V/H/S/MIXTAPE Review

I have, in recent months, written Franchise Reviews for both the Alien and Scream series. They are franchises that have few truly great entries and plenty of pretty bad ones.

It was quite depressing to power through those franchises and see all of the subpar outings they have had. At least Alien is currently sitting on a mostly positive note with Alien: Romulus being its most recent flick. Scream's last offering was the absolutely abhorrent Scream 7. Does anyone alive have any hope for Scream 8? I bet it's a positively dreadful film at this point. I can't imagine anyone being excited for that.

Now a franchise I used to enjoy was Paranormal Activity. Granted that its last couple of goes weren't that wonderful, either, but it actually had a strong start with four or five flicks that are well worth your time. Remember when Paranormal Activity was a holiday tradition? They would release a new one basically every October for Halloween. It was a good shtick for them before they ran out of juice and mercifully let the whole series go to rest.

Today, we are going to take a little from column A--a historically bad franchise--and a little from column B--a series that debuts new films every October--and look at the newly released V/H/S/Mixtape.

The V/H/S franchise has been a Shudder staple for spooky season for years now. An anthology series, each new movie features several short stories that make up its runtime, usually all of them bonded by a wrap-around story that pops up between entries. It's surprisingly eight films deep at this point, having debuted in 2012 and having started its current annual release schedule back in 2021. A ninth movie, V/H/S: SCP, is already slated for October 2027! It never ends!

2026's contribution is, again, V/H/S/Mixtape, and the idea behind it is that everything about this offering will be based on the premise of music or sound. With this marriage of cinema and song, will the V/H/S franchise rights its sails and produce a solid outing?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The GWAR interstitials were entertaining and funny, as is to be expected. Those guys are whacky and gross and effective at what they do. They were the high point of this anthology, and basically, anytime they weren't on screen and goofing off, I was wanting them back instead of whatever the film was offering me at the time. 

Now, GWAR is not for everyone. Or even many. And honestly? GWAR is not even for ME. But I did enjoy their segments here. That said, I have seen several folks say the cut-aways to them were their LEAST favorite part of this entry. And I get that; it's certainly different than what V/H/S has done in the past, where the wrap-around segment ends up being its own tale. That's not the case here, so I get why others didn't like it.

But for me? I don't know; I kind of loved it. GWAR is just so damn weird and dedicated to their whole shtick. This isn't a seriously good franchise, so why not have an unserious series of interstitials tying the shorts together?

+ The concept of doing a music-based V/H/S movie is a solid idea. The stories are all centered around music and/or sound, and it keeps everything thematic and on-point. After doing so many editions based on years/eras/holidays, to do one based on audio themes is a neat way to move the franchise forward. 

The different interpretations the directors had when they created their segments are really intriguing too! Some took the inspiration as meaning there had to be a central song in their flick. Others took it as a feeling that they just had to incorporate some level of core sound into their feature. The basis of Mixtape really let the creators play around with what they wanted to manifest, and I appreciate that.

- As usual with V/H/S, the anthologized short films presented here range from Awful ("Death Tone", "Heartbeat", "Premature Burial") to Not Bad ("The Music Of Mr. Sze") to Adequate ("Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance"). There is an impressive stop-motion entry called "Another Cabin", but that's more about the effects work than its story. But the long and short of it is that this is another V/H/S that doesn't really have a standout offering. I was bored by most of these stories. I was having an extremely hard time trying to stay off of my phone when many of the segments were being shown; they just did not reach out and grab me.

- This franchise just keeps going every year, but I've yet to really be impressed by it, nor have I ever looked forward to the next iteration. It's well past time to let this series die. I'm not saying that it's garbage across the board--I can usually count on one or two shorts per V/H/S entry to entertain me (I'm thinking of the "Hail Raatma" moment from V/H/S 94 or the first two bits from the very first V/H/S or the bewildering "Fun Size" offering from V/H/S Halloween). But most of each outing in this franchise is forgettable and unimportant.

OVERALL

V/H/S/Mixtape is one of the worst movies in a franchise full of bad ones. It's wild that, after the relatively fun V/H/S Halloween in 2025 and the actual overall goodness of V/H/S Beyond in 2024, the series backpedaled this hard for 2026. I dread what they come up with for 2027 at this point. Sorry, Shudder; I certainly can't recommend this one.

🍿 SCORE = 17 / 100