There are probably few better ways to announce that a new V/H/S movie is going to get wilder than usual than opening the thing with GWAR. Not merely featuring the legendary shock-metal band somewhere in the background, but putting them front and center as the hosts of a deranged, MTV-style nightmare filled with music, gore, and enough ridiculously vulgar imagery to give anyone who isn’t prepared for an early massive ejaculation gag ample opportunity to turn the movie off before the real show even begins.

That bold opening is a pretty perfect introduction to V/H/S/MIXTAPE, the ninth entry in the long-running found-footage horror anthology franchise. This time around, music and sound are the connective tissue holding everything together, with GWAR providing the wraparound segments and music-video interludes from Flying Lotus and Ghost frontman Tobias Forge helping further enhance the appropriate audiovisual atmosphere.

Every major segment finds a different way to turn audio into something dangerous, while the wildly different filmmaking styles from this iteration’s collection of directors keep the anthology from ever settling into one predictable rhythm. Don’t miss out on adding MIXTAPE to your Halloween watchlist this year.

Renee Zhan kicks things off with “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance,” which is immediately one of the most visually distinctive segments the franchise has produced. A studio executive (Barbara Crampton) is attempting to resurrect a long-cancelled children’s puppet program, only to discover that the puppets have some very strong opinions about being digitally scanned and transformed into modern CG creations. The fact that the puppets were actually created with the Jim Henson Creature Shop makes the whole thing infinitely better. The Creature Shop has been defining the possibilities of physical character creation and puppetry for decades, and watching these adorable, meticulously constructed puppets go completely feral is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

It isn’t particularly scary, but that’s hardly the point. The production design is fantastic, the puppet-fueled gore is inspired, and everyone involved seems to understand exactly the kind of twisted fun this premise should deliver. I could absolutely see this thing working as a Halloween horror maze.

David Moreau’s “Heartbeat” is considerably more grounded, and more disturbing because of it. Two urbex YouTubers (Julie Clergerie & Elie Kaempfen) explore a decommissioned military facility where sonic experiments were once conducted, eventually stumbling into a soundproof room that was never meant to contain human beings. Moreau, the director behind Them and MadS, makes excellent use of the found-footage format using the couple’s various recording devices, gradually transforming their adventurous exploration into an agonizing descent into physical and psychological torment.

The segment takes a little while to get moving, but once the sound experiments begin, “Heartbeat” becomes genuinely horrifying. The idea of being trapped inside a room while increasingly intense sonic waves literally tear your body apart is horrifying enough on its own, while Clergerie’s increasingly desperate central performance gives the climax a real emotional punch.

Ernest Dickerson’s “The Music of Mr. Sze” is unfortunately the weakest link, despite some fun production flourishes. Dickerson is an extraordinary filmmaker, with a career that includes his foundational cinematography work with Spike Lee on films like Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, as well as directing cult favorites like Juice and Demon Knight, so it’s disappointing that this particular story never quite finds its footing.

The premise has potential: a young film student (Jihad Brent) documents a mysterious violinist (Alex Hsu) in his apartment building whose music seems connected to something ancient and otherworldly. There are some great visuals, particularly inside Mr. Sze’s bizarre apartment and the strange dimension waiting beyond it, but weak performances and a fairly thin narrative keep it from reaching the same heights as the surrounding segments.

Then RZA brings the mixtape home with “Death Tone,” and this one goes straight for the jugular.

A young sound engineer (Neela Jolene) attempts to fulfill her late father’s instructions to create the ultimate track, using his personal studio as a laboratory for increasingly depraved experimentation. Drugs, black metal, a Faces of Death-style VHS tape and a series of kidnapped victims all become ingredients in her increasingly horrific creative process.

What makes “Death Tone” work so well is the strange tonal balance RZA nails down. It’s violent, occasionally darkly funny and increasingly rancid as the protagonist moves from murdering men she lures home to targeting homeless people for the sounds their deaths might contribute to her masterpiece. Jolene’s committed performance keeps the whole thing from tipping into camp, even when the material starts to really swing for the fences.

Flying Lotus and Tobias Forge get to play in the more explicitly music-video side of the V/H/S/MIXTAPE concept, and both contributions fit beautifully into the film’s aesthetic. Flying Lotus’ “Another Cabin” is a striking stop-motion nightmare about a young boy and his grandmother being attacked by a long-tongued demon, accompanied by his appropriately dreamlike synth track “Dreamshade.” It’s brief but visually arresting, with the warped stop-motion imagery feeling like a bizarre fever dream that crawled out of a forgotten late-night music video slot. 

Forge, meanwhile, reaches back into his own musical history with a video for “Premature Burial,” the Repugnant track from 1999’s Epitome of Darkness. The Ghost frontman’s death metal roots are on full display as the video races through churches, hospitals, coffins and other grim imagery through a suitably degraded VHS lens. It’s a particularly cool deep cut for anyone familiar with Forge’s history, but even without that context, the combination of filthy old-school death metal and analog horror imagery makes it one of the movie’s most satisfying little diversions.

The film closes on the adrenaline-pumping track “Hellraiser” by exciting up and comers Showing Teeth, ending everything on a raging high note. Between the puppet carnage, sonic body horror, Lovecraftian weirdness, heavy metal depravity and GWAR’s gloriously filthy contributions, V/H/S/MIXTAPE manages to feel like something genuinely different for the franchise.

Not every track is gonna hit equally hard, but that’s part of the nature of any mixtape. The important thing is that V/H/S/MIXTAPE knows exactly what kind of party it wants to throw, and it has more than enough blood, noise and beautifully bizarre ideas to make it one of the standout additions to the V/H/S franchise.

‘V/H/S/MIXTAPE’ begins streaming October 8th exclusively on AMC+ / Shudder.