Every V/H/S Movie Ranked from Worst to Best: Eight Tapes of Terror
With V/H/S/Mixtape arriving on Shudder October 9, we’re ranking all eight previous installments of horror’s most unpredictable found-footage franchise.
There are few horror franchises quite as gloriously inconsistent as V/H/S.
Since 2012, the series has delivered some of the most inventive, disturbing, and downright insane moments in modern found-footage horror. It’s also delivered its fair share of shorts that feel like somebody found an unfinished student film, slapped a tracking effect over it, and called it a day.
But that’s part of the appeal, isn’t it?
The anthology format has always been a gamble. You might get twenty minutes of absolute nightmare fuel followed immediately by something that makes you wonder whether the filmmakers understood the assignment. Sometimes both happen in the same movie.
And yet, here we are, eight installments later, still eagerly awaiting the next collection of cursed videotapes.
With V/H/S/Mixtape arriving on Shudder October 9, we’ve decided to revisit the franchise and rank every previous installment from worst to best.
We’re judging these movies on creativity, scares, memorable segments, consistency, and perhaps most importantly, whether we’d actually want to watch them again.
Naturally, your mileage may vary. That’s half the fun.
8. V/H/S: Viral (2014)
Somewhere along the way, V/H/S: Viral forgot what made the first two movies work.
The third installment attempts to expand the franchise’s mythology by embracing viral videos, digital technology, and internet culture. On paper, that’s a logical evolution for a series built around the idea of disturbing footage being discovered by unsuspecting viewers.
In practice, it’s a mess.
The wraparound story, Vicious Circles, is particularly frustrating, introducing an ambitious concept involving an ice cream truck, mysterious broadcasts, and people behaving increasingly irrationally. Unfortunately, ambition doesn’t automatically translate into coherence.
There are bright spots. Nacho Vigalondo’s Parallel Monsters is genuinely intriguing, exploring alternate realities in a way that feels refreshingly different from the franchise’s usual monsters and mayhem.
But Dante the Great, despite its entertaining premise involving a magician with supernatural abilities, feels more like a conventional horror short than convincing found footage. Bonestorm offers some entertaining supernatural chaos but little substance.
The result is an anthology that feels less like a carefully assembled collection of nightmares and more like a handful of unrelated experiments.
Best segment: Parallel Monsters
The verdict: An ambitious but frustrating misfire that nearly derailed the franchise.
7. V/H/S/99 (2022)
The late 1990s should have been fertile ground for a V/H/S movie.
Camcorders were everywhere, amateur videos were becoming increasingly popular, and the internet was beginning to change how people consumed media. Unfortunately, V/H/S/99 doesn’t always make the most of its nostalgic setting.
The anthology leans heavily into obnoxious characters, gross-out humor, and a particularly juvenile brand of cruelty. That’s not necessarily a problem for horror, but it becomes exhausting when multiple segments seem to be competing over who can create the least likable protagonists.
Shredding, involving a punk band exploring the site of a deadly concert, has an appealing setup but doesn’t entirely capitalize on it.
Suicide Bid fares better, delivering an effectively claustrophobic nightmare involving a sorority initiation gone horribly wrong.
Then there’s To Hell and Back, directed by Vanessa and Joseph Winter, which injects some much-needed imagination into the proceedings with its wonderfully bizarre journey into the underworld.
It’s arguably the most entertaining segment in the entire film.
Unfortunately, one great finale doesn’t completely compensate for the uneven material preceding it.
Best segment: To Hell and Back
The verdict: A few memorable nightmares buried beneath too much adolescent nastiness.
6. V/H/S/85 (2023)
One of the more interesting things about V/H/S/85 is how fully it embraces the aesthetics of its chosen decade.
The washed-out colors, analog interference, and grimy presentation create an atmosphere that feels genuinely pulled from a forgotten box of home movies.
Unfortunately, atmosphere can only take you so far.
The anthology contains some fascinating ideas, particularly No Wake and Ambrosia, two interconnected stories that cleverly explore violence, mortality, and consequences.
