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Exploring Outer Wilds’ stunning clockwork solar system in 2019 was truly something special, so getting the chance to return in a DLC expansion feels like Christmas came early – or, in this case, more like Halloween. Echoes of the Eye weaves one more thread worth pulling into the already complex tapestry of Outer Wilds, handily recapturing its charming, woodsy-sci-fi aesthetic and intricate time-loop puzzle solving, but this time with a creepier tone and a few sections that fully shift genres from adventure to horror game. That’s not exactly what I ended up wanting from more Outer Wilds, and its siloed nature does make it a little more linear to explore, but Echoes of the Eye is still a great reason to revisit this ever-exploding star.
Before I dive in, a quick word about spoilers: I’m not going to get into specific plot points or puzzles solutions here, but I will discuss some of the new areas and mechanics. Anyone who has played the base game knows that much of the magic of Outer Wilds can come from the surprise of stumbling upon a thrilling discovery or witnessing one of its timed events from just the right spot. Echoes of the Eye is no exception, and I am going to preserve that surprise as much as possible, but those looking to go in entirely fresh should be warned that some of it will be mentioned by necessity.
Echoes of the Eye cleverly integrates its new mysteries by pretending they’ve been there all along, hiding in the shadows. A new exhibit in the museum on Timber Hearth will point you toward a nearby research station monitoring a photo-taking satellite, and following that simple but exciting lead will eventually land you in a brand-new area with just as much to do as any of the base game’s planets. This setup does mean that Echoes of the Eye won’t have you bouncing around the solar system trying to piece together distant clues, which does make its discoveries a little more straightforward to unravel, but there are still plenty of intertwining secrets to find in this area alone.
The bulk of this side adventure is basically a haunted river-rafting trip (which absolutely rules), with many of its puzzles and new mechanics built around using light. That includes the rafts you’ll be riding between locations, which have orbs you can shine your flashlight on to float in a specific direction, as well as locked doors that open when illuminated. It’s a neat little twist that sets how you navigate this area apart from the others, but it also maintains that same sense of wonder as things change in surprising ways at set times during each loop.
The focus on light ties perfectly into this DLC's spookier vibe.
The focus on light is also a clever choice because it ties perfectly into Echoes of the Eye’s spookier vibe, often forcing you to wander through the dark and occasionally making light a luxury you desperately wish you could afford. Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, this new area is essentially split in two: one half is much closer to the physics-bending, awe-inspiring planet exploration of the original game, while the other occasionally warps Outer Wilds into a proper horror game. I’m talking a “stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to progress while monsters hunt you” kind of horror game – and it sure does play that metaphorical screeching violin well.
Outer Wilds has always had some creepier sections and the looming threat of death, but this tangible mechanical shift (while well implemented) isn’t one I was expecting, and ultimately wasn’t something I was too interested in compared to my previous planet hopping. I will freely admit that I am not generally into horror games overall, and those who are will almost certainly enjoy these sections more than I did, but that’s sort of the problem; these bits are so unlike the rest of Outer Wilds that they almost feel like an entirely different game – one that’s fun but far less unique, and pretty much just had me wishing I was playing more of its usual style instead.
The horror sections are unavoidable, but thankfully not a huge part of the roughly seven hours Echoes of the Eye’s surprisingly hefty expansion took me to complete. (There is also a “Reduced Frights” menu option that makes these sequences a little less intense, which is a small but appreciated inclusion for those who actively dislike horror but love Outer Wilds, although not one that changes enough to truly solve that particular problem.) And genre be damned, the story told throughout this DLC is still an enthralling one. The self-contained structure and more linear layout of its locations does mean the pieces of that story are easier to assemble than the history of the base game’s Nomai, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fun to uncover all the same.
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When Sony releases a television, it's usually an immediate competitor for best in whatever price segment it sits in. The A80J is a high-end OLED display that is the more approachable of Sony’s OLED lineup in terms of price and competes right up next to the LG C1 as one of the best 4K TVs for gaming. And while LG comes in just slightly less expensive, the A80J makes several strong arguments that it should be considered the superior choice side-by-side.
