V/H/S is a weird and strangely fascinating film that takes the found footage genre and raises it up a notch, as it's basically a found footage movie built upon a number of different found footage videos, with everything tied together with a twisted little bow. For the first 15 to 20 minutes, you're a little unsure about what you're watching; by the end of the first little sub-story, though, you know you're in for an uncommonly wild ride through a gauntlet of dark and gory horror thrills.

Those who give up on V/H/S too early don't know what they're missing.

The main storyline has us tagging along with a bunch of twenty-something hooligans who go around filming all of their acts of vandalism, robbery, assault and other nefarious deeds. Then one of them says he has a job that promises a most satisfactory payoff. All they have to do is break into some old man's house and steal a certain video tape -- they have no idea what is on the tape, but the third party that wants it says they'll know it when they see it. So off they go, video camera in hand, to burgle the old guy's house.

The job seemingly gets a lot easier when they find the old man dead in his chair, facing a wall of TV monitors and video players. That gives them the chance to go through the video tapes they do find to try and find "the tape." As it turns out, though, that's where they make their big mistake.

That's when things start to get good. Each tape features a group of strangers filming their own little adventures. The first one, for example, features three guys who go out on the town to pick up chicks -- with one of the guys wearing spy glasses to capture all the fun on video. They manage to get a couple of girls to go home with them, but things don't go as planned from that point on. One of the girls is really weird -- both in terms of her looks and her behavior -- and she is definitely not the type you want to bring home, even for a one-night stand. Then you have a travelogue of a couple's vacation out west, with some creepy moments leading up to an unexpected ending; a group of college kids' trip to an isolated lake (and you know nothing good ever comes from that scenario); a string of video chat recordings between a cute girl and her out-of town boyfriend, centering on a "haunting" in the girl's apartment; and, finally, a group of buddies' video of the Halloween party from hell (a word to the wise: when you go to a Halloween party, make sure you've got the right house before you go in).

Of course, in between and after each video, our gang of hooligans are unknowingly filming their own horror story for us, as well.

V/H/S really offers a great new spin on the found footage genre. The middle stories aren't as strong as the first and last ones, but there are some really good special effects throughout. Everything is filmed on VHS tape, of course, some of them copied on top of other recordings, so we aren't talking about digital special effects here. That being said, some of the effects are really just superb given the VHS format. Blood, gore and ghostly manifestations all look cheaply real rather than really cheap.

You're a little hard pressed to find any characters you like in any of these stories, but that doesn't really matter in this particular context. The first and last videos are particularly spellbinding, while all of them have their creepy moments. I think most horror fans, even those who dislike found footage films, will get a real kick out of V/H/S.