Dreamkill, directed by Scott Derrickson, delivers a disturbing supernatural mystery that arguably deserves more attention than it receives.
But other segments struggle to make the same impression. God of Death features some impressive imagery, while TKNOG offers an unusual technological nightmare, but neither completely sticks the landing.
The biggest problem with V/H/S/85 isn’t that it’s bad. It’s that the overall experience feels strangely muted compared to the franchise’s more aggressive installments.
There are moments of genuine inspiration, but they don’t always translate into sustained tension.
Best segment: Dreamkill
The verdict: Strong atmosphere and intriguing concepts, but an uneven collection that doesn’t always deliver on its potential.
5. V/H/S (2012)
Sometimes the original deserves credit simply for having the audacity to exist.
When V/H/S arrived in 2012, found-footage horror was already becoming oversaturated. What the filmmakers recognized was that the format might work even better in short bursts.
Instead of stretching one premise across ninety minutes, why not give several filmmakers the opportunity to create their own miniature nightmares?
The result was rough, frequently unpleasant, and occasionally brilliant.
David Bruckner’s Amateur Night remains one of the franchise’s defining achievements, introducing audiences to a terrifying supernatural encounter that spawned its own feature-length spinoff, Siren.
Ti West’s Second Honeymoon delivers a more restrained, unsettling experience, while The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger plays with the audience’s expectations through its unusual video-chat presentation.
Not every segment works. The framing narrative is particularly unpleasant, and some of the stories lean too heavily on unlikeable characters and shaky-camera chaos.
But the original V/H/S established something important: found footage didn’t have to be a single gimmick stretched to feature length.
It could be an entire playground.
Best segment: Amateur Night
The verdict: Raw, inventive, and historically important, even if later installments would refine the formula.
4. V/H/S/Halloween (2025)
After years of experimenting with different time periods and genres, V/H/S/Halloween embraced what seemed like an obvious direction for the franchise: an entire anthology built around the most wonderful time of the year.
And surprisingly, it works.
The Halloween theme provides a welcome sense of cohesion, allowing the filmmakers to explore everything from sinister trick-or-treating to deeply disturbing holiday traditions.
Kidprint, directed by Alex Ross Perry, is particularly upsetting, relying on disturbing subject matter rather than simply overwhelming the audience with supernatural spectacle.
Meanwhile, Fun Size embraces the absurdity of Halloween candy with the kind of outrageous creativity that makes the franchise so enjoyable.
The wraparound, Diet Phantasma, is also more memorable than many of the franchise’s previous attempts to connect its stories.
Not everything lands perfectly, and the film occasionally mistakes excess for effectiveness.
But V/H/S/Halloween understands something essential about anthology horror: variety is important, but a strong central theme can make even wildly different stories feel like parts of the same nightmare.
Best segment: Kidprint
The verdict: A nasty, imaginative Halloween treat that proves the franchise still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve.
3. V/H/S/Beyond (2024)
By the time V/H/S/Beyond arrived, the franchise had already explored multiple decades, supernatural mythology, and just about every variety of human depravity imaginable.
So why not throw science fiction into the mix?
The decision turned out to be an inspired one.
V/H/S/Beyond embraces extraterrestrial horror, alien encounters, and otherworldly creatures while maintaining the grimy found-footage aesthetic that defines the series.
Stork kicks things off with a gloriously chaotic blend of police body-camera footage and monstrous violence.
Live and Let Dive transforms a skydiving adventure into an absolute nightmare, while Stowaway, directed by Kate Siegel and written by Mike Flanagan, offers a more cerebral and deeply unsettling approach to alien horror.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is how effectively the film balances spectacle with genuinely interesting concepts.
The effects are ambitious, the creatures are memorable, and the stories frequently take unexpected turns.
It isn’t flawless, but it represents one of the franchise’s strongest examples of filmmakers being given a creative playground and actually making the most of it.
Best segment: Stowaway
The verdict: A wildly entertaining collision of found footage and science-fiction horror.