Since the actual quality of the OLED panel is going to be negligibly different, if at all, Sony instead competes on its software and design. But is that worth the extra $200 when you’re already spending more than $2,000?
Sony A80J – Design and Build
Like most modern OLED televisions, the actual display of the Sony is stunningly thin. The bezels are near invisible, and Sony created a stand that sits the A80J just barely above my media console. Sony chose this particular design philosophy to bring as much emphasis on the display itself and make the other parts of the television fade into the background.
When watching the A80J, I can attest that while I like the innovation of some stands on competitor displays – like the dramatic swoop found on the Vizio OLED – forcing my eye to just enjoy what’s on display with no distractions does make sense. Stands can look cool, but that’s not why I buy a television.
The downside of this philosophy is that the feet of the A80J are so close to the platform on which it sits that there is no room to include any kind of cable management. Because the display is so low set, you probably won’t notice the cables unless you are intentionally looking for them, but they are there and they can be seen. If I’m going to ding other display manufacturers for not addressing cable management, I have to hold Sony to that same standard.
Of course, if you plan to wall-mount the television none of this matters and the A80J will just melt into your wall, blending in almost seamlessly.
The A80J is loaded with connectivity options. Digitally, it supports WiFi, Apple Airplay 2, Bluetooth, and Chromecast. Physically it offers a composite video input, a digital audio input, and an ethernet port. It also packs four total HDMI ports, two of which are the latest 2.1 standard and one of those is designated for eARC (which is the port I used to connect my HDMI audio device). There are also two USB ports.
The HDMI 2.1 ports support up to 120Hz in 4K HDR and are compatible with variable refresh rate (VRR), but there is a catch: like all Sony displays right now, VRR is only promised for an undefined “future” firmware update and is not currently enabled. If you’re planning to game with a PlayStation 5, this isn't a big deal since the PS5 doesn’t support VRR yet either. But if you’re using an Xbox, it certainly bears consideration.
Sony A80J – Remote
Moving on to the remote control, let’s address the elephant in the room: it’s huge. It’s obnoxiously large and a lot of it is taken up with buttons you will likely never touch. Unlike Vizio, Samsung, or TCL, Sony continues to create remotes that offer buyers the ability to control just about everything, and as such have a button to do just about anything. The company still includes the number pad, for example, and there is a giant blank space at the bottom that is likely included as a grip which expands the height of the controller even further.
It’s easily twice as large as any other remote I’ve held since the last Sony remote I used. Still, it has a lot of options on it, which some people might appreciate. Me? I wish it was a quarter as big.
Sony A80J – Software and UI
The Sony A80J is powered by Google TV and it works perfectly. For years I detested using Google’s previous operating system – Android TV – on any display, but Sony’s processor plus the updated Google TV is a snappy experience that exhibits no lag and is an overall lovely experience.
Google TV on the A80J works like it does on any other television. There's a wide selection of apps you can install at setup, or later at any time. Every app I could ask for is available and they all work flawlessly.
Sony A80J – Picture Quality
The Sony A80J uses an OLED display, which means that each pixel of the television can be controlled individually and even turned off entirely. That means that blacks can be true black, which makes for stunning picture quality when contrasted against any pixels that are lit.
Rich blacks and beautiful colors are rendered beautifully on this display, and support for various HDR formats including Dolby Vision means streamed content from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Sony’s own Bravia Core looks spectacular. Bravia Core, which has a good but somewhat limited selection of movies, is a movie streaming service from Sony that offers a bitrate of up to 80 Mbps, much higher than any of the other streaming platforms. If your internet can handle that kind of data throughput, picture quality through Bravia Core is outstanding and near Blu-Ray quality.
OLED displays of this size are all theoretically capable of the same quality, but Sony ups the ante with some of the best – if not the best – picture processing available on the market.
