Quartile rating: 5/10 · 1 rating
As the streets of Los Angeles overflow with camera-wielding gawkers seeking to capture images of a bizarre police pursuit, the same people who sought to exploit the suffering of others for amusement on the Internet become the stars of a gruesome viral video from which no one gets out alive.
V/H/S: Viral is widely considered the weakest entry in the anthology franchise. The wraparound segment is muddled and unsatisfying, and the individual stories — while occasionally creative in concept (the magician segment shows some imagination) — are mostly poorly executed and narratively incoherent. Acting across the segments is amateur-level, which is partly intentional for the found-footage format but rarely feels authentic. Cinematography follows the shaky-cam found footage template without adding much of its own visual identity. The film offers little novelty beyond its predecessors in the series, recycling the format without fresh ideas. The ending of the wraparound is particularly weak and unresolved, earning a low mark.