At this point, the annual arrival of another V/H/S movie has become a Halloween tradition. You know the drill - several filmmakers get around 20 minutes to ruin your evening and people going to die in increasingly disturbing ways.
V/H/S/Mixtape, the ninth film in the series, gives the formula a musical twist. Every major segment uses sound, music or the absence of sound as part of the horror, with contributions from Ernest Dickerson, RZA, David Moreau and Renee Zhan. Flying Lotus and Ghost frontman Tobias Forge contribute music-video interludes while GWAR (unfortunately) hosts the whole thing like an MTV broadcast that escaped from Hell. GWAR was the weak link for me here but if you’re a fan of them, you’ll probably like this even more than I did.
As usual with a horror anthology, not every story worked equally. Luckily, the best thing about this format is that if one segment is not doing anything for you, something completely different is only about 20 minutes away.
5 Reasons to Watch V/H/S/Mixtape
#5: The V/H/S Formula Is Still Perfect for Horror Anthologies
If you already like the V/H/S series, you probably do not need much convincing here. The franchise has always been built around big swings, which means every installment gives you stories you love, stories you forget and probably one segment that makes you wonder what the hell you just watched.
Mixtape gives that structure an especially strong theme by building everything around sound. Ernest Dickerson’s The Music of Mr. Sze follows a film student investigating a reclusive musician whose violin playing connects to something much stranger. RZA’s Death Tone follows a sound engineer trying to create the perfect track using increasingly horrifying source material. David Moreau strips sound away almost entirely in Heartbeat, while Renee Zhan turns a forgotten children’s television show into a puppet massacre.
That variety is the point. Shudder describes the movie as exploring music, rhythm and audio as things that can haunt, possess and destroy, which is broad enough to let every filmmaker interpret the assignment differently. If one tape is not working, just wait. The next nightmare is already cued up.
#4: Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance Has Murderous Henson Puppets
My favorite segment is Renee Zhan’s Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, which feels like somebody combined Sesame Street with a slasher movie and then decided there still was not enough blood.
A production team is attempting to resurrect The Curious Chorus, a children's television program that mysteriously disappeared after one season. Barbara Crampton is involved, the old puppets are still sitting around and unfortunately for everyone hoping to cash in on reboot culture, those puppets have some very strong opinions about the project.
The big selling point is that the puppets were created with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. That gives you beautifully constructed, colorful children's characters running around committing acts of extreme violence, and that contrast between professional puppetry and total carnage is exactly what makes the segment work.
Even better, the Creature Shop apparently did not need convincing. Zhan said the feedback she received from the team was essentially to go further and add more blood. She also said the puppeteers would stay in character between takes, improvising conversations in the puppet voices while the cameras kept rolling.
If you liked Buddy, the Smile Time episode of Angel, The Banana Splits Movie or Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, these homicidal little monsters should be right in your wheelhouse.
#3: Heartbeat Makes Silence Terrifying
David Moreau’s Heartbeat was a very close second for me, and its premise is ridiculously simple.
Two urban explorer YouTubers enter a decommissioned military facility in Bulgaria and discover an anechoic chamber, a room specifically designed to absorb sound. Naturally, because this is a V/H/S movie and people in these movies never recognize a terrible idea when they see one, they end up trapped inside.
What makes the segment interesting is that it takes the sound theme and works backward. Instead of asking what happens when a sound is terrifying, Moreau asks what happens when there is almost no outside sound at all and the only thing you have left to listen to is yourself.
Moreau had apparently wanted to explore an anechoic chamber on film for years. He has described the experience as reaching a point where you begin noticing your heartbeat, blood flow, stomach and jaw because there is so little external noise competing with your own body. The found-footage format then created another challenge because he could not simply cut to traditional close-ups, so the characters and their cameras had to physically move in ways that let the sound design put us inside their experience.
Director David Moreau previously made MadS, and if you liked the way that movie used filmmaking technique itself to create anxiety, Heartbeat gives him another fun technical problem to solve.
#2: It Is Extremely, Impressively Disgusting
No one is ever going to accuse the V/H/S franchise of tasteful restraint.
If somebody dies in one of these movies, there is an excellent chance that death will involve significantly more exposed anatomy than was medically necessary. Mixtape proudly continues that tradition with dismemberment, heads being separated into pieces, bodies being destroyed by cosmic creatures and enough blood to make several horror movies jealous.