When watching lower bitrate content from streaming providers like Disney+, banding and artifact “blocking” can sometimes be visible in scenes. For example, during the desert scenes from the first season of The Mandalorian, the bright sky can appear to have lines on it as there isn’t enough data to create a smooth transition among those graduated colors.
That is, if you’re not watching on a Sony. The A80J software can interpret that lower quality data stream and smooth it out, removing those gradients and making for a smooth, pristine sky.
It makes most streams look better, but it is not a cure-all. Particularly old shows can still suffer from pixels blocking together. For example, when streaming Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was produced in the 1990s, no amount of software was able to smooth out some of those scenes where there just isn’t enough data for a clean picture, even for the A80J.
The one knock on this display is a problem with all OLED displays: brightness. Overall, the television is noticeably less bright than LCD-style televisions like the Hisense U7G or Mini LED televisions like the TCL 6-Series. The A80J is certainly capable of hitting some very bright peaks, but it is rare to see – as the brighter the object on screen, the more likely it is to experience permanent burn-in.
Speaking of which, a lot of the trepidation folks have when faced with buying an OLED comes from that burn-in fear, but most average consumers won’t have to worry about it. I’ve used OLED displays as my daily drivers for years now and never had an issue. Only if you plan to play a video game with a persistent, unchanging HUD or have a news network with a ticker always showing for eight to 10 hours a day every day for months will the problem start to rear itself. Under normal use cases, software in the television keeps a careful eye on the display’s status to assure that none of the pixels get too worked out and burn in.
Sony A80J – Gaming Performance
Thanks to HDMI 2.1 and the extremely fast response time of OLED displays along with auto-low latency mode (ALLM) that kicks in when tuned to Game mode, the Sony A80J is a gaming dream. HDR games look especially fantastic and playing the few games that can operate at 4K HDR at 120 frames per second results in a top-tier display experience for consoles on a modern television.
As far as performance is concerned, I had no issues at all playing a host of games on the PS5: Apex Legends, Destiny 2, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and Risk of Rain 2 all looked and played great. The majority of those games can’t exceed 60 frames per second in 4K but the visual experience sparkles nonetheless. A Plague Tale in particular looks remarkable.
Destiny 2 is a truly fantastic experience. The PvE portions of the game look absolutely fantastic and really let you sit back and enjoy the work the developers put into the atmosphere of the game. In PvP activities, the 120 frames per second kicks in for a buttery smooth competitive experience.
One knock right now is that, as mentioned, the A80J doesn’t currently support VRR and Sony has not provided any indication of when it might come, though it does promise that a future firmware update will bring it to all of its compatible televisions. This is no doubt frustrating, especially for Xbox owners or even PC players who thought about using this television as a monitor.
One last thing to note about OLEDs is that when something is black on screen – like a cave or a hole – it’s black. While this kind of contrast looks exceptional for movies and TV, it’s less great for gaming, especially competitive. While you can adjust the contrast to be less black and choose not to use HDR, it’s still something to consider. Mixed with this TV’s medium-tier brightness, it can be a challenge at times, especially when gaming during the day or in a brightly lit room. It’s possible to completely miss an opponent hiding in a dark corner in Apex Legends because the TV just can’t come out of black and into the gray very easily. For single person adventures, this is less of a big deal.
Sony A80J – Audio Quality
Audio quality of this television is better than many other thin displays on the market, but it’s still not one I would recommend for those who like quality sound. Audio sounds like it is coming directly at you from the screen – because it is: Sony uses a technology that plays sound through the display itself. With certain Sony soundbar systems, the display can even be used as a center channel in a multi-speaker system.
But alone, sound out of the A80J is really lacking on the low end, which makes a lot of audio sound hollow and without depth. So while yes, it’s better than you might find in a lot of other competitive options, I still don’t think it’s something to rely on. Get a sound bar or better yet, a true sound system. A great display like this deserves that kind of quality audio.
