Barbara Crampton makes an extended cameo appearance in V/H/S/Mixtape.
V/H/S/Mixtape, as the name implies, is a jumbled bag of short films that kinda/sorta/but don’t really have a musical theme. I think they were going for an audio horror vibe here but figured the medium just didn’t work considering the material and people behind the camera. It doesn’t really follow the “rules” of the franchise, with some vignettes eschewing the “found footage” gimmick altogether. It’s uneven and the tonal shifts can be very abrupt; but even when V/H/S/Mixtape falters it still has some redeeming qualities to consider.
For starters, there is an interesting assemblage of directors here. Tobias Forge, Flying Lotus, Ernest Dickerson, RZA. You’ve even got GWAR serving as the de facto hosts of the entire movie. There’s a ton of creativity going on here, but it’s not tied together very well. The lack of a truly distinct theme — like, a sci-fi thematic or ‘90s bent — makes the proceedings feel very random and unstructured. There’s just too much mood whiplash between the vignettes, especially when the vibes of said vignettes are so different.
The very first vignette, Dance Dance Dance, tells a pretty formulaic story about the puppets on a children’s show going psycho and mass murdering virtually everybody who stumbles into their workshop. This would’ve been a novel concept ten years ago, but it’s pretty tired and trite stuff nowadays. The gore effects and puppet work is great, but not even an extended cameo from the ageless Barbara Crampton can really salvage this one. It’s an easy pass.
Another Cabin is an animated short from Flying Lotus. Like the proceeding vignette, it’s visually impressive but doesn’t really do anything new or memorable with its very cliched subject material. There’s aesthetics are cool, but it doesn’t really have the actual story to go along with it.
Heartbeat goes full Reddit horror as two YouTube investigators break into an old Russian military compound and get locked in a totally soundproof room. You know what to expect here — it’s pretty predictable, but at least the final payoff is nice and gory.
The Music of Mr. Sze, from Ernest Dickerson, is pretty bland, too. It’s a semi-found footage story about some kid trying to uncover the truth about a mysterious musician … who just so happens to wear one of the WORST fake beards in the history of motion pictures. It has its moments, but ultimately, this is another fairly disappointing offering to the V/H/S/ canon.
Premature Burial is literally just a fake music video that’s like five or six minutes long, directed by that one dude from Ghost. No, not Ghost, that’s Patrick Swayze and he’s been dead for a couple of years now. I’m talking the metal band Ghost, and I’ve already learned a long time ago to not piss of their fans. What Swifties are to music in general, Ghosties are to heavy metal music. Personally, I didn’t see much in this one, but hey, your mileage may vary.
The final vignette, from RZA, completely saves this entry from being a total dud. Death Tone is the kind of old-school, Tales From the Crypt-style exploitation potboiler that we don’t really get in mainstream-ish horror movies anymore. It’s violent, it’s cynical, it has a tremendous gimmick, it’s well-acted and it actually has a few inspired moments on top of everything else. I really think this one should’ve been its on standalone, full-length movie. And if you’re surprised by how solid a mini-horror movie made by the dude from Wu-Tang turned out, just wait until you see what he does in One Spoon of Chocolate.
It’s kinda hard to give the totality of V/H/S/Mixtape a ringing endorsement. It’s a horror anthology with a lot of hills and valleys, so to speak — essentially, when it’s good it’s great and when it’s bad, it’s really bad. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the “worst” of the V/H/S/ films so far, but I would definitely contend that it’s the most inconsistent and the one most in need of extra fine tuning. There are a lot of seemingly obvious tweaks that just didn’t happen here and the end result is a movie that starts and stops on a dime and never really falls into a comfortable groove. This movie is basically one of those Dollar Tree candy grab bags with a little of everything in it, but only like two or three things you actually WANT to eat in it.
Anthology horror is a difficult thing to pull off. The strength of the V/H/S/ series, up to this point, anyway, is that it had a stock formula that directors could revert back to. The franchise has completely abandoned its whole “analog horror” roots and it can’t even find the patience to latch on to a central annual gimmick anymore. This just feels like a bunch of stuff cobbled together on the fly — as in, with a couple of weeks’ notice before filming began — with the producers naively thinking they could make all of it “work” in post-production edits. They gave it a noble attempt, but sometimes, a cinematic mess is just too damn messy to fix.
With nine official entries and a handful of spinoffs, the V/H/S/ brand is beginning to show its age. What began as a showcase for up and coming filmmakers has turned into a parade of B-material for already established directors and V/H/S/Mixtape is definitely NOT the pathway for this series to take. There are some good ideas here but only RZA’s vignette truly nails the execution.
I’ll give Shudder and pals credit for trying something a little unorthodox in V/H/S/Mixtape. Alas, they should’ve paid closer attention to the sound check — no matter how great the artists and equipment may be, without a decent song to work with they’re just making inconsequential noise.