This article was originally published on October 6, 2023. It has been updated to include segments from V/H/S/Beyond, now streaming on Shudder . When the first V/H/S made its way to theaters and VOD in the autumn of 2012, it looked like a one-off curiosity, not the beginning of a regular showcase for exciting voices in horror.
Roping together a handful of spooky short films all shot in the style of home videos, the omnibus project was clearly made to capitalize on the found-footage craze that Paranormal Activity had resparked a few years earlier. V/H/S was also steeped, of course, in the language of a more distant past: It was a Creepshow -style anthology of the kind that was last big in the ’80s and was named for a movie-watching technology that had gone obsolete around the turn of the 21st century. “Timeless” was not a word that leaped to mind while watching this collection of digital campfire stories.
A sequel seemed about as likely as VHS itself mounting a comeback. Yet here we are, over a decade later, and there are now seven V/H/S movies and counting, directed by an ever-growing stable of rising and established filmmakers. Since moving to Shudder, the series has become an annual tradition, with a new crop of scary shorts arriving every October and breaking records for the streamer.
Where once these movies seemed only vaguely retro in their format and framing, they’re now often intentionally so, sending viewers on video flashbacks to 1999, 1994, and 1985. The late.