Sony A80J – The Competition
Those in the market for the A80J will no doubt be looking at the LG C1 and the Vizio OLED H1. Sony will likely win on pure picture quality against both when displaying low bitrate content because of its superior processing, and the implementation of Google TV is more approachable than LG’s webOS and less buggy than Vizio’s overall experience, even though Smartcast at its core is still pretty great. But folks using these televisions mainly for gaming might not care about these benefits, and I don’t blame them. If you run your entire entertainment system off your PlayStation, for example, the gap in performance between these televisions closes. I can’t speak more highly to Sony’s picture quality than I already have, but it’s going to be up to you to decide if what Sony does better than the competition is worth the slightly premium price the A80J asks of you.
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With no alarms and no surprises, EA Sports has pumped out yet another incremental update to its football simulation series. FIFA 22’s graphical upgrades and new animation technology make the beautiful game feel better, with goals demanding a more deliberate and rewarding playstyle. Tiny tweaks also improve FIFA 22’s Career Mode and Volta Football ahead of a proper revamp. However, aside from those minor but largely positive changes, this is the same game in a new pair of pants – which means its microtransactions are just as eager as ever to get you to turn your pockets inside out.
David Beckham has ordered pancakes on a Parisian balcony. As the server slaps the plate down in front of him, you can see the individual blueberries jostle. The camera then pans down a floor, past rippling flags and flowerbeds to reveal you, the protagonist of FIFA 22, having a cheeky lie-in. Don’t worry; EA Sports hasn’t transformed its beloved football series into a JRPG (that would be far too interesting) but it’s just put together an absurdly lavish opening to try and convince all of us that this is the next generation of virtual football. Some of that Ultimate Team cash has to go somewhere right? Having made the leap to a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X for this year’s game, I quickly noticed the aesthetic facelift.
It’s mostly little things that stick out, like the way a football shirt catches a player’s skin or the forehead sheen of a busy winger. At the same time, there’s still a very evident gulf in consistency between character models; the world’s most popular footballers are rendered in remarkable detail, sporting bouncy hair and expressive features while managers, on the other hand, look like they’ve all had dodgy head transplants onto the same stock body. With action both on and off the pitch looking better than ever, FIFA 22 can often be an intoxicating atmosphere to take in then, but these are all surface-level improvements.
HyperMotion may sound like brain-numbing marketing jargon, but it actually results in tangible improvements on the pitch.
If you’re a perennial FIFA player, you’ll know that graphical bumps are nice-to-haves, but gameplay is king. This is where FIFA 22 has made some meaningful progression. Most of the improvements this year can be attributed to “HyperMotion,” a new motion-capture technology that EA is leveraging to make FIFA 22 feel more fluid on new-gen consoles by adding over 4,000 new animations harvested from real-life matches. This may sound like brain-numbing marketing jargon, but it actually results in tangible improvements on the pitch.
A forward’s legs will buckle from the momentum after they ping a shot in the top corner from outside of the box. Midfielders will react naturally to the blowback from a strong pass, and wingers with high dribbling stats feel more flexible on the break. Players still clatter into each other and fuse into well-paid Cronenberg monsters, making the ball’s trajectory anyone’s guess, but it’s a rare occasion this time around. Collisions seem to have been improved, with opposition AI being dragged up in tandem.
FIFA 22 is a slower game than FIFA 21 as a result, but that doesn’t mean it’s all about defence. There’s not a lack of goals; you just have to earn them with careful passing play and a healthy dose of vision. Patience often seems to trump pace, which is very refreshing. I’ve muttered ‘what a ball’ more than ever this year, most often after spotting one of my wingers in space and switching it with a dreamy late lob across the pitch that leads to a dazzling equaliser.
FIFA 22 is a slower game than FIFA 21 as a result, but that doesn’t mean it’s all about defence.
I’ve always been a big proponent of using both triggers to jockey, intercept a pass, and counter when defending in FIFA, and it feels more important than ever to play deliberately and capitalise on these opportunities in FIFA 22. Players like Jack Grealish and Jadon Sancho are a real challenge to track, with the new explosive sprint mechanic letting them leave you in the dust with a knock-on if you don’t try and read their run. It can get hectic as the opposition closes in on goal, and this is where player switching becomes a bit too frantic as you try to fill all the gaps in your armour and survive an onslaught of Tiki-taka. The new Icon Switch mechanic tries to fix this by letting you click in the right stick and flick to the player you need, but it’s still not as quick as hammering the bumper, so it’s hard to justify and ends up feeling redundant when the timing is tight.
