touches on those issues and like Adam said, it’s from the male perspective—

WINGARD: Funny, it’s from the male perspective, but it was filmed by David’s girlfriend, she’s his DP [Victoria Warren].

BARRETT: People also, just frankly, aren’t used to ridiculous horror films like ours addressing these topics and not spelling it out.

WINGARD: At the end of the day, it’s just a fun horror movie. Especially this film, it’s a serious movie to a certain degree, because of the violence, and the characters take that violence seriously, but at the end of the day, it’s just a horror movie. There’s nothing overtly political about this film.

BARRETT: The thing that bothers me, too, is I think that horror fans—and this is particularly troubling—just aren’t used to films that have any kind of subtext or relevance, at all.

FANG: While the genre is made for transgression.

BARRETT: It is, and they’re just not used to films with any kind of theme unless it’s shoved in their face, or spelled out. If our movie took some time to really hammer home that we’re addressing gender relations and voyeurism, male desire vs. female desire, everyone would love it. There’s a lot more films that have come out recently that have done that and been far less subtle, and people have really responded to it. But because we don’t address anything, we just touch on these topics and move on, I think audiences are left to decide for themselves what we were trying to say and a lot of them are coming up with the idea that just because we have these issues at all, the movie is sexist.

It’s interesting, you see movies like THE WOMAN, which some people feel is very feminist, some people feel is very sexist and it’s just like, that movie is much more obvious in what it’s doing than us, and it still divides people and confuses them.

FANG: I think it happens with any possibly feminist work coming from a man. Obviously, the intention of a rape/revenge movie is always debatable, but still it often ends up being questionable.

BARRETT: Well, you make films with sexual violence of any sort and then the filmmakers get up on stage and it’s ten dudes. That’s got to rub some people the wrong way, and justifiably so. It is a total sausage party when we get up for a Q&A. Also, we’re fairly jokey and self deprecatory at our Q&As and I think maybe people don’t realize we do take our work seriously [laughs].

FANG: Simon, you wrote both the wraparound and the Joe Swanberg-directed piece. Adam, having directed the wraparound and connective tissue of the film, do you feel like you maybe didn’t get to play enough. Would you like to do a more standalone short within these parameters?

WINGARD: [Pictured right] I was concerned about doing the wraparound initially, because I knew that ultimately we’re probably going to have the least amount of fun. Everybody else got to freely do a short film basically with just time parameter. I knew ours, we were going to have to take into account cutting around everybody’s shorts, which was ended up being more difficult than I imagined. But, Simon and I are the kind of people that thrive on having a challenge and it never seems like it’s worth it if it’s not a challenge. We were just like, “the wraparound’s going to be the hardest part about this thing. Let’s just do it so at least we know we can do the best job possible and however it turns out, we can retain some kind of control over the project.” Plus, it was the first thing that was shot for the movie, which probably wasn’t the best way to go about it, but it was the only way this project was actually going to happen.

BARRETT: That’s completely true. There wasn’t even going to be a wraparound until we called dibs.

WINGARD: It was a really hectic time for the two of us, because we shot it about a month before we shot YOU’RE NEXT. So, we were in Missouri and we just used a lot of our infrastructure that we had set up there from A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE and YOU’RE NEXT.

BARRETT: Yea, we filmed four days in Missouri and then a day of reshoots in Los Angeles. As soon as they started talking to me about this concept, I was like, “We want dibs on the wraparound.” I just feel like wraparounds are never good and it’s just kind of a thankless task. I think we wanted to do something cool and interesting there. It also is, it was February of 2011 and the project needed to happen or else it was going to fall apart and just be a bunch of shorts that get released on iTunes. We really wanted to make sure the first thing we filmed was something you could build a feature out of.

FANG: Speaking of building a feature, there seems to be a chance to expand on whatever’s going on in the wraparound. Is that something you’re thinking about, where these tapes come from? I know Ti West's initially was connected to the frame.

BARRETT: Speaking in general terms, there’s a deeper mythology to the overall story of the film that we don’t really touch on. We didn’t want anything to feel too expository. Now that the film has been kind of successful and people are responding to it, we are looking at ways to expand and extrapolate on what’s in V/H/S.

FANG: Does that extend to the Skype one you wrote? There’s certainly something more there.

BARRETT: Yea, that’s a really good example of one that we might try to expand on the mythology of. I wrote that for Joe and I deliberately wrote it to be hinting at things that you can kind of put together if you’re paying a lot of attention, but mostly it just doesn’t really make that much sense. I tend to think that’s a good way to scare people. I think scary things feel that way. At the same time, that’s different from just doing a bunch of pretentious nonsense that doesn’t all add up because you’re lazy and you don’t know how to tell a story. There is actually a story logic to that short and if you watch it, you can put together what’s actually happening.

WINGARD: It’s definitely a short you have to watch more than once.

BARRETT: Which nobody will ever, ever do [laughs]. So, we might try to revisit that one in a different project, or a project that’s related to this one. Actually, both the segments that we worked on for V/H/S are ones that just hint at what’s motivating the actions.

For much more on V/H/S, see our talk with I SELL THE DEAD's Glenn McQuaid here, and pick up FANGORIA #317 (on sale Sept) for exclusive words with David Bruckner, Joe Swanberg and Ti West. 

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