V/H/S/Mixtape Review: Found Footage Horror Anthology Is Sometimes Good, Never Great

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Two people staring into a camera in VHS Mixtape

The found footage horror anthology sequel V/H/S/Mixtape takes some wild swings, but consistently misses the mark, even with its better segments.

Published Oct 8, 2026, 9:01 AM EDT

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

Short-form horror, like the segments in the found footage anthology sequel V/H/S/Mixtape, is inherently a good idea. Instead of stringing together a series of set pieces that beg the question, "why does the ghost keep shouting 'boo' and then vanishing without doing anything else?," horror shorts can end on the first "boo!" They can get straight to the scare and its consequences, without having to overload the story with lore or render the antagonist toothless by forcing it to reset every 10 minutes in service of having the main character last until the third act of a feature-length runtime.

Unfortunately, the surprisingly robust V/H/S franchise (of which Mixtape is the ninth installment) is a chronic reminder that not all short-form horror is created equal. That problem's compounded by the anthologies themselves being feature-length objects. Placing these shorts next to one another practically demands that they be compared and contrasted, which can put a damper on the whole exercise. At the very least, Mixtape offers a unique premise, which is that all six found footage shorts (which are connected by an interstitial featuring the monstrously costumed metal band GWAR) are themed around the power of music or audio.

V/H/S/Mixtape Has Its Moments

While some of the segments in previous installments in the franchise have been truly great ("Safe Haven" from V/H/S/2, which was co-directed by The Raid's Gareth Evans and Killers' Timo Tjahjanto, springs immediately to mind), most of the good shorts in Mixtape have severe flaws that prevent them from reaching that level. Take "Another Cabin," a stop-motion short directed by rapper Flying Lotus. It has terrific character design and a wonderfully ooky monster, but it's less than three minutes long and feels like a discarded fragment of a draft, rather than a coherent, satisfying finished piece.

The best segment of the bunch... [turns] the stuff of classic children's entertainment into a playfully violent fantasia.

"Heartbeat," from director David Moreau (2008's The Eye), is another segment that feels too short for its own good. Its depiction of a soundproof room rendering the sounds of one's own body dangerously maddening is quite visceral and intense, but it escalates too quickly. If the story had just a couple minutes worth of room to breathe, the nasty places it ends up would have been more justified. Meanwhile, Ernest Dickerson's (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) "The Music of Mr. Sze" is stylish and visually audacious, but lacks momentum.

The best segment of the bunch by far is Renee Zhan's "Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance," which plays in the same sandbox as 2026's Buddy but to more satisfying ends, turning the stuff of classic children's entertainment into a playfully violent fantasia. Jim Henson's Creature Shop elevates the material with fun twists on classic puppet designs, and Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, You're Next) delivers the best performance in the movie as an ice-cold corporate shark. However, one rock-solid (if overly predictable) short does not a satisfying movie make.

The Good Isn't Strong Enough To Make V/H/S/Mixtape Worth Watching

A bloody person surrounded by whimsical puppets in VHS Mixtape

Unfortunately, the movie cannot consistently stay in the "good, but flawed" zone, which would have resulted in a perfectly fun Halloweentime watch. This is largely due to GWAR's interstitials, which are crude and grating. The puerile shock value of these segments packs no punch. They're simply irritating, and the fact that V/H/S/Mixtape keeps jerking the viewer back into GWAR's world between every segment has a deleterious effect on the movie as a whole. It's hard to bask in the glow of the better segments when GWAR is delivering self-consciously edgelordy material at the highest possible decibel.

The stench of flop sweat slowly soaks into everything bookended by these interstitials, turning the final third of the anthology into a brutal slog. V/H/S/Mixtape unfortunately ends with its two least satisfying segments, so by the time the credits roll, the fun parts feel like a half-remembered dream. There's almost nothing worth admiring about "Premature Burial," which was helmed by Ghost frontman Tobias Forge. It's simply a bland heavy metal music video that doesn't do anything a hundred other videos haven't already done.

Then there's the kicker. V/H/S/Mixtape's closing segment, "Death Tone," which was helmed by Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, is by far its most boring. Its story about an aspiring producer trying to use the sounds of violence to produce the perfect track is undermined by unfocused characterization, a repetitive plot, and the fact that said track turns out to be deeply mediocre. This frustrating segment is the final blow in a tiresome cinematic gauntlet. Ultimately, while the movie does have a few segments that would work in isolation, the experience as a whole is fundamentally disappointing.

V/H/S/Mixtape is available to stream on Shudder from Friday, October 9.