THE STORY – A new anthology in which music and sound become a source of terror.
THE CAST – Josh Willis, Christopher Romero Sosa, Barbara Crampton, Erin Griff, Zach Jobe, Julie Clergerie, Elie Kaempfen, Jihad Brent, Alex Hsu, Jaki Lauper, Neela Jolene & Understanding Diggs
THE TEAM – Ernest Dickerson, David Moreau & RZA (Directors/Writers), Flying Lotus, Tobias Forge & Renee Zhan (Directors), Zoe Cooper & Matt Landsman (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 98 Minutes
It’s a storied tradition for one horror franchise to be present every Halloween, releasing a new, quickly assembled film each October. From 2004 to 2010, Jigsaw ruled the spookiest month of the year, inviting audiences to his annual game night with seven successive “Saw” movies, prompting a favorite grammatical headache of a tagline, “If it’s Halloween, it must be Saw.” For a few years in the 2010s, “Paranormal Activity” took over, ushering in the found footage boom that led directly to the “V/H/S” franchise. The first three entries in the anthology series were released from 2012 to 2014, but after the release of the truly terrible third entry, “V/H/S/Viral,” the fun seemed to be over. But then, in 2021, Shudder resurrected the series with the retro-themed “V/H/S/94,” and ever since, the horror streaming service has unleashed a new entry every October, with each anthology’s short films centered on a specific theme. This year’s edition is all about music, but unfortunately, “V/H/S/Mixtape” is unlikely to top the charts, as it’s the franchise’s most disappointing entry yet in the Shudder era.
Anthology horror films have always been a great way for up-and-coming filmmakers to make a name for themselves, and for more established directors to try something different in the relatively lower-stakes world of short-form film. Without the pressure of a big studio budget and the obligation to fill a 90-minute-plus runtime, the better shorts in the “V/H/S” series represent some of the most exciting examples of quick, efficient visual storytelling in recent memory. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with “V/H/S/Mixtape,” which, with one notable exception, is made up of shorts that are decidedly neither scary nor particularly compelling as fun-sized stories.
Most “V/H/S” films feature five or six short films, almost always situated within a framing device that gives thematic context. “V/H/S/Mixtape” features only four shorts, possibly because the framing device is so long, both in the introduction and in the interstitial sequences between shorts. Or maybe they just feel long, because they certainly are interminable. They’re led by members of the heavy metal band Gwar, most famous for their over-the-top costumes and gnarly stage hijinks. Their brand of dark humor is undoubtedly aimed at a very specific audience, built on extremely juvenile energy and cartoonish gore that screams, “Can you believe we did that?” In other words, they’re supremely obnoxious and, judging by the tone of their antics, they’d probably relish that label. Admittedly, the tone of their infamous, irreverent stage shows fits right in with the “V/H/S” franchise, but every time they pop back up in “Mixtape,” it feels like spending time with an immature younger cousin at Thanksgiving while waiting for the next course. Further adding to the time spent between shorts are music videos directed by Flying Lotus and Tobias Forge, which do a better job of setting a spooky tone than the Gwar segments.
Not that there’s much meat on the proverbial bone in “Mixtape.” The first of the four shorts, “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance,” from director Renee Zhan, begins with footage from a retro children’s TV show featuring singing puppets. Not dissimilar from Casper Kelly’s new film “Buddy,” despite the accurate recreations of ’90s edutainment programming, a sinister tone vibrates underneath it all. We then jump to the present day, where a group representing a television network hoping to revive the show (led by the always-fierce horror icon Barbara Crampton) visits the workshop of the man who now owns the puppets. But the hoped-for retrieval of the felt hand props doesn’t go as planned.
The puppets sing a central song throughout this short: a cleverly written ditty about the inevitability of death, with darkly comic lyrics such as, “As mold comes for a sandwich, the darkness comes for you.” The puppetry and practical effects are both designed and executed with admirable care. It’s a simplistic concept and, as the “V/H/S” shorts so often do, it ends with a big display of carnage. But unlike the majority of the shorts in “Mixtape,” the gore feels earned.
“Heartbeat,” the second short directed by David Moreau, is far and away the highlight of “Mixtape.” It follows a couple with an online video channel that seems devoted to exploring remote and abandoned locations. Here, they trek through the woods near the border of Bulgaria to find a Cold War-era Soviet military base. After cracking into the facility, they discover a bizarre, soundproof chamber, and what begins as a curious exploration becomes a true nightmare.
“Heartbeat” succeeds because it leans into the limitations of short-form storytelling; its concept is simple, it’s almost entirely set in one (extremely well-constructed and eerie) location, and it features only two characters. And it’s scarier for doing so. Undoubtedly, this is the most realistic segment of “Mixtape,” and boldly, it centers less on music or sound than on the lack of either, which becomes the short’s unexpected source of terror thanks to excellent sound design. Julie Clergerie delivers a fantastic, giddily-terrified performance, ferociously portraying a woman pushed to the edge of sanity and beyond. “Heartbeat” is a simple little morsel of horror, standing alongside the best shorts that the “V/H/S” series has offered.
But unfortunately, it’s followed by two more shorts that are decidedly disappointing, both sharing similar shortcomings. The first comes from experienced horror director Ernest Dickerson, entitled “The Music of Mr. Sze.” It follows a young college student named Philip (Jihad Brent) as he begins shooting a documentary about his own life. He’s recently moved into a ridiculously spooky boarding house, filled with strange, anti-social tenants. At night, he hears a mysterious, hypnotic violin melody from his upstairs neighbor, Mr. Sze (Alex Hsu), and, against the advice of those around him, Philip investigates the music.
The final short “Death Tone” is directed by the legendary RZA of Wu-Tang Clan. It centers on Lydia (Neela Jolene), a young musician who finds a tape from her late father that advises her on how to construct the ideal song. After taking bizarre substances she finds among his possessions, Lydia becomes obsessively determined to use her father’s wisdom to create an entirely new type of music, one that requires spilled blood.
Although different in concept and story, these two shorts have nearly identical problems that prevent them from feeling fully satisfying as horror shorts. Poor writing plagues both, with characters speaking in obvious, hack statements and strange turns of phrase throughout. In “Death Tone,” one of Lydia’s dates reacts to her telling him about her passion for music by saying, “You look too sweet to be making heavy beats,” to which she bizarrely responds, “A lot of people say that until they get to know me.” A lot of people really say that? Both shorts also break their own form with filmmaking techniques that completely disrupt the ruse that these films are found footage. In “Mr. Sze,” the movie takes a turn at the end when one character enters a vision constructed entirely by overly cinematic CGI, yanking the audience out of the small-scale world Dickerson built up to that point. And in “Death Tone,” the film is pieced together with admittedly slick editing, but the kinetic cutting and showy assemblage of footage totally move away from the found-footage format. And both shorts ultimately end with an explosion of blood, guts, and dismemberment, as many “V/H/S” shorts so often do. It’s no longer shocking; it’s expected.
“V/H/S/Mixtape” represents a low point for the soft reboot of the franchise that’s been a Halloween mainstay for the past five autumns. But don’t worry, just like the year’s best holiday, next October will inevitably bring the latest film in the found-footage horror anthology series.