2. V/H/S/94 (2021)
Following the disappointment of V/H/S: Viral, the franchise disappeared for several years.
Then V/H/S/94 arrived and reminded everyone why the series mattered in the first place.
This is arguably the installment that most successfully captures the feeling of discovering something you were never supposed to see.
Chloe Okuno’s Storm Drain is an instant classic, introducing the gloriously grotesque Raatma in a segment that perfectly balances dark humor with genuine horror.
Simon Barrett’s The Empty Wake delivers a more traditional supernatural experience, building tension through isolation and increasingly unsettling events.
And then there’s Timo Tjahjanto’s The Subject.
Good lord.
A nightmarish fusion of body horror, mad science, and relentless action, The Subject is one of the most technically ambitious segments the franchise has ever produced.
The wraparound story isn’t perfect, but the individual shorts are so consistently entertaining that its shortcomings are easy to forgive.
More importantly, V/H/S/94 feels dangerous.
It’s unpredictable, frequently disgusting, and genuinely interested in pushing the boundaries of what found-footage horror can accomplish.
Best segment: The Subject — although Storm Drain is practically tied.
The verdict: The comeback that brought the franchise roaring back from the dead.
1. V/H/S/2 (2013)
Sometimes a sequel doesn’t just improve upon the original. It demonstrates exactly what the original concept was capable of becoming.
That’s V/H/S/2.
Where the first film occasionally struggled with pacing and consistency, the sequel feels leaner, more confident, and considerably more aggressive.
Adam Wingard’s Phase I Clinical Trials takes a simple technological premise and transforms it into a surprisingly effective supernatural nightmare.
Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale’s A Ride in the Park offers a clever perspective on zombie horror, using its first-person presentation to create something both horrifying and darkly entertaining.
Jason Eisener’s Slumber Party Alien Abduction delivers frantic extraterrestrial chaos through the perspective of a group of kids.
But the real reason V/H/S/2 earns the top spot is Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s Safe Haven.
Few anthology segments have ever escalated quite so spectacularly.
What begins as an unsettling documentary investigation into a mysterious cult gradually transforms into an absolutely unhinged explosion of violence, supernatural terror, and apocalyptic imagery.
It’s the kind of short that makes you forget you’re watching an anthology at all.
And that’s ultimately what separates V/H/S/2 from the rest of the franchise.
Every segment contributes something memorable, the pacing rarely drags, and the filmmakers understand that found footage works best when the camera feels like an unwilling witness to something genuinely horrifying.
More than a decade later, Safe Haven remains one of the franchise’s greatest achievements.
Best segment: Safe Haven
The verdict: The franchise at its most focused, frightening, and gloriously insane.
What’s Next? V/H/S/Mixtape Arrives October 9
The ninth installment, V/H/S/Mixtape, arrives on Shudder October 9, 2026, and this time the franchise is turning up the volume.
The new anthology explores horror through music and sound, featuring contributions from Ernest Dickerson, RZA, David Moreau, and Renee Zhan, along with music-video interludes from Flying Lotus and Tobias Forge.
There’s even an appearance from legendary shock-metal outfit GWAR, because apparently the V/H/S franchise has decided that subtlety is overrated.
The premise is intriguing. Sound has always been one of horror’s most effective weapons, and an anthology built around music, rhythm, and auditory terror offers plenty of opportunities for creative experimentation.
Whether the finished film belongs near the top or bottom of this ranking remains to be seen.
But if there’s one thing the V/H/S franchise has taught us, it’s that even its weakest installments are usually worth exploring for that one unexpected segment that gets everything right.
And sometimes, that’s all it takes.
Now it’s your turn.
Did we get the ranking right? Is V/H/S/2 still the undisputed king, or does one of the newer installments deserve the crown? And which individual segment still gives you nightmares?
Let us know in the comments. We’re fully prepared for the inevitable argument over Safe Haven versus Storm Drain.
While we wait for the next tape, explore why silence scares us and how horror movies turn the absence of sound into a weapon.
