.jpg)
V/H/S/Mixtape Is the Goriest, Loudest Entry Yet and I Was Screaming
The franchise cranked the volume to 11 and let a bunch of musicians make me scared of sound
Every single year when the leaves start turning and spooky season rolls around, there's one release I guard my calendar for like a dragon hoarding gold, and it's the new V/H/S. This found-footage anthology series is comfort food for the deranged, and I say that with my whole chest.
So when I found out the ninth entry, Mixtape, was built entirely around sound and music as the source of terror, with segments directed by actual musicians, I dropped everything and prepared to have a great time. And I had a great time. This might be one of my favorites in the whole franchise.
The whole gimmick here slaps. Every V/H/S has a theme, and "music and sound become the thing that kills you" is such a fun, flexible premise that each director gets to run wild with it in completely different directions.
Cosmic horror, claustrophobic dread, killer puppets, splattery carnage. It's a genuine mixtape in the best sense, where you never know what the next track is going to sound like.
TMJ Rating: 🍿🍿🍿🍿/5
What You Need to Know
It's a V/H/S movie, so the structure is a wraparound story stitching together a handful of standalone found-footage shorts, all loosely connected by the theme of sound.
This time the connective tissue is a chaotic MTV-style variety show hosted by shock-metal legends GWAR, and the segments come from Renee Zhan, David Moreau, Ernest Dickerson, and RZA, with music video interludes from Flying Lotus and Ghost's Tobias Forge. If that lineup doesn't tell you this is going to be unhinged, I don't know what will. Check out how Mike Flanagan Did Prime Video Carrie Dirty in the Best Possible Way
The V/H/S/Mixtape Wraparound is Completely Deranged
Let's address the GWAR of it all. They were clearly handed total creative freedom and used it to be as crude, loud, and bodily-fluid-forward as humanly possible.
It is disgusting. It is nonsensical. It also perfectly nails that sweaty, lewd early-90s MTV energy the movie is reaching for, so somehow it works.
My one real gripe is they used the Wilhelm scream like four times in a row, which is an absolute crime against sound design. You get one per movie, gentlemen. Those are the rules.
The Segments, Ranked By My Heart
Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance from Renee Zhan is the goofy one, and I adored it. A group of filmmakers tries to revive a canceled puppet show and the puppets, brought to life by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, do not appreciate being scanned into a machine to be reproduced as soulless content.
Horror queen Barbara Crampton plays a nightmare network exec. There's genuine commentary buried in here about art being flattened into a product, and honestly? I was rooting for the murderous puppets. Protect your one perfect season, kings.
Heartbeat from David Moreau is the brutal one, and it wrecked me. Two urbex influencers get trapped in an anechoic chamber inside an abandoned Russian base, where every sound their own bodies make gets amplified until it drives them insane.
It goes to genuinely horrifying places, including a pregnant woman making the darkest survival choice imaginable. Placing it right after the silly puppet one was a smart tonal gut-punch. I wanted it to be even longer.
The Music of Mr. Z from Ernest Dickerson might be my favorite of the whole thing. It's full-blown Lovecraftian cosmic horror, where a man uses entrancing music to commune with forces beyond human comprehension.
The practical effects are a showcase, there are gorgeous aspect ratio shifts that made my little film-nerd heart sing, and it commits completely to its creeping dread. Chef's kiss.
Death Tone from RZA gives Mr. Z serious competition. It follows the daughter of a famous music producer instructed by her dead father's tapes to record the ultimate track by capturing the murders of innocent musicians. The antagonist is basically a music-obsessed Patrick Bateman and she's magnetic. Great villain, nasty concept, perfect closer.
The Flying Lotus stop-motion bit and the Tobias Forge thrash music video sprinkled throughout add texture and honestly made the whole thing feel more like an actual mixtape.
Where It Wobbles
It's an anthology, so it's uneven by nature. Some segments crackle, and a couple runs slightly short, leaving dread on the table right when they should be twisting the knife. Heartbeat especially could have simmered longer.
And the GWAR chaos will absolutely not be for everyone. If you need your horror polished and tasteful, this movie will offend you on a cellular level. For me, that's a feature.
My Verdict
This is a loud, gory, gleefully weird entry that fully commits to its gimmick and lets a wild roster of musicians terrorize you through your speakers.
Mr. Z and Death Tone are top-tier franchise material, Heartbeat is genuinely upsetting in the best way, and the whole thing has that lovable scrappy V/H/S energy where the swings matter more than the misses. If you love practical gore and horror that isn't afraid to be stupid and brilliant in the same breath, put your headphones on and hit play.
