V/H/S/MIXTAPE Review: The Kills Keep on Coming

Halloween is creeping up, which means a new V/H/S is landing on Shudder today, just in time for some post-trick-or-treat trauma.

Since the series’ resurrection, V/H/S has largely traded its loose narrative throughline for an annual theme, and while the franchise has mostly played things pretty safe by horror-anthology standards, V/H/S/Mixtape finds a surprisingly fresh hook in that subtitle: Every found footage segment is built around sound or the concept of an old school mixtape.

And, weirdly enough, that simple conceit gives the ninth entry an intriguing creative kickstart. Producers/stewards Brad Miska and Josh Goldbloom may be nine movies deep into this thing, but V/H/S/Mixtape suggests they’ve still got some gas left in the tank.

Unlike previous entries, which typically stitch their individual stories together with a singular wraparound narrative, V/H/S/Mixtape throws that structure out the window and hands hosting duties to Gwar’s larger-than-life latex monstrosities, in all their gloriously disgusting glory. It’s a collection of increasingly unhinged vignettes, united by grotesque humor, gore, and enough bodily fluids to make you wonder if the film had a dedicated mop budget.

Surprisingly, that sense of humor works. The sillier moments give you just enough room to catch your breath before the next segment comes along to stomp it out, with some genuinely diabolical and anxiety-inducing stories finding clever, occasionally downright nasty ways to exploit the mixtape’s premise.

Highlights include Renee Zhan’s Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, a behind-the-scenes look at the reboot of The Curious Chorus, a beloved, fictional, Sesame Street-esque singalong children’s show that mysteriously lasted only one season. As the reboot production team attempts to 3D-scan the original puppets for the revival, they quickly discover there was a very good reason the show never made it to season two.

It’s a wonderfully deranged way to kick off Mixtape, delivering a hilariously blood-soaked blast of puppet horror that wastes no time getting weird. And yes, bonus points for Barbara Crampton and puppets crafted by the Jim Henson Studio.

My other favorite installment is David Moreau’s (MadS) polar opposite Heartbeat, which takes the film’s sound-based premise and burrows straight into the part of your brain responsible for inventing new irrational fears. The setup is simple: two urban explorers stumble across an abandoned Soviet base and, naturally, decide to investigate the soundproof anechoic chamber they find inside. There’s just one rule posted within it: don’t stay in there for more than 15 minutes.

Naturally, they get locked inside. What follows is one of those segments that gets under your skin and refuses to leave. Moreau turns silence itself into a weapon, delivering an anxiety-inducing slice of psychological mayhem that doesn’t just play with the theme -- it grabs it by the throat and refuses to let go.

As far as unexpected surprises is Ernest Dickerson’s (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) much more by-the-book segment, which manages to swing surprisingly big with a narrative that might be one of the most ambitious in the franchise’s history.

Titled The Music of Mr. Sze, it follows an overzealous young man tasked with making a documentary for college, who finds his subject in his eccentric upstairs neighbor, the violinist Mr. Sze, who seems to play at all hours of the night. It’s when we discover why he’s playing that the segment suddenly morphs into something much stranger, and Dickerson really starts swinging for the fences. The story takes a little while to find its rhythm, but once it gets going, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Not all the songs are hits in this mix however, the final song in the playlist, RZA’s Death Tone has Neela Jolene as a serial killer who’s using the audio recordings of her grisly murders to craft a song that will somehow reunite her with her recently departed music producer father. There’s a genuinely interesting spark there, but the segment never quite catches fire.

Neela plays her gender-swapped Patrick Bateman more like a caricature of a killer than an actual character, leaving the story without much nuance or pathos -- and that becomes especially noticeable when it reaches its grand finale. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.

Thankfully, before the credits roll, we get some more Gwar and a fun mid-credits bit from Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance to take the edge off that ending.

All said, V/H/S/Mixtape is another solid outing for a series that somehow keeps finding fresh themes and filmmakers willing to get weird with them. More importantly, the franchise continues to strike a nice balance between fresh voices and established genre directors who have been away from the horror game for far too long. There’s something exciting about watching filmmakers with wildly different sensibilities get handed the V/H/S sandbox and told to make a bloody mess.

With Mixtape, that variety might be the franchise’s biggest strength yet. The lineup jumps from surreal puppet carnage, to nerve-shredding psychological horror to a few swings that are far more ambitious than you’d expect from a series that could easily just put itself on repeat.

Not every track is a banger, but that’s part of the fun: you never quite know what’s coming next, and even the misfires keep the playlist interesting. Nine movies in, V/H/S/Mixtape proves there are still plenty of tapes worth digging up — and plenty of filmmakers ready to leave their fingerprints all over them.

The film is now streaming on Shudder.