It’s a ridiculous notion, really, that the horror movie we’re watching was never meant for our eyes—that our very presence as viewers is an invasion, a scintillating bit of voyeurism we may well come to regret. As silly as it is, this is the underlying promise (or threat) of all found-footage horror. I was only six years old when The Blair Witch Project first burst into Sundance, so I can’t quite fathom the cultural commotion brought on by its savvy marketing campaign, which did everything possible to convince moviegoers that this narrative film was cobbled together from footage found deep in the Maryland woods, its stars and creators missing and presumed dead. People believed it, I’ve been told, and it’s likely because they wanted to believe. That desire was not only effective from a storytelling standpoint, but from a financial one as well.
This remained the case long after the cat was out of the proverbial bag, and it came to a head with another one of the following decade’s biggest surprise horror hits: 2007’s Paranormal Activity. Jason Blum had been kicking around an idea for over a decade before producing what would become the most successful found-footage movie of all time. For only $15,000, Blum and director Oren Peli were able to produce a supernatural phenomenon that would go on to make a little under $200 million worldwide, a return on investment that would lead Blum to become one of the most powerful horror producers of the 21st century. After the subsequent success of movies like Insidious and Sinister, the precedent was set: If you wanted the kind of independent financial success promised by the Sundance craze that first burst through in the late ’90s, horror was your best bet.
Which brings us to the found-footage horror anthology series V/H/S, the logical endpoint of shoestring-budget filmmaking within the subgenre. “You hear about how all these studios are now cutting down their budgets and hoping to use their funds to promote a movie as opposed to spending $20 million to make a film,” said the series’ creator and founder of horror website Bloody Disgusting, Brad Miska, back in 2012. “When you do a horror film, the grittier the better. The more raw it is, the better it is.” His plan was simple; recruit filmmakers he’d known through his work with the website and essentially give them free rein to come up with their own 20- to 30-minute segment of what would be an omnibus film loosely tied together by supposedly haunted VHS tapes.
Six sequels later and V/H/S has quietly become one of the more reliable horror properties of the last decade. Though Miska never quite landed the ROI of Paranormal Activity, he has managed to create his own sort of horror incubator, drawing in writers and directors from all over the world to take a stab at original horror shot through the found-footage lens. The first installment alone includes names like David Bruckner (The Night House), Ti West (MaXXXine), and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Abigail)—all of whom have, in recent years, announced themselves as major voices in horror.
Of course, as with any anthology collection, there are significant highs and lows. So, as with a seasoned songwriter or syndicated sitcom clips episode, we feel it’s high time to comb through the many cursed tapes haunting viewers over the years to construct a conclusive V/H/S best-of with, it should be added, just a dash of macabre imagination and reckless speculation.
THE FRAME NARRATIVE
If you’ve seen any installment in the V/H/S series, you know that each film attempts to contain the segments within a larger narrative framework. You also know that these invariably suck pretty hard (it’s almost impressive to have attempted this seven times now without ever managing to make something remotely frightening or interesting out of this wrap-around device). For this new compendium-of-compendiums it’s time we solve this frame narrative issue once and for all and hire Mike Flanagan. This will be giving him carte blanche to come up with some way to wrangle these varied best-of segments into something cohesive. He can do it, I’m confident. After all, if you watched last year’s Edgar Allan Poe send-up The Fall of the House of Usher you’ll recall that the whole series essentially presented a story being told episode-by-episode. If anyone can figure it out, it’s the master of a very specific kind of modern, slow-burn storytelling like Flanagan. Give him the keys to the crypt.
THE BEST-OF SELECTIONS
“Amateur Night” from V/H/S (2012), directed by David Bruckner
As V/H/S has progressed over the years, Miska and company have done their best to make each entry in the series feel more anchored in certain eras (V/H/S/99, V/H/S/94, etc.) or within a given theme (2014’s Viral, 2024’s Beyond). But in a way, one of the central themes running through all of the V/H/S films has been right there from the jump. Not only is “Amateur Night” literally the first V/H/S segment, but with its story of male depravity and the appropriately gnarly punishment leveled in response, it’s the perfect jumping off point for our collection.
Written and directed by David Bruckner, the set-up here is fairly simple: three beer-guzzling twentysomething men head out for a night on the town with the intent of secretly filming themselves getting laid, thus making an amateur porn film that will surely be a huge hit. It can be a difficult ask to force a viewer to spend a feature-length runtime with such deplorable characters, but as an experiment in short-form storytelling, it’s highly satisfying to witness such swift and predictable comeuppances. I won’t spoil any specifics, but the term “succubus” might readily be thrown around.
