30 NIGHTS OF NIGHT, Night 1: V/H/S/2

V/H/S/2, the followup to last year's uneven but occasionally brilliant horror anthology, is in some ways a more satisfying collection of short films than its predecessor.  It's shorter, leaner, and less self-indulgent than the previous film, and the directors are always having fun with the film's gimmick.  The premise--a collection of five found-footage films from different directors--was strained in the original, but here is kept fresh in each entry.

Each of the four films finds an interesting way to tell its first-person story. Adam Wingard’s (You're Next) is shown through a bionic eye that records a little more than it should. Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez, the producer and co-director of The Blair Witch Project, use a GoPro helmet camera in a way that I’d never seen before. Jason Eisener’s (Hobo with a Shotgun) segment, a very funny Goonies-like account of a sleepover gone wrong, is told partially from the point of view of the family dog.

The best segment belongs to Timo Tjahjanto (who made the notorious "L is for Libido" segment of The ABCs of Death) and Gareth Huw Evans (The Raid: Redemption), about an Indonesian religious cult that agrees to let a camera crew into its compound for the first time. This is the most suspenseful and the looniest of the series, and the off-the-wall performance from Epy Kusnandar as the pompous cult leader is a standout.

The only weak link in the film is the wraparound story by Simon Barrett, which strains to be spooky but doesn’t leave much of an impression. Still, the opening scene, in which a peeping tom gets a surprise, is clever, and the gory punchline is good for a laugh.

*** out of ****

NOTE: It might be silly, but I really enjoy the song that plays over the end credits.