Because of these changes, I rarely end up in goalless draws in FIFA 22, though I have also let in some absolute howlers. Goalkeepers' fingers aren’t as buttery as last year, but even top dogs like Alisson can fumble under pressure and leave you scratching your head. It’s much harder to get past them in basic one-on-ones, but a quick fake shot or a long cross across the box seems to give them an existential crisis. Finesse shots from range also feel particularly deadly, with statistical all-rounders curling them in like it’s nothing.
Goalkeepers' fingers aren’t as buttery as last year, but even top dogs like Alisson can fumble under pressure.
My favourite metagame addition to FIFA 22 is the fleshed-out stats screen you can see during and after each match. At a glance, you can see your dribble success rate and pass accuracy, but dig a little deeper, and you’ll find diagrams showing where and how you lost possession, the angles when your shots were blocked, and what your distribution looks like. It’s invaluable information for developing your skills with certain players and teams, even if your expected goals stat can border on depressing in a match that is slipping away from you.
This is all subject to change with post-launch patches, but right now, FIFA 22 feels like a solid blend of offence and defence with a surprising amount of over-the-top play. It’s a brave new world where sweaty pace demons can’t just run riot, and strong strikers are viable. It’s still early days, but I’ve already developed a complex where my hands will start getting clammy if I see Romelu Lukaku or Erling Haaland appear in Division Rivals.
Volta Football, Career Mode and Ultimate Team
Outside of the bread and butter gameplay, several revisions have been made to FIFA’s major modes this year. There’s nothing revolutionary to note, but careful tweaks here and there have made FIFA 22 enjoyable across the board, with the new-gen console’s loading time boosts and graphical upgrades pulling some serious weight.
This is one of the best licensed soundtracks in recent memory.
I played on the PlayStation 5, and the low hum of the DualSense’s haptics is a nice touch that pulls me deeper into the action with the thud of a good through ball or the crunch of a nasty tackle coming through to my palms. Each mode in FIFA 22 is also complemented by one of the best licensed soundtracks in recent memory, featuring earworms from an eclectic mix of artists, including Brockhampton, Sam Fender, and Kero Kero Bonito.
Career Mode is very similar to FIFA 21’s version but with a few new additions, such as the ability to create a club. In this separate mode, you’ll replace an existing team and make your own crest, kit, and stadium, tweaking the board’s expectations to your liking. It’s a neat idea, but in practice I much prefer taking a real club in an exciting direction rather than developing a squad of randomly generated androids, so I quickly put it down.
Player Career Mode now offers RPG-style objectives in each match that you must complete to build a relationship with your manager. Think of it as a visual novel, except you’re trying to romance Steve Bruce into putting you in the starting XI of Newcastle United. This is a lot of fun if you create your own player as it features a massive skill tree, attributes to upgrade, and perks to unlock that help the whole team. You get to feel like you’re building a footballer’s career within an established club, and it can hurt when you don’t live up to your potential. The character building also helps to offset the dull moments when you’ve got no control over the team’s direction at large.
Think of it as a visual novel, except you’re trying to romance Steve Bruce.
However, the Career Mode upgrade that I appreciated most was a simple quality-of-life tweak that lets you bypass Training Days and simulate them at the highest rank you’ve previously achieved, which cuts out a lot of the menu monotony. It was also great to hear Alex Scott pop up to talk about goals across the grounds during Premier League matches. By FIFA standards, the Career Mode package is solid, but there’s a reason why so many people still prefer Football Manager.
