Cultists with camcorders! Murderous parents ought for blood! A bloody battle of the bands! The ghoulish girl next door! An urban legend to the last breath! That’s right, Boils and Ghouls, V/H/S, the acclaimed found footage anthology, is back for another viewing!
V/H/S/99 marks the return of the acclaimed found footage anthology franchise and the sequel to Shudder’s most-watched premiere of 2021. This Shudder Original film definitely mixes up the medium, presenting audiences with new stories to electrify the Halloween season with.
Set in 1999, these five short films - Shredding, Suicide Bid, Ozzy’s Dungeon, The Gawkers, and To Hell And Back - present horror on the verge of the digital age. The tape wrinkles, ghost images, and VHS haze are as real as the spooks on display as a new millennium takes shape. While the fifth in the ongoing series, V/H/S/99 remains engaging, disturbing, and a great platform for talented new voices in horror.
And it begins with the splatter of blood as one Bratty punk rock group RACK — acronym for bandmates Rachel, Ankur, Chris and Kaleb - take the risk of filming a DIY video in the same location where another band met their untimely demise. Written and directed by Maggie Levin, Shredding is an absolute blast of face melting horror because the cursed location of the condemned underground venue means little to the annoying members of RACK . . . but it will when the GHOULS of Bitch Craft return from the dead to teach the band a much needed lesson in rock n’ roll.
Suicide Bid, written and directed by Johannes Roberts, is about a sorority dare gone tits up when Lily, a college freshman, is dared to spend the night inside a coffin, only to find herself the casualty of a little bit of history repeating. Some Urban Legends never die . . . and for good reason. Unsettling and something of a pressure cooker, this short film will leave you gasping for air.
And that’s what happens when a thirsty teenager's home video leads to a series of horrifying revelations. Featuring three more disturbing short films, the limits of horror are pushed to their breaking point as a children’s game gets turned on its head thanks to the bitter plans of a grieving couple, a group of lusting boys gets more than they bargained for when they videotape the next door neighbor, and a summoning ritual is videotaped by a couple of Y2K who find that the tables have turned and they are the ones in hell! Now, how do they escape!
Brave and fearless (complete with fun army men figures providing interludes), V/H/S/99 feels like a fresh start for the franchise thanks to its embracing of practical effects and it episodic challenges its audience with all new scares, new ideas, and a plan to escape from Hell itself.
Featuring five new stories from filmmakers Maggie Levin (Into The Dark: My Valentine), Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City), Flying Lotus (Kuso), Tyler MacIntyre (Tragedy Girls) and Joseph & Vanessa Winter (Deadstream), V/H/S/99 harkens back to the final punk rock analog days of VHS, while taking one giant leap forward into the hellish new millennium.
Play or die! Play or die! Play or die! V/H/S/99 will be released on October 20th, only on Shudder.
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Runtime: 109 mins
Director: Flying Lotus; Maggie Levin; Tyler MacIntyre
Writer: Zoe Cooper; Flying Lotus; Chris Lee Hill
Cast: Jesse LaTourette; Keanush Tafreshi; Dashiell Derrickson
Genre: Horror
Tagline: VHS Goes to Hell.
Memorable Movie Quote:
Distributor: Shudder
Official Site:
Release Date: May 10, 2019
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: October 20, 2022.
Synopsis: Witness a hellish vision of 1999, as social isolation, analog technology and disturbing home videos fuse into a nightmare of found footage savagery.