a review of 致命录像带3：病毒

Of necessity, I watched this one on my phone at my local laundromat, in the hopes that the ephemeral qualities of the medium and setting would bring something out of the film. Sadly, this did not happen because it doesn't even stick to its own ground rules for much of its running time: Ostensibly another "found-footage" anthology like its predecessors, a couple of the segments cheat the premise by including cutaways and video sources that don't have a reason to exist in the world of the movie, and even spoil the logic of their own storylines. The stories themselves are pretty underwhelming this time out, with the sole exception being the middle segment (by "Colossal" director Nacho Vigalondo) which plays out like a wickedly strange Twilight Zone episode from a parallel dimension. By comparison, the other two main segments either play it too safe (a stage magician gets a taste of the real thing, and get this, it goes to his head!) or are so inexplicably single-minded in their execution (skater bros fighting Mexican zombies FPS-style, for what seems like HOURS) as to be borderline unwatchable. The frame story for this one (by "Deadgirl" director Marcel Sarmiento) starts out sort of interesting and progressively whittles away that early goodwill 10 minutes at a time between segments, until you get to the pointlessly nihilistic conclusion and wonder why they even went to the effort.