V/H/S/94 is the cinematic equivalent of finding an unmarked VHS in your parents’ attic, popping it in, and realizing it’s less “home movies” and more “cursed object that will end civilization.” A prequel to the previous V/H/S entries, this one goes full early-’90s: CRT fuzz, camcorder grime, and that specific visual headache that screams this was not shot legally. It’s an anthology that remembers what made the series fun in the first place—mean, imaginative, deeply weird horror—then straps it to a meat grinder and cranks.
Holy Hell: SWAT Team Walks into a Cult, Film Wins
The frame narrative, “Holy Hell,” follows a SWAT team raiding a warehouse they think is a drug den and definitely is not. This is your guided tour through the franchise’s mission statement: grainy tapes, mutilated bodies, cult nonsense, and people who have absolutely not been briefed enough for this job. Each time they enter a new room and a TV kicks on, we drop into another short. The fun twist? The frame story isn’t just window dressing—it slowly reveals that the people watching the tapes are just as messed up as what’s on them. Corporate synergy, but for snuff.
Storm Drain: Hail Raatma and Public Access Hell
“Storm Drain” is pure found-footage candy: a local news reporter, Holly, goes underground (literally) to cover an urban legend about the “Rat Man” and discovers that journalism is bad for your life expectancy. The segment nails the feel of early-’90s local TV so perfectly you can practically smell the cheap hairspray.
When we finally meet the sewer-dwelling creature Raatma—a lumpy, glorious rat-god that vomits corrosive slime—it’s both ridiculous and genuinely unsettling. The final broadcast, with Holly cheerfully spewing rat-acid on her co-anchor and signing off with a chirpy “Hail Raatma,” is the kind of tonal whiplash only this series pulls off: part horror, part sketch comedy, part demonic infomercial.
The Empty Wake: One Corpse, Zero Chill
“The Empty Wake” traps poor Hailey alone in a funeral home overnight with a storm outside, an apparently dead guy in a coffin, and a VHS camera recording the whole mess. This is V/H/S at its simplest and nastiest: one room, one body, one increasingly bad idea.
The segment slowly builds dread out of little things—thumps in the coffin, flickering lights, the sheer awkwardness of hosting a wake that nobody attends. When the body of Andrew Edwards finally gets up, head partially missing, lurching around blindly while Hailey scrambles to survive, it’s equal parts terrifying and grimly funny. You can’t help thinking: this is what you get for helping your boss cover a shift.
The Subject: Cyberpunk Body Horror on a VHS Tape
Then Timo Tjahjanto shows up with “The Subject” and politely detonates the entire anthology. This short is deranged in the best way: mad scientist James Suhendra kidnaps people and turns them into biomechanical abominations, as one does. We experience most of it from the POV of S.A., a woman who wakes up mid–science project to discover she’s now part human, part weaponized hardware.
What follows is a bloody, first-person shooter from hell: soldiers storm the lab, cyborg experiments break loose, limbs fly, and the line between “monster” and “victim” dissolves in a shower of sparks and viscera. It’s gory, yes, but there’s a sweet, tragic core to S.A. clawing her way toward some sliver of agency. Imagine RoboCop if it had been shot on a bootleg camcorder in a Jakarta basement.
Terror: Idiot Militias and Exploding Vampires
“Terror” might be the meanest and most gleefully political segment: a gang of white supremacist losers plan to “take back America” using a new kind of bomb—sunlight-reactive vampire blood. Which they harvest by repeatedly shooting an imprisoned vampire in the chest. Because of course they do.
The beauty here is how utterly pathetic these guys are. They posture, they shout, they drink, they talk revolution—and then their plan falls apart in the stupidest, bloodiest ways possible. Rabbits explode, teammates explode, the compound explodes, the vampire explodes. It’s like watching a militia training video directed by Final Destination. The horror’s real, but the punchline is clear: the true terror is how dumb violent extremists can be.
Holy Hell (Again): The Cult Behind the Curtain
Each return to “Holy Hell” gets darker: more body parts, more upside-down crosses, more TVs vomiting static. Eventually, we learn that some of the SWAT team aren’t clueless heroes but members of the cult behind these tapes, using raids as a content-acquisition strategy. Their big business model? Producing cursed VHS snuff for the underground.
By the time Nash is bashing Slater’s head in with the camcorder for the final shot, the movie has fully committed to the idea that the act of recording is the real desecration. The tapes don’t just show horror—they create it. It’s a nasty, cynical little bow on the anthology: congratulations, you made the perfect tape.
Found Footage That Actually Uses the Gimmick
One of the best things about V/H/S/94 is how committed it is to the found-footage aesthetic. The grain, glitches, tracking issues, and warped audio aren’t just filters slapped on afterward—they’re integral to the vibe. Each segment uses the format differently: news crew, static security feeds, handheld SWAT camera, cult propaganda. It keeps the anthology from feeling repetitive and makes the whole thing feel like a cursed mixtape compiled by someone who hates humanity and loves practical effects.
Blood, Brains, and a Surprisingly Coherent Soul
For all its chaos, V/H/S/94 hangs together better than some previous franchise entries. The shorts share a lo-fi aesthetic and a shared nastiness, but they’re also doing smart thematic work: media as infection, institutions as monsters, bigotry as self-destruction, grief and body autonomy turned inside out. And then, layered on top of all that, there’s a streak of dark humor that keeps everything from collapsing into pure misery.
Whether it’s a news anchor ripping off his own melting face while his co-host beams “Hail Raatma,” or drunk neo-Nazis accidentally blowing themselves up with vampire juice, the film keeps chuckling in the background like, “Humans really will ruin themselves, huh?”
Final Rewind: A Gloriously Nasty Return to Form
V/H/S/94 isn’t subtle, kind, or clean. It’s muddy, loud, grotesque, and occasionally ridiculous—and that’s exactly why it works. After a weaker previous installment, this one feels like someone shook the franchise awake, shoved a camcorder in its hand, and said, “Go make something disgusting and fun again.”
If you’re into found footage, creature effects, and horror that lets you laugh and wince at the same time, this tape is absolutely worth popping into the VCR of your soul. Just don’t be surprised if, the next time you see static on an old TV, you hear a faint whisper from the screen: “Track the signal… and hail Raatma.”
