V/H/S/Mixtape Review: Cursed Tapes & Shredded Riffs

The framing device strands us with GWAR-adjacent metal monsters - BalSac The Jaws of The Death (Mike Derks), Blothar The Berserker (Michael Bishop), Jizmak Da Gusha (Brad Roberts), Beefcake The Mighty (Casey Orr), and Bonesnapper The Incredibly Boring Cave Troll (Bob Gorman) - as they paw through a stack of found-footage music videos that should never have been dubbed. Each segment plays like a cursed track on a playlist from hell, escalating from creepy to full-on blood-soaked chaos. One standout chapter, "The Music of Mr. Sze," gives us Alex Hsu as a figure whose melodies do far worse than get stuck in your head. The wraparound keeps the carnage chugging along, even when logic takes a smoke break.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: this is a niche within a niche. A horror anthology built around faux music videos sounds like a stoner pitch that should've stayed on a napkin. And yet Moreau commits so hard to the bit that resistance feels pointless. The visuals are grimy in the best way - smeared VHS tracking lines, blown-out stage lights, and practical gore that squelches with real conviction. When a performance goes wrong here, it goes spectacularly wrong, and the film's best moments land like a power chord straight to the sternum.

The cast is a blast. Mike Ferguson, Jihad Brent, and Alex Hsu chew scenery with the glee of people who know exactly what movie they're in. The GWAR-adjacent frame narrative crew - Derks, Bishop, Roberts, Orr, and Gorman - bring rubber-suited theatricality that's equal parts terrifying and hilarious, which is precisely the tonal tightrope this series lives on. Bonesnapper The Incredibly Boring Cave Troll is a name that promises a joke and delivers one, but the surrounding menace keeps it from tipping into pure parody.

Where the mixtape skips, though, is pacing. At 98 minutes, a couple of segments overstay their welcome, and the anthology's connective tissue occasionally feels like filler between the hits. The scares lean heavily on shock and splatter rather than slow-burn dread, so if you came for atmosphere over arterial spray, you'll leave disappointed. That IMDb-versus-TMDb split tells the whole story: the faithful are vibing, everyone else is reaching for the remote.

Still, there's something admirable about a franchise this deep into its run refusing to coast. V/H/S/Mixtape swings big, misses sometimes, and absolutely never bores. In an era of sanitized streaming horror, that counts for something.

Pros

• Ferocious practical gore and nasty, tactile creature effects
• A genuinely fun frame narrative anchored by the GWAR-adjacent metal crew
• Alex Hsu's "The Music of Mr. Sze" segment is a deranged highlight
• Moreau's VHS-soaked visual style is dripping with grimy personality

Cons

• Uneven pacing drags through the weaker segments
• Leans on shock value over sustained dread
• The framing device occasionally feels like connective filler
• Polarizing ratings suggest it's strictly for franchise diehards

V/H/S/Mixtape is the horror equivalent of a bootleg concert tape: rough, loud, and impossible to look away from. It won't win over anyone who checked out of this franchise three entries ago, and that 3/10 TMDb score isn't going anywhere. But for fans of found footage, analog grit, and metal-flavored madness, this mixtape earns its spot in the rotation. Crank it up - just don't expect it to stop when the song ends.