Meanwhile, Volta Football edges closer but doesn’t quite commit to being the new FIFA Street game we’re all hoping for. This time there’s no story mode, but it leans further into absurdity with abilities that give you supernatural powers on the pitch, such as lightning pace and deadly shots. The more focused football lets you appreciate the extra animations and visual enhancements. As always, Volta is a handy training ground for figuring out skill moves without the pressure of a full-size pitch.
Bizarrely, Volta’s most interesting new addition is annoyingly only available at the weekends. Volta Arcade has you competing online in Fuzion Frenzy-style party minigames where you can hone some important skills. Tense games of Foot Tennis help with crossing, while Disco Lava has you dribbling carefully to steal squares from your opponents. It feels more worthwhile than repeating skill games and is the perfect chaser after bottling it on a cold, rainy night in Stoke; it’s just baffling that I can’t play these whenever I want.
The online multiplayer is what I am sticking around for.
Over in Ultimate Team, it’s another year of minor revisions on a formula that clearly works very well for EA, even if it delivers waves of Stockholm Syndrome to many players. Some extra stadium customisation options help make your club feel more like home, and the Division Rivals framework has been made more forgiving with checkpoints and seasonal rewards. In the absence of anything new, I’m holding out for a training mode that lets you play skill games with your Ultimate Team to get used to how they play together ahead of matches.
The online multiplayer is what I am sticking around for, though. It’s as palm-wetting and foot-twitching as ever, with the meta still in flux as FIFA 21 players throw off the complacency that 99-rated, end-of-year cards afford. Gone are the days when you would tremble in fear at your opponent’s team before a match, too, as the PlayStation 5’s SSD and a solid internet connection pretty much erase the loading process, so if you blink you’ll miss the screen that displays them.
I’ve forced a few rage quits with my J1 League team centred around ‘King’ Kazuyoshi Miura (a 59-rated Bronze Striker who is 54 years old), so it’s fair to say you can still have a good bit of fun in Ultimate Team without feeding EA’s golden goose. Still, I don’t recommend getting sucked into the billion-dollar money vortex for the sake of a few good cards, and given my track record over previous years, I’ll likely play it for a few months and then drop it because of the growing temptation to dig into my pockets.
You can still have a good bit of fun in Ultimate Team without feeding EA’s golden goose.
For FIFA 22, EA has fully implemented Preview Packs that let you look inside one loot box every day before you buy, but, even so, the microtransactions are still very much front and centre here. EA is not yet brave enough to tame the rampaging elephant in the room, and FIFA 22 suffers for it.
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V/H/S/94 was reviewed out of Fantastic Fest, and will debut on Shudder on Oct. 6.
The fourth entry in the V/H/S franchise, and the first since 2014, V/H/S/94 is a lukewarm retread of familiar found footage imagery — with one major exception. Shot within the constraints of COVID lockdown, the anthology saga hops back in time to the 1990s, with a framing story and three horror shorts made in the U.S., each of which apes a distinctly home-video look, though they rarely do anything interesting with it. However, the fourth short, made in Indonesia, bucks this trend and takes a wildly innovative approach to the genre. It makes little effort to match the themes and aesthetics of the rest of the film, but it’s also what makes the whole experience worthwhile.
In keeping with previous entries, V/H/S/94 has a wraparound story involving the discovery of various tapes, each of which then plays in full as a standalone film. This framing device, titled Holy Hell, is helmed by Jennifer Reeder (writer-director of Knives and Skin), and it follows a SWAT team making their way through a grisly, labyrinthine crime scene where they find dead and mutilated bodies seated in front of television sets playing mysterious cassettes about cult-like happenings. Holy Hell is interspersed between each anthology short, and while it purports to tell a story of its own, little actually comes of this until the very end, when it attempts to make a self-reflexive statement about the supposedly provocative nature of the rest of the film.
