I’m a little flabbergasted here with the negative critical response to “V/H/S: Viral” (2014).  I thought this was a fantastic little horror anthology flick that redeemed the “V/H/S” franchise from a pretty poor second installment.  (And apparently fans liked that one?)

I’d give this a 9 out of 10.  It certainly isn’t for everybody, with its violence, gore and disturbing content.  (I’m going to repeat that: as with past “V/H/S” films, this has some disturbing content, so beware.)  But it should be a damned scary treat for hardcore horror fans.

This time out, we’ve got three short films linked together by the running “wraparound” film.  (A fourth segment was edited out.)

The first is like a damn good episode of “The X Files.”  The fight with the cops was fantastic, and the special effects were surprisingly good for a “V/H/S” movie.

The second film is a wonderfully creative horror/science fiction tale that plays out like a terrific classic short story.  (Yes, it begins a bit slow, but I think that’s an intentional part of the narrative.)  This segment gets extra points for its unabashed use of some not-so-subtle Freudian body horror.

The third film isn’t perfect, with a thin story and some schlock horror cheesiness.  But it’s still really entertaining, thanks to the teen skateboarder anti-heroes (and their “photographer guy” tagalong) that were scripted perfectly and then performed perfectly by their young actors.  I am still laughing at how one character threatens to “pistol whip” another for interrupting him.  These kids were great.  They’re perfect malcontents at first — then, thanks to a nice flourish in the script involving a homeless person — they’re shown to have more depth than that.  Gimme a full-length feature film starring these brats.  I’m serious.

Finally, the wraparound tale’s finale was brutal and perfect.  And what a great use of classical music!

A few things left me scratching my head:

1)  We learn little about the story’s antagonist in the wraparound tale — exactly who or what is responsible for the speeding ice-cream truck?  I wanted to know more, despite the story’s deliberate ambiguity.

2)  Why does the main character’s girlfriend in the wraparound story enter the truck?

3)  How do people on bicycles manage to keep pace with the speeding truck?  One of them is a bicycle made for a young girl.  They … even outpace the pursuing police cars?

Forget the haters, check this out.

Oh!!  One more thing — if you view this via Netflix, as I did, you’ll find that the entire second segment is in Spanish.  You can fix this just by wiggling Netflix’ captions function at the bottom right.