V/H/S 2 Gets Big Bump In Talent, Still No Women
I don't think V/H/S is misogynistic. I know some of the producers behind the movie - Brad Miska and Roxanne Benjamin - and they're not bad people. They're quite great people, in fact. And I don't think the individual shorts in the film are misogynistic. It's just that when taken together, as a whole, there's a whole lot of anti-woman sentiment going on. Hulk touched on this earlier in the year.
V/H/S has been a big hit for Magnolia - seeing it at Sundance I knew it was going to be a huge audience picture. It plays! - and now there's a sequel. Brad and Roxanne and the other producers have lined up a stellar talent list this time, a huge step up from some of the mediocre people from the first one. Jason Eisner, director of Hobo With A Shotgun and master of the fucked up short, is in. Gareth Evans, director of The Raid, is part of the team. Eduardo Sanchez, whose The Blair Witch Project is the granddaddy of the current found footage craze, is doing a short. Adam Wingard is back and Simon Barrett is making his directorial debut (I think Barrett's going to end up the surprise MVP this time around). Timo Tjajahnto, of Macabre, is contributing. It's a great line up.
But it's also without a single female director. I'm not advocating quotas here, but I don't think the horror landscape is all men (although it is male dominated). The Soska Twins, currently riding high from American Mary, seem like a great choice, for instance. Or perhaps a new talent could be found - relative newbies Radio Silence directed what might have been the most imaginative and interesting segment in the original V/H/S. In fact I'd argue that it would be smart for the producers, who will surely make at least another V/H/S, if not two or three more, to keep an official Radio Silence spot in the line-up, a place for interesting up and comers.
I think with these directors V/H/S 2 will blow away the first film, which I thought was a mixed bag. I'd just love to see the film correct some of the misogynistic feel from the original, and having women behind the camera could be a good place to start.
