Directed by: Flying Lotus, Renee Zhan and Zoe Cooper, David Moreau, Ernest Dickerson, Tobias Forge, and RZA and Matt Landsman
Rated: NR
Running Time: 98 minutes
Shudder
Our Score: 3 out of 5 Stars
It’s here. The 10th film in the “V/H/S” franchise. At this point, I have to wonder if there’s a big whiteboard somewhere filled with ideas. Last year, the franchise tackled Halloween. Before that, it wrestled with aliens, and just a few years ago, it was invoking Y2K and Nickelodeon game shows. The latest pivot is toward music with “V/H/S Mixtape,” a film looking to replicate midnight MTV nostalgia, explore the horror/music Venn diagram known as GWAR, and unleash another batch of filmmakers to see what kind of bloody nonsense they can come up with.
GWAR serves as the wraparound, presenting a chaotic blend of phony behind-the-scenes outtakes, gruesome on-set antics, general screwing around and attempts at some kind of recorded television program. It’s messy, occasionally smirk worthy and appropriately grotesque. More importantly, GWAR seems to understand the assignment better than anyone else. Their improvisational energy makes the whole thing feel like something you might have recorded off television at 2 a.m. and discovered in a box 30 years later. The actual shorts, however, aren’t nearly as committed to the musical theme.
First up is Renee Zhan’s “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance,” which feels like the Jim Henson Creature Shop indulging its wildest John Carpenter fantasies. The story follows the creators of a children’s program whose work is being scanned and digitized in an effort to replace the artistry behind their puppets with something considerably cheaper. Unfortunately for the people responsible, those old props and puppets have some thoughts about being discarded. Naturally, those thoughts involve torture, torment and murder.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the short. The practical creativity is entertaining, and watching cheerful children’s entertainment turn into a bloodbath is always good for a few laughs. But the problem is “Buddy.” It’s still in theater and it’s another story about the darkness lurking beneath the bright, sunny disposition of children’s programming. I’d also argue a full length version of “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance” still wouldn’t hold a candle to “Buddy.” Zhan’s contribution has its merits, particularly in its commentary on technology replacing artists, but it feels a little too familiar. It’s hard to get particularly excited about something when you feel like you just watched a variation of it.
Thankfully, David Moreau’s “Heartbeat” offers something different. The short follows two urban explorers investigating an abandoned Bulgarian bunker, which, if you’ve spent any time watching YouTube, already sounds like an excellent way to get yourself killed. Without revealing what horrors await them, “Heartbeat” is refreshing because it doesn’t rely entirely on supernatural creatures or some grotesque monstrosity waiting in the darkness. Instead, it finds horror in the ignorance and overconfidence of people who think wandering through abandoned structures is harmless fun.
There’s something particularly satisfying about watching people who make a living documenting dangerous places discover that they might not be nearly as prepared for danger as they believe. Their own minds become as much of a threat as anything lurking around them. It’s probably the strongest segment in “V/H/S Mixtape,” largely because it has a clear idea and knows exactly what to do with it. Audio is fun, until it’s your enemy.
Then the franchise heads back into the bizarre with Ernest Dickerson’s “The Music of Mr. Sze.” The short follows a college film student looking to shoot a documentary for a class project. He becomes fascinated with a reclusive elderly musician living above him, particularly the strange sounds coming from the man’s violin. But there’s something deeply unsettling about Mr. Sze, and the student’s curiosity eventually leads him toward something resembling cosmic horror.
In a lot of ways, “The Music of Mr. Sze” feels like an incomplete idea or an elevator pitch that somebody forgot to develop into a finished story. The premise is intriguing, the atmosphere works and there’s something inherently creepy about an elderly musician harboring an unimaginable evil inside his apartment. But the short spends so much time teasing its horrors that it barely gives itself enough room to reveal them. I’m not asking Dickerson to explain every detail of the cosmic nightmare. Some things are better left to the imagination. But there’s a difference between preserving mystery and withholding the payoff. Another five minutes might have helped establish the evil our protagonist is confronting and given the conclusion a little more substance. Instead, it feels like the short ends just as its most interesting ideas are beginning to emerge.
Then comes RZA’s “Death Tone,” a short that has the look of something I’d probably love but never quite figures out what it wants to say. The story follows a young woman whose deceased father left her with some rather unusual advice about making music. She interprets that advice as incorporating the sounds of people dying into her work, which is certainly one way to find your artistic voice. It’s a wonderfully deranged premise. Unfortunately, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
If “Death Tone” is trying to explore how much artists put into their music, there’s an interesting story buried somewhere beneath the blood and guts. But the musician’s victims often feel arbitrary, and the violence rarely tells us anything meaningful about her artistic obsession or the personal cost of pursuing it. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if her music somehow reflected the relationships she was destroying? Or if the people she killed revealed something about the sacrifices she was willing to make for her art? Instead, the story mostly seems interested in finding new excuses to kill people.
Which, to be fair, is perfectly acceptable in a “V/H/S” movie. And some of those kills are pretty damn inventive. At one point, I found myself admiring the creativity of a stabbing filmed from inside someone’s body while simultaneously wondering why I was supposed to care about any of it. That’s the fundamental problem with “Death Tone.” It has interesting imagery, some nasty gore and a premise that could have gone somewhere fascinating. But the characters aren’t particularly compelling, the story doesn’t make much sense and the whole thing goes on longer than its ideas can support. It’s an unfortunate way to wrap up the anthology’s major segments.
There are also a couple of much briefer contributions, including a music video from Tobias Forge and a claymation short that feels like something you’d expect to see before the feature presentation. Both run only a few minutes, give or take, but their inclusion helps establish the film’s mixtape personality while keeping everything moving. And that’s something “V/H/S Mixtape” generally does well.
At 98 minutes, the film rarely gives you enough time to become bored. Even when a short isn’t particularly successful, there’s usually another bizarre idea, grotesque image or unexpected burst of creativity waiting just around the corner. The problem is that very little of it sticks. The music theme feels largely cosmetic outside of GWAR’s wonderfully chaotic wraparound. Having filmmakers with musical backgrounds doesn’t necessarily make their contributions feel like part of a larger musical experience. And while there’s a certain cohesiveness to the presentation, the individual shorts rarely build on one another or leave much of an impression.
Maybe that’s the point. A mixtape doesn’t necessarily need to be cohesive. It’s supposed to be a collection of different sounds, moods and personalities, some of which work better than others. But a great mixtape still needs a few unforgettable tracks. “V/H/S Mixtape” isn’t a bad addition to the franchise. It’s somewhere toward the lower end of the middle of the pack, with enough blood, guts and wonderfully stupid creativity to justify another trip into the series’ increasingly bizarre universe. There are some genuinely clever ideas here, and I never found myself particularly bored.
But ten installments into this franchise, I’d like at least one segment that stays with me after the credits roll. Instead, “V/H/S Mixtape” feels like a mixtape I enjoyed listening to from beginning to end, but one where I can’t think of a single track I’d go out of my way to play again. Sometimes that’s enough for a good time. It just isn’t enough to make a great mixtape.