The problem, however, is that V/H/S/94 rarely lives up to its own inflated self-image, starting with the way Holy Hell is presented. While its characters and costumes feel plucked from the mid ’90s, its overarching fabric feels visually inauthentic. Its 16:9 aspect ratio would be forgivable, as would the clash between its videotape static effects and its high-definition footage, were they not used to capture shots that felt so obviously blocked, rehearsed, and carefully composed. Holy Hell isn’t alone in this either. Little in the film’s 100-minute runtime has the raw visual unpredictability of something like The Blair Witch Project. And while it may seem unfair to compare V/H/S/94 to one of the urtexts of modern found footage horror, the first two shorts feel like direct descendants of the 1999 landmark, in that they try and fail to achieve several of the same things.
The first short is Storm Drain by Chloe Okuno, which follows a news report by an on-scene reporter and her cameraman, about a supposed “rat man” who lives in the sewers. Like The Blair Witch Project, it evokes the feeling of an urban legend being chased in real time, and for a good chunk of its 17 minutes, it actually lives up to this comparison, between its slow descent through winding tunnels and its focus on dark and endless spaces. Unfortunately, the tension it manages to skillfully build dissipates before long, once its camera catches glimpses (and then, full-body shots) of a rather silly-looking creature, and it presents a climax that renders its own found footage gimmick somewhat unnecessary.
For better and for worse, Storm Drain pairs nicely with the second short, The Empty Wake by V/H/S veteran (and 2016 Blair Witch sequel writer) Simon Barrett. A more claustrophobic work, it chronicles an overnight wake, whose sole attendant — a young funeral home employee — begins to see and hear unsettling things, which only grow more terrifying once a storm knocks out the power. The family of the deceased wants the wake videotaped from multiple angles, so the short has a built-in excuse for its gimmick, but this ultimately works against it. The Empty Wake is at its strongest when the attendant holds the camera in her hand and uses its light to navigate the winding corners of the funeral home, so its additional angles only serve to break the immersion. Like Storm Drain, frantic whip pans across the darkness help rack up the tension, but also like Storm Drain, that tension is deflated as soon as the unseen becomes seen, and the mysterious becomes known.
However, the third film — Timo Tjahjanto’s The Subject, about a mad scientist and his technological experiments — plays with perspective and informational reveals in delirious fashion. It feels, at once, like the cheapest production in V/H/S/94, and yet the most carefully crafted; its plentiful CGI effects are cartoonish, but its eerie production design is wonderfully detailed. Like the other shorts, it also unfolds in 1994, and while its footage is unapologetically in HD, this has a wildly original justification, one that blurs the lines between the human eye and the camera’s perspective in head-spinning fashion.
The third film plays with perspective and informational reveals in delirious fashion.
Not only does The Subject take a hilariously twisted approach to found footage, it also finds several excuses — good ones, at that! — to transform from a seedy body-horror film into an all-out action splatter-fest that resembles a first-person shooter video game. At nearly half an hour in length, it’s easily the longest segment in V/H/S/94, and the film is better for it, because Tjahjanto peppers his lunatic visual approach with a number of surprising ethical dilemmas as well. It’s a work of transhumanistic madness that’s as thoughtful as it is maniacally exciting.
Sadly, V/H/S/94 peaks with this explosive penultimate entry (though to be fair, Tjahjanto is generally a tough act to follow). Its final short, Terror by Ryan Prows, at least has the distinction of actually looking like it was filmed (or rather, taped) in 1994. It begins in intriguing fashion, by presenting a white supremacist Christian death-cult executing a man at point blank range, before it plays the execution once again, from what appears to be a different angle. However, before long, the recursive nature of this video soon reveals something more strange, sinister, and tongue-in-cheek, as the cult members wax poetic about cleansing America of impurities while preparing to unleash a supernatural weapon.
Aesthetically, Terror is easily the most on-the-fly entry in V/H/S/94, with intentionally haphazard and almost timid camerawork that rarely feels ready, but always captures something interesting (even if the sound design is a bit too polished to maintain this illusion). However, it unfortunately ends up in the company of Storm Drain, The Empty Wake, and even the film’s framing device by building to an uninspired reveal, and a climax that only ever feels like it uses the found footage element well when it’s copying something The Blair Witch Project did more effectively over 20 years ago.
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