Critic Reviews

When you get old and crotchety, you say things like, “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.” For the most part, “they” don’t. Then you see VFW and realize it’s not a nostalgia thing. It’s genuinely not done this way anymore. Thank you Joe Begos for reminding us how it should be.

VFW delivers the goods—tough-guy dialogue, memorable characters, and so much splatter— and audiences will be giddy as adolescents as the gore literally explodes on screen.

An unrelenting throwback to a gleefully caustic view of America's capacity for untrammeled nastiness.

Soaked in neon and coated with a thick layer of 16mm film grain, it’s a visceral throwback to the gritty action fare that lined video store shelves in the early ’80s as grindhouses gave way to the VHS boom—coincidentally, also the era that made VFW’s core cast famous.

McArdle and Brallier have thus rendered VFW an efficient us versus them scenario with Fred’s crew possessing an infectious, three-dimensional rapport opposite Boz and cronies leaning into their one-track yearning for a fix. Begos then brings the grainy and gritty aesthetic its predecessors possessed to really deliver a throwback vibe augmented solely by new advancements in violently realistic gore.

If you’re into “Splatterhouse Cinema” that respects its elders and tenderizes human bodies without remorse, Joe Begos has a pile of discarded corpses waiting for you. It’s vile, slick with repugnance, and appropriately inhumane. A canon full of guts blasted straight into your face – the Fangoria way.

Essentially a geezers-fight-back siege movie (Tom Williamson plays the sole young veteran), VFW is riotously scuzzy and warmly partial to its rusty heroes.

VFW ultimately lacks the cinematic flair to be truly memorable. But the pic succeeds on its own terms of being a nostalgic throwback to the days when such B-movies routinely opened on double and triple bills in urban grindhouses.

Unlike Bliss, which has a cogent intention pushing it forward, VFW plays slapdash, which admittedly fits the film’s grimy aesthetic, a delirious theme park ride. Maybe that’s all a horror movie needs to be to be worth watching, but Begos can do more than douse a set with viscera, even if VFW doesn’t need “more” to justify itself.

They made a promise, with their cool trailer, that their dull, bloody movie couldn’t keep.