“Storm Drain” from V/H/S/94 (2021), directed by Chloe Okuno
We now jump ahead almost a decade to “Storm Drain,” the first entry in 2021’s V/H/S/94, the first installment to be released as a Shudder Original Film directly to the horror aficionado’s favorite streaming service. More than anything, director Chloe Okuno (whose thrilling debut feature Watcher came out a year later) understood the assignment, rooting her short in 1994 by presenting it through the lens of a local news story gone awry.
This template, while far different from the classic Blair Witch–style home video format, still technically follows all the rules a stingy found-footage stickler might demand. A Channel 6 reporter and her cameraman have a reason for filming everything that’s happening, and the segment never breaks any rules regarding perspective even as they travel down a storm drain in hopes of uncovering the origin behind the local Rat Man myth running through their small town. By way of tidy (if wonderfully absurd) storytelling, Rat Man becomes “Raatma,” a godlike figure who does, indeed, look like an unholy rendering of Master Splinter but with the ability to spew some kind of toxic liquid. This is all wonderfully lurid B-movie stuff with a devilishly arch ending to match.
“No Wake” from V/H/S/85 (2023), directed by Mike P. Nelson
Technically, found-footage cinema is not relegated to the horror genre, but there are a few key factors that make it an ideal match of form and content. So much of horror, when you dig into it, is about what gets shown and when. If we had a full, well-lit view of any slasher villain, we’d almost wonder what frightened us so much to begin with. In this, found-footage is perfect. Any lack of focus, shaky hand, or wickedly teasing quick-pan can be easily blamed not on the film’s director, but on the idiot holding the camera. It’s the story’s fault, not the storyteller, and that distinction is important.
Writer/director Mike P. Nelson implements this perfectly on his segment “No Wake,” which sees a jovial group of twentysomethings head up to the lake only to be accosted by unseen forces shooting at them from the shoreline. Pandemonium ensues, and our cameraman catches just enough of the action for us to know that things are pretty dire (fingers are missing, jaws carved up, intestines spewing), but not enough for us to know what the hell is going on—especially when they all miraculously wake up some time later, their wounds permanent, their deaths less so. It’s a perfect example of the kind of story that only really works as found-footage fare, serving as a proof of concept for the entire series.
“Stowaway” from V/H/S/Beyond (2024), directed by Kate Siegel
V/H/S’s latest installment is the first to find the filmmakers working within specific storytelling parameters. V/H/S/Beyond might sound vague (“V/H/S/Aliens” might have been apter), but the mandate is clear: bring on the extraterrestrials. The results are decidedly mixed, with much of the “beyond” factor feeling more shoehorned in than organic to the story. The exception is “Stowaway,” the directorial debut for television scream queen of sorts Kate Seigel (the segment was co-written by her husband and frequent collaborator Mike Flanagan). In it, we follow an alien obsessive making a “documentary” about extraterrestrial sightings in the Mojave Desert. This is, admittedly, one of the least classically scary segments in the series, but witnessing the amateur filmmaker as she slowly follows her obsession past the point of no return is disquieting in a way that no other V/H/S story really manages to be.
“Safe Haven” from V/H/S/2 (2013), directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans
Take a look down the list of V/H/S directors and you’ll find a pretty impressive collection of horror storytellers. Some of these were notable before V/H/S, some after, but what’s perhaps most compelling is the names we might never have heard of if they hadn’t taken a stab at the V/H/S template. In his home country, Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto is known primarily for his unique blend of horror and action and, undoubtedly, “Safe Haven” represents the high point for both within the V/H/S universe (co-director Gareth Evans similarly made a name for himself two years before V/H/S/2 with his martial arts hit The Raid).
Following a documentary film crew as they investigate Indonesian doomsday cult Paradise Gates, “Safe Haven” is a perfectly paced exercise in tension, expertly playing on our expectations as things progress from simply unsettling to downright batshit. By the time Tjahjanto’s version of the legendary Baphomet makes its appearance, things have fully devolved into chaos. That’s not unusual for a typical V/H/S segment, but none other earns it in quite the way Tjahjanto does with “Safe Haven.”
BONUS SEGMENT
What would a best-of collection be without a little bonus feature for the real heads? And what kind of culture writer would I be if I didn’t wildly speculate/fan cast what I want to see from a series I love? OK, so here it goes. For the bonus segment we get Arkasha Stevenson, whose first feature The First Omen came out to critical acclaim earlier this year. Given the thankless task of continuing a long-suffering legacy horror franchise, Stevenson absolutely nailed it. What better time to give her a real shot at original storytelling in a franchise that perfectly fits her skills?
