RZA, GWAR and Ghost Turn V/H/S Into a Horror Mixtape
The found-footage franchise that built an empire on cursed camcorders just handed the aux cord to a rapper, a jazz-fusion producer, and a Swedish metal frontman. V/H/S/Mixtape, the ninth entry in the long-running anthology series, dropped on Shudder as part of the platform's Season of Screams lineup after premiering at Beyond Fest — and this time, the found footage isn't the scary part. The music is.
A Found-Footage Franchise Finds Its Rhythm
Every V/H/S movie needs a gimmick to string its segments together, and the series has tried plenty: cursed tapes, a haunted Halloween night, a UFO conspiracy. Mixtape swaps all of that for a theme instead of a frame story — each segment is built around music, rhythm, and audio as the source of dread rather than just the soundtrack underneath it. It's a sharp left turn from last year's V/H/S/Halloween, which leaned on a specific date to connect its shorts, and it sets Mixtape up as one of the more conceptually ambitious entries in a franchise that's nine movies deep and still finding new ways to reinvent its format.
The wraparound segment hands the whole thing over to GWAR, the shock-rock band known for latex monster suits and fake blood cannons, who host an MTV-style show stitching the segments together between skits and in-character bits. It's a fitting choice for an anthology that's trying to feel like flipping through late-night cable in the '80s and '90s — equal parts music video channel and ghost story.
Who's Behind the Camera (and the Mixing Board)
The segment directors are where Mixtape gets genuinely interesting on paper. RZA of Wu-Tang Clan directs "Death Tone." Steven "Flying Lotus" Ellison, the producer and Adult Swim veteran, directs "Another Cabin," a stop-motion short about a boy and his grandmother terrorized by something in the woods. Tobias Forge — the mastermind behind the theatrical metal band Ghost — directs "Premature Burial," built like a horror story told through a full metal music video. Candyman and Juice cinematographer-turned-director Ernest Dickerson and animator Renee Zhan round out the directing roster, with David Moreau (Them) contributing the segment "Heartbeat." Rounding out the lineup are "Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance," a puppet-show revival built with practical effects, and "The Music of Mr. Sze."
It's a murderer's row of music-world names that no other horror anthology franchise could realistically assemble, and it's the clearest sign yet that the V/H/S producers — Brad Miska, Roy Lee, Steven Schneider, and Michael Schreiber among them — are leaning into the series' reputation as a launching pad for unconventional voices rather than a straight-ahead horror product.
The Verdict: Does the Concept Work?
Critics are split. Mixtape landed at 57% on Rotten Tomatoes and 41 on Metacritic — respectable for an anthology, but a step down from the warmer reception some recent V/H/S entries picked up. The consensus so far: the idea is stronger than the execution. Forge's "Premature Burial" is getting singled out as the strongest segment, with critics pointing to how naturally the metal-music-video format folds into a horror short. Flying Lotus's stop-motion "Another Cabin" is picking up praise too, for committing to a genuinely unsettling practical-effects look rather than leaning on digital scares.
On the other end, GWAR's wraparound segments are drawing criticism for straining to land jokes between shorts, and Moreau's "Heartbeat" is being called out as the weakest link in the tape. The broader critique is that a theme built entirely around music and rhythm ends up boxing some directors in rather than freeing them up — a concept that, on paper, should feel like cranking the genre possibilities up to eleven, but doesn't always land that way on screen.
Even with the mixed reviews, Mixtape is worth a watch for anyone who's followed the franchise since its 2012 debut. Few long-running horror series are still willing to blow up their own format this many entries in, and handing segments to a Wu-Tang member, a Ghost frontman, and the band behind some of metal's most ridiculous stage shows is the kind of swing that keeps an anthology franchise from going stale — whether or not every segment sticks the landing.
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