The V/H/S franchise has never been particularly interested in staying comfortable. Since its beginning, the anthology series has used found footage as a playground for filmmakers to experiment with different forms of horror, with each installment throughout the years bringing together an increasingly eclectic collection of filmmakers and ideas. V/H/S/MIXTAPE takes that philosophy one specific step further this time around by making music and sound the creative foundation of its nightmares.
This ninth installment brings together animator and filmmaker Renee Zhan, MadS director David Moreau, legendary artist Ernest Dickerson and none other than Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA for four primary horror segments, while Flying Lotus and Ghost frontman Tobias Forge contribute music-video interludes and heavy metal legends GWAR serve as the film’s gloriously unhinged hosts. Phew. That’s a hell of a lineup.
This is obviously the most musically inclined entry in the franchise yet, going from the grotesque puppetry of Zhan’s “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance” to Moreau’s sonic body horror in “Heartbeat,” Dickerson’s Lovecraftian “The Music of Mr. Sze” and RZA’s gleefully depraved “Death Tone.” Which, naturally, makes this the most perfect yet for us here at Knotfest, and we were lucky enough to chat with the director of each segment of this year’s V/H/S - here’s what they had to share.
Check out our full review of ‘V/H/S/MIXTAPE’
For Zhan, the opportunity came through her background in animation and led directly to one of the film’s most unusual collaborations. “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance” takes place around the attempted revival of a mysterious children’s puppet program, with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop providing the actual puppets.
What was it like to not only collaborate with the Jim Henson Creature Shop but go fully R-rated and gory with them?
Renee Zhan: It was a real treat for me. I got involved with V/H/S through the Jim Henson company because I come from an animation background, and they came with a really open brief: “We’re going to shoot something in the studio.” We did no set design. It was just a crazy place full of years and years and years of history. There was so much there to play with. I also designed the puppets, and when they were actually made, I had no notes. They were perfect. They’re [Henson] the masters of this craft, and each of the puppets is named after something that can kill you. There’s Riptide, Botulism, Hemlock, and Mosquito. But each of them is very cuddly and cute. It was a really nice mixture of these really fluffy, lovely, beautifully made puppets that have this secret dark soul inside. And I think puppeteers kind of have that dark soul inside them too. So everyone was really excited to make this thing, which was just a really nice, fun vibe on set.
David Moreau came to V/H/S/MIXTAPE with one of the most physically challenging concepts in the anthology. “Heartbeat” follows two urbex influencers who become trapped inside a decommissioned military facility and eventually activate a sonic experiment that turns their own bodies into the source of their torment.
Moreau is no stranger to intense genre filmmaking. His credits include the French home-invasion classic Them and the more recent hit MadS, a relentlessly kinetic zombie movie built around a particularly immersive visual approach. For “Heartbeat,” however, he had to find a way to make something essentially invisible feel brutally physical while still working within the restrictions of found footage.
What was the challenge in making a horror film where the horror itself isn’t necessarily a physical, tangible thing that they’re dealing with?
David Moreau: It’s all about the sound. When Steven Schneider, one of the producers, asked me to think about having an idea around sound, I had this idea about silence - because silence is sound too. Having two characters starting to be crazy because they hear the sounds of their own bodies was tough to do as found footage. I always thought about this shot in Blue Velvet when the main character finds this ear in the grass. You have a close-up shot and you get inside the ear, you get even closer, and then you start to hear some buzzing sound, and it’s kind of crazy. In my film, the characters carry their own cameras, so they have to move in a certain way, so I need a shot that allows me the possibility to make the audience hear what they were hearing inside their own body. This was hard, but it was really, really fun to do.
Ernest Dickerson brings perhaps the deepest history of filmmaking to the anthology - horror or otherwise. Before directing films such as Juice and Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, Dickerson established himself as one of the defining cinematographers of Spike Lee’s early career, shooting films such as Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever and Malcolm X. His career has continued across film and television, including work on The Wire, Dexter and The Walking Dead.
His V/H/S/MIXTAPE contribution, “The Music of Mr. Sze,” follows a young film student whose attempt to document a mysterious musician gradually leads him toward something far older and more dangerous than he could have imagined.
You have such a long history with music, filmmaking, and the ways they tie together. Could you talk about the inspiration for this film, and the way it involves music and a young filmmaker who becomes obsessed with what he’s hearing?
Ernest Dickerson: I was invited to do a V/H/S film about music. I went to H.P. Lovecraft and I adapted two stories and kind of mashed them together. I like taking old wine and putting it in new bottles. I like taking a lot of classic horror ideas and putting them in a brand new setting, and that’s what I did with this. The Lovecraft stories are all people that are like scholars and get involved in a mystery that winds up doing them in. I figured, okay: A young guy who has to make a documentary about his life and do something interesting, and while he’s searching for something, he finds something that he can’t stop getting fascinated with, and he starts going after it, and it winds up being his undoing.
The final major segment, “Death Tone,” comes from none other than RZA, whose career has always existed at the intersection of music and filmmaking. As a founding member of Wu-Tang Clan, producer, composer, actor and filmmaker, RZA has spent decades exploring the relationship between sound and imagery. V/H/S/MIXTAPE gives him the opportunity to push that relationship into particularly bloody territory.
“Death Tone” follows a young sound engineer attempting to complete the ultimate track using instructions left behind by her late father. What begins as a dedicated creative pursuit quickly becomes something much more sinister as she starts using violence, drugs and murder as raw material for her music.
Could you talk about casting Neela Jolene and working with her to nail down the really specific tone you have for "Death Tone"?
RZA: The casting director, Jeff Gafner, is the one that got me on this project. He was like, “You should meet the V/H/S team. They do some cool stuff that you might get a kick out of.” He knew that I was interested in maybe jumping to horror, they made the connection, and here we are. Neela was one of the people that he put in front of me and my team, and it was like “Yeah, she’s the girl.” What made it fun was her ability to allow her natural talent to exist, but also not be shy to become a muse of my craziness, you know what I mean? I felt she was very brave. When she gets that bloodbath all on her face - that stuff is sticky, bro. She just sat there and enjoyed it. I told her, “Listen, just have fun, dance in the blood”. And she danced in that blood.
Across various very different segments, V/H/S/MIXTAPE demonstrates just how much mileage there is in turning music into a source of horror. Zhan uses the tactile magic of professional puppetry, Moreau turns the human body itself into a terrifying speaker, Dickerson revisits the cosmic-horror traditions of Lovecraft, and RZA transforms the recording studio into a slaughterhouse. The filmmakers and musicians may be approaching the material from completely different backgrounds, but they all arrive at the same basic idea: sometimes the thing you hear can be every bit as terrifying as the thing you see.
‘V/H/S/MIXTAPE’ starts streaming on Shudder / AMC+ on October 8th.