RZA's Death Tone may be the purest expression of that idea. Lydia is a sound engineer following instructions left by her late father as she tries to build the ultimate track, eventually discovering that murder can provide some particularly unique Foley work. RZA has said the concept grew out of the way he has always incorporated real-world New York sounds like trains, sirens and storms into his music. He spent months working through different horror concepts before landing on the idea of someone searching for a literal sound of death.
There is even a Protect Ya Neck reference because if RZA is going to direct a gore-soaked V/H/S segment about murdering people for samples, I would be disappointed if Wu-Tang did not make its way in there somewhere. If Dead Alive, The Sadness or the Terrifier movies are your idea of a good time, Mixtape has several buckets waiting for you.
#1: It Is an Almost Perfect Halloween Hangout Movie
As I write this, Halloween is right around the corner, and this is where the V/H/S movies have carved out a really useful niche.
They are easy watches. Mixtape runs only 98 minutes, the stories are episodic and the tone constantly moves between creepy, disgusting, funny and completely bizarre.
That makes it perfect for a group. Everyone can argue over their favorite segment when it is over, and there is a decent chance nobody will pick the same one. It also works if you are sitting at home handing out candy because missing two minutes will not destroy some elaborate plot you have been carefully tracking for an hour.
Put it on during a Halloween party and the grimy found-footage aesthetic almost becomes part of the decoration. It looks like something somebody discovered in a cardboard box at an estate sale and then made the terrible decision to bring home.
There are scarier movies you could watch this Halloween. There are better movies too. But there are not many that are easier to throw on with a room full of horror fans and immediately start debating.
Who Should Watch V/H/S/Mixtape?
If you already enjoy V/H/S, found-footage horror or anthology movies like Creepshow, this is an easy recommendation. The music theme gives the filmmakers enough of a common thread to make the movie feel cohesive without forcing every segment to resemble the one before it.
It is an even easier recommendation if puppets killing people, experimental sound design, cosmic monsters, GWAR and extreme gore all sound like things you want in the same 98-minute movie. Anyone who wants a tightly connected narrative or has a low tolerance for splatter should probably look elsewhere.
This is a mixtape. You are not supposed to love every track.
Where to Watch V/H/S/Mixtape
V/H/S/Mixtape premiered on Shudder on October 9, 2026 and is currently streaming there. It is also available through AMC+ and its associated streaming channels.
Prefer to Listen?
You can also hear this Force Five recommendation as a podcast episode covering the same five reasons you might want to watch V/H/S/Mixtape.
V/H/S/Mixtape on the Force Five Top 5 Radar
Top 5 Demented Kids Shows
The Curious Chorus absolutely belongs in the conversation with Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, Death to Smoochy and Buddy. There is something inherently unsettling about taking the bright colors, relentless positivity and artificial enthusiasm of children's television and pushing them slightly in the wrong direction.
Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance goes several steps further by giving the puppets the ability to physically object to their own reboot. Maybe the real monster was intellectual-property exploitation all along.
Top 5 Movies That Weaponize Sound
Sound has always been one of the most important tools in horror, but some movies make it part of the actual threat.
A Quiet Place makes sound a death sentence, Pontypool turns language itself into the infection and The Sound of Violence builds murder around audio experimentation. Recent movies like Undertone and Tuner have also found new ways to build suspense around what characters hear.
V/H/S/Mixtape practically gives you an entire anthology of candidates for the list.
More Force Five
If Mixtape leaves you wanting more from the franchise, start with Force Five's review of V/H/S/94. That installment includes Timo Tjahjanto's spectacularly violent The Subject, and the earlier review already makes the same case for why anthology horror works: even when one segment misses, another story is only a few minutes away.
If the practical gore was the main attraction, Penny Lane Is Dead is an easy next choice. Mia'Kate Russell came to directing after decades in makeup and special effects, and her Ozploitation throwback understands exactly how much nastier violence becomes when it looks like somebody actually had to build it.
For another recent horror movie determined to find increasingly disgusting things to do to human bodies, Ghost in the Cell mixes supernatural horror, comedy and elaborate gore inside an Indonesian prison. If Mixtape's bloodier segments were your favorites, Joko Anwar has several additional nightmares waiting for you.
