V/H/S/85’s directors explain how they made ‘f***-you movies’

It’s been a little over a decade since the original horror anthology V/H/SThe first themed horror anthologies were published in the early 1970s.ABCs of Death, Tales of Halloween, Enjoy your Holidays, etc.) suddenly became underground hits — and a major proving ground for young directors showing off their chops to secure funding for full-length features.

The V/H/S Series, still the OG of the V/H/S, continued to be popular despite the market saturation. 2013’s V/H/S/2 and 2014’s V/H/S Viral Shudder Originals joined the group. V/H/S/94The year 2021 will be the first time that this happens. V/H/S/99By 2022. Now, Shudder has the latest episode of the series streaming. V/H/S/85, a collection of five segments (one split up into a “wrapper” film connecting the others) all visually themed around 1980s found-footage technology.

The all-star lineup of directors is a big reason why this particular episode in the anthology show is more sharp, startling and impressive. V/H/S/94You can also find out more about the following: 99 producer David Bruckner (Ritual, The Night House), Natasha Kermani (Lucky, The Imitation GirlMike P. NelsonRight Turn Wrong, The Domestics), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Culture Shock, Bingo HellScott DerricksonDoctor Strange, Black Phone).

All five directors were on hand at a Q&A after the movie’s world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2023, where Bruckner made a stir when he told the audience that he lured the other directors into the project by telling them “V/H/S movies are fuck-you movies,” a sentiment they all seemed to enthusiastically agree with. Polygon had the opportunity to sit down with the five directors of V/H/S at Fantastic Fest and explore the implications for both the directors as well as the fans.

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Polygon: So what is a “fuck-you movie,” and why was getting to make one such an instant sell for all of you?

Gigi Saul Guerrero, director of “God of Death”: It means a project where you’re not afraid to push yourself as a filmmaker, but also to push yourself with things that you know you won’t be able to do on a regular job. [laughs]You can be bold and shock your audience. Don’t be afraid to scare them and leave something that will last. Grab something scary that you may also find yourself scared.

Mike P. Nelson, director of “No Wake”/”Ambrosia”: So often, when you’re given a more normal movie or commercial, you get asked to pull back. This one, however, was quite the opposite. It was like, “No, go full-bore, and just have fun with it.”

Guerrero: No filter

Natasha Kermani, director of “TKNOGD”: Permission is granted to be mean, ugly and a bit sarcastic.

Scott Derrickson, director of “Dreamkill”: It’s an opportunity to really swing for the fences without the fear of a big feature failure that will ruin your career. It’s very liberating to be able to do that.

David Bruckner, director of “Total Copy”: When you’re working on a feature, especially in studio systems, it’s a little bit like steering an aircraft carrier. Many voices can speak, and there may be many expectations. There’s a lot to uphold when you have three acts at work, you have to hold an audience’s attention for 90 minutes or more. It’s an enormous ask.

It’s also because these strange little relics are haunted. They’re tapes that have been discovered at a certain point, so anything can happen. You don’t have to be as structured. And now you’re asking yourself different questions regarding setup. It’s a very purified state of mind: What would I like to see now? It’s all fair game. And that’s refreshing for me. Invigorating.

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Natasha, you made that point at the Q&A about being excited to make “ugly” movies for once, and that’s something else everyone here lit up over. What is so inspiring about being able to make something “ugly”?

Kermani: We all seem to love the language of film. Everyone here is a true master. And I think a lot of times, there is that idea that whatever “beautiful” means, that film language is necessary for a commercial-quality film. The film language is essential for a commercial-quality film. V/H/S/85Scott spoke a great deal about the importance of the medium in conveying the message. He let us explore this gritty, visual world. “Glitch” was one of our keywords.

She cried after she saw our final film. [laughs] She’s like, You can’t see anything! Like, yeah, it’s VