‘V/H/S/MIXTAPE’ Poster Debuts Ahead of Shudder Premiere This October
‘V/H/S/MIXTAPE’ Poster Cranks the Found-Footage Franchise Up to 11 Ahead of Shudder Premiere
The V/H/S franchise is turning up the volume for its next anthology.
Shudder has unveiled the poster for V/H/S/MIXTAPE, a music-driven installment of the long-running found-footage horror series that brings together filmmakers Ernest Dickerson, RZA, David Moreau and Renee Zhan, with additional contributions from Tobias Forge and Flying Lotus.
The film will stream exclusively on Shudder beginning Friday, Oct. 9, following its world premiere at Beyond Fest on Sept. 30 at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles.
This time, the connective tissue is sound.
V/H/S/MIXTAPE explores music, rhythm and audio as sources of horror, with four new stories moving across cosmic horror, psychological suspense, splatter and practical effects. The anthology also features GWAR and work from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
Renee Zhan directs Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, which follows a studio attempting to revive a long-canceled puppet television series carrying a mysterious history. The segment features creature work from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, bringing another practical-effects component to the franchise’s latest experiment.
David Moreau directs Heartbeat, centered on a pair of YouTube urban exploration influencers who enter a decommissioned military facility once used for sonic experiments. Their exploration leaves them trapped inside a location where sound itself may be part of the threat.
Ernest Dickerson takes on The Music of Mr. Sze, following a college film student whose documentary project leads to the secluded life of a troubled musician. Dickerson’s involvement brings a filmmaker with decades of horror and genre experience to the anthology, including Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and Bones.
RZA directs Death Tone, in which a young sound engineer follows instructions left behind by her late father as she attempts to create the ultimate track. The segment gives the musician and filmmaker a particularly fitting entry point into an anthology built around the intersection of music and horror.
Holding everything together will be GWAR.
The band appears throughout the wraparound portion of V/H/S/MIXTAPE, hosting skits and music videos through what is described as an MTV-style broadcast from hell. Music videos directed by Tobias Forge and Flying Lotus will also be incorporated into the presentation.
That framework represents another shift for a franchise that has continually found ways to reconfigure its central conceit without abandoning the rough visual language that made V/H/S recognizable.
Beginning with 2012’s V/H/S, the series has used videotapes, home recordings, television broadcasts and other forms of captured media to connect otherwise independent horror stories. More recent installments have increasingly embraced specific eras and technological aesthetics while giving each group of filmmakers room to interpret the format differently.
V/H/S/MIXTAPE takes that idea into music culture, treating sound as more than something accompanying the horror. Across its stories, audio can haunt, manipulate, transform and destroy.
The new poster reflects that shift, positioning the latest anthology as something closer to a corrupted horror mixtape than a traditional collection of found recordings.
Josh Goldbloom, Steven Schneider, Roy Lee, Michael Schreiber and Brad Miska produce V/H/S/MIXTAPE. Zoe Cooper, David Moreau, Ernest Dickerson, RZA and Matt Landsman are credited as writers. Ben Ross and Rami Yasin serve as executive producers.
Before arriving on Shudder, V/H/S/MIXTAPE will make its world premiere Wednesday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. during Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. A Q&A with members of the cast and filmmaking team will follow the screening.
V/H/S/MIXTAPE begins streaming exclusively on Shudder Friday, Oct. 9.
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