Is V/H/S/99 Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 6 out of 10. It's five short horror stories on found tape, and the gore is the main hazard.
Ruling: It's five stories on one tape, so you can skip the ones that sound worst.
V/H/S/99 runs 109 minutes and is made of five unrelated short films, all supposedly recorded on tape. A boy named Brady fills the gaps with stop-motion toy soldiers.
The premise, briefly
Five short horror tapes from the end of the VHS era cover a haunted music venue, a sorority hazing, a children's game show, a webcam spying scheme and a witches' ritual.
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
No story ends well for the people filming. The band is dismembered, the sorority is buried, Donna's family has their faces melted, the boys are turned to stone, and Nate and Troy both die. In the credits, the witches call Mabel's name.
The third story, Ozzy's Dungeon. At the start, a contestant named Donna breaks her leg badly on the game show and nobody stops the game. Later a host is tortured, and at the end a beam from Ozzy's eye melts the faces of the host and Donna's family.
No dog dies in V/H/S/99.
It's five short stories that end badly and show a lot of gore, which makes it easy to skip the ones you'd rather not see.
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Gelatin-filled dolls make a poor tribute
The film is five unrelated short stories with no frame story, and stop-motion toy soldiers filmed by a boy named Brady fill the gaps between them. In Shredding, the punk band R.A.C.K. (Rachel, Ankur, Chris and Kaleb) break into the Colony Underground, a music venue that burned down three years earlier in an electrical fire. Four members of another band, Bitch Cat, died there in the stampede. Ankur says he fears the bhoota, spirits that supposedly possess anyone who disturbs their resting place, and the others pretend to be possessed to scare him. He storms off and says he hopes the bhoota kills them. The other three stomp on gelatin-filled inflatable dolls to re-enact the stampede. Kaleb is then pulled into the dark and his remains fall from above. The zombified Bitch Cat take the camera and film themselves dismembering Ankur, Rachel and Chris. The tape glitches, and the band's remains, stitched back together and possessed by Bitch Cat, perform their old song on stage.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
A box of reassurance that is full of spiders
In Suicide Bid, college freshman Lily wants into Beta Sigma Eta, which is the top sorority on campus, and makes a suicide bid, which means it is her only choice. The sisters take her to a graveyard and dare her to spend the night buried in a coffin. Their leader, Annie, says the dare recreates the legend of Giltine, a freshman who did the same thing twenty years earlier, was left alone for a week, and people said she had crawled into the underworld. Lily goes in with a camera and a box meant to reassure her, and the box is full of spiders. She begs to be let out and the sisters laugh. A rainstorm starts, a police car arrives, the sisters run, and the officers leave without hearing her cries. The coffin partly floods, and Giltine's ghoulish spirit breaks through the lid and attacks Lily. In the morning the coffin is empty. That night, the sisters wake up buried in coffins. Lily, now a ghoul, appears with Giltine and says she has offered the sisters as replacements to save her own soul.
A game show host who does not stop the game
Ozzy's Dungeon is a children's game show where contestants complete physical challenges for a chance to meet Ozzy, who grants the winner a wish. Donna wants to help her family leave their run-down neighborhood. During the obstacle course she breaks her leg badly, and the host keeps the game going instead of getting her help, so she loses. After the show is cancelled, the former host wakes up in the basement of Donna's mother, Debra, stripped to his underwear and locked in a dog cage. Debra, who groomed Donna to win at all costs, her husband Marcus, their son Brandon and Donna, whose leg is now gangrenous, film the host as he is forced through harsher versions of the challenges, under threat of acid. This is the story people dread most, and it is the third of the five. When the host fails, he offers to take the family to Ozzy. In the empty studio they find Ozzy on an altar, worshipped by people in contestant costumes. Ozzy's body splits open, and he melts the faces of the host and Donna's family with a beam from his eye, while the camera stays on Donna's smile.
A neighbor with a yard full of stone busts
Brady makes the toy-soldier animations with his older brother Dylan's camera. Dylan takes it back to film himself and his friends Kurt, Mark and Boner practicing pick-up lines, pulling pranks and doing tricks at the skatepark, and they leave Brady out. Sandra moves in across the street, and the group becomes fixated on her. Brady befriends her and she invites him into her house to help set up a webcam, which makes Dylan jealous and shocked. The group talks Brady into installing spyware so they can watch her through the webcam, and he reluctantly does it. They watch Sandra undress, and she tears off her scalp to reveal hair made of snakes. She is a gorgon, and she sees what they are doing. She jumps from her window to their house, kills Kurt, Mark and Boner, and turns Brady and then Dylan into stone while Brady's apology does nothing. She approaches the camera, stuck in Dylan's stone hand.
Two videographers take a gig that ends in Hell
On New Year's Eve, a coven of witches hires the best friends and videographers Nate and Troy to film a ritual in which a woman named Kirsten volunteers as a vessel for a demon called Ukabon. Nate suspects a prank. The witches say Ukabon won't actually be summoned until midnight on the new millennium. When the ritual begins, an uninvited demon named Furcas shows up, the witches fail to cast it out, and it drags Nate and Troy under the altar and sends them to Hell. They meet demons, traps and mutilated bodies, and Mabel, a damned soul who speaks in old-fashioned language. Mabel offers to lead them to Ukabon, whom she hates, if they write her name in the witches' spell book, because he is their only way back. They find Ukabon in a cave surrounded by masked demon cultists, and they kill the cultists. Ukabon fatally stabs Mabel, who reminds them to write her name before she dies.
The ending, explained
Nate and Troy jump into Ukabon's stomach and make it back to Earth just as the ritual begins, but Nate has taken over Kirsten's body. The angry witches kill Nate and Kirsten, then cut Troy badly with a scythe. He writes Mabel's name in the book in his own blood and dies. The tape goes back to the previous story, showing the stone bodies of Dylan and Brady until the camera's battery runs out. Across the five stories, nobody films their way out: R.A.C.K. is dismembered, Lily is a ghoul, Donna's family has had their faces melted, Brady and Dylan are stone, and Nate and Troy are dead.
The post-credits ruling
Something plays during the credits. The witches are heard running their ritual a second time, and this time they call Mabel's name, which hints that she will return to Earth.
Questions people ask at 1am
The whole plot of V/H/S/99 is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You can skip all five stories of V/H/S/99 and still know exactly how each tape ends. Install Scaredy Cat and it blurs horror before you see it.
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