V/H/S/MIXTAPE (2026)

New streaming on Shudder from Image Nation Studios, Cinepocalypse, and Spooky Pictures!
Directed by Renee Zahn, Flying Lotus, David Moreau, Ernest Dickerson, Tobias Forge, RZA.
Written by Renee Zahn, Zoe Cooper, Flying Lotus, David Moreau, Ernest Dickerson, Tobias Forge, RZA, Matt Landsman.
Check out the trailer here!

V/H/S/MIXTAPE is less of a collection of found footage shorts and more of a sloppy hodge-podge of short films in different formats. That’s all well and good, but to have this series drop the found footage format nine movies in doesn’t show an opening of standards, but a loss of them, if you ask me. I’ll talk about that later. But first let’s look at each segment of V/H/S/MIXTAPE.

The film starts out with some GWAR nonsense. I’m not saying I’m not a fan of the disorganized mayhem that is GWAR but I just never found them to be particularly scary. Just goofy music geeks in costumes, so to see them featured as the wraparound segments for this installment was not an encouraging sign. GWAR goes for in-your-face grossout moments on a big stage. But zoomed in on as they are in this film, their cartoonish and crude acts just aren’t as effective. I’ve been in the audience of a GWAR concert. I’ve been sprayed with all kinds of fake blood and body fluids at their performances. Sure it’s novel, but they end up going bad slapstick and crass humor the whole time such as one of them jazzing on a child’s drawing in order to bring the picture to life. Yep, that’s the level of funny these V/H/S films have sunk to. This is just a bloody Sid and Marty Kroft routine and it’s bad. Really bad. Sorry, GWAR fans, but this isn’t the format to enjoy this band and this is someone who watched and enjoyed them at this year’s Chicago Riot Fest.

The first segment is appropriate, given that BUDDY recently made quite the splash on the big screen. Entitled “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance” the segment focuses on production team deciding to reimagine an old TV puppet show. The kid from the old show is now a big fan of the series as it was, and now, somehow happens to be working in the studio that makes the puppets. This doesn’t really make sense as, if this guy was a kid when the original show was on, there’s no way he could have been in on making the puppets, so why is he there in the first place? Anyway, the puppets are being 3D scanned because they are going to be CGI in this new incarnation, but something goes terribly wrong and the puppets begin attacking the humans in the group leaving them all in gory lumps. The segment features Barbara Crampton who is given nothing challenging to do in the script but scream. Also wasted is the fact that the Jim Henson puppet workshop made the puppets here, but none of them really stand out as something worth remembering. Shrewd eyes might see some creature effects from some previous V/H/S installments, which was the only fun thing about this unoriginal segment which takes the CHANNEL ZERO Candle Cove and BUDDY concept and just goes for cheap shocks and gore. This uninspired installment was overseen by Renee Zhan, who has only done a few short films and work in the art department so far.

They invited Flying Lotus back for another installment. I found his last segment from V/H/S/99 to be not to my liking. Didn’t like ASH either as it simply borrowed sci fi elements from better sci fi films. And this one isn’t very good either as he doesn’t even do a found footage sequence for this found footage film. It’s a stop motion animation sequence done in the style of the old PJ’s show, if you remember that one. It’s about a boy and his mother being attacked by a monster in the woods with a giant tongue called “Another Cabin.” As this isn’t’ a found footage short, I have no idea why this is in the movie other than the fact that it pads out the movie’s runtime. I guess Flying Lotus did the music for this one, so if you’re a fan of his work, there’s that, but the whole segment feels unnecessary and there’s barely a story to be told.

Next up is the first segment with a little promise, “Heartbeat” by the one and only David Moreau. This guy is the talented filmmaker behind ILS, MADS, THE EYE, and last year’s excellent OTHER. Moreau is known for making films that push the boundaries of filmmaking, so I was looking forward to what he could provide with found footage. He did do the shot-in-one-take MADS infection movie, you know, so there’s a lot of creative and technical talent here. In “Heartbeat” a pair of urban explorers/influencers film themselves breaking into a secret bunker that has been abandoned by Russian military. The couple end up getting stuck in a noise silencing room and find that the sounds of their own bodies begin to drive them mad. This is a very dark segment. Simple in execution, but technically sound. The stars film themselves from selfie sticks and cameras mounted to their bodies, so it makes for a jarring experience following the camera movements. Toss in some extreme closeups and some tactile gore and this sequence ranks as one of the best of the bunch, even though it is rather light on story.

Out of all the segments in this film, “The Music of Mr. Sze” is by far the most realized as a found footage short with an original and fun concept. Ernest Dickerson who directed BONES, TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT, and of course, JUICE follows a day in the life of a film student Philip Howard (Jihad Brent). As the name of the protagonist suggests, this is an ode to H.P. Lovecraft in every imaginative way possible. Phillip hears wonderful music in the apartment above him, occupied by the enigmatic Mr. Sze and when Phillip investigates with his video camera, he finds out Sze’s music is a key to another dimension populated by tentacled elder gods bent on world destruction. The effects are a gory great time here and work pretty seamlessly with the real world, found footage format. Dickerson sticks to the found footage rules, yet still makes a memorable, yet all too short, segment.

But the format is shattered again after that as the fictional band Ripitome of Darkness plays the death metal song “Premature Burial” which depicts a woman harassed at her office taking revenge on her attacking co-worker. This music video is directed by the lead singer of the band Ghost, Tobias Forge. Again, this was a music video and not found footage. I guess the real band who did the music was called Repugnant. The song is not horrible, if you like death metal and the visuals are decent. It just isn’t found footage and has no business being in this film.

Neela Jolene stars as Lydia in the final segment entitled “Death Tone” by RZA. This one’s about the daughter of a famous music producer who finds a tape addressed to her after he dies, instructing her to find her new sound to honor him with. Turns out, that involves taking lots of drugs, murdering people while recording the sounds they make, and splicing it all together to come up with a brand-new type of sound. I get what RZA was going for here. Sort of a scavenger hunt style story where Lydia follows her father’s advice in steps to come up with new sounds by murdering people in creative ways. Still, the premise wears thin by the end and as far as the found footage format goes RZA breaks all the rules by adding in flashbacks, music, and edits the hell out of it.

I guess it’s ok if the producers want to tread outside of the found footage format but why call it V/H/S then? It’s a series that has been producing found footage shorts for over a decade now. Either admit that you’ve run out of ideas or stop making these films. That’s my harsh truth for the producers of this film. The highlights of the film were the grossout effects. There’s a particular gnarly kill in “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance” and things get viscerally disturbing in “Heartbeat.” Those are the gore effects highlights. The narrative quality has been low throughout the V/H/S series. It seems past the premise, there really isn’t much by way of interesting dialog or twists and turns and half of the segments never know how to come to a proper ending.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved many of the previous V/H/S films and thought V/H/S/HALLOWEEN and BEYOND were great entries. But the fact that only three directors seemed to understand the found footage assignment in this group and the others are just music videos from musicians who want to direct and ad libs from GWAR. Sorry, but MIXTAPE is the sloppiest and worst V/H/S film of the bunch. It’s messy and just feels like no one really cared about formatting or coming up with a concept worth a damn. It seems like they were just excited to have the artists involved and let them do whatever the hell they wanted with it. Sometimes that can be promising and decent. But other times you get a movie like this. I mean, what the fuck were these producers thinking? They gave their found footage movie a music theme which is idiotic because everyone knows produced music is something no found footage worth a squirt of piss should have in it. It feels like the producers don’t care about quality anymore and just want to get a movie out in a year. They need to slow down, get some real talent, come up with some innovative and especially scary premises. Maybe take a year off and reevaluate, guys. Either way, V/H/S/MIXTAPE was a steep slide in quality from previous installments and despite promising segments from Dickerson and Moreau, it isn’t worth your time seeing it. There’s much better horror out there right now for the Halloween season to be wasting your time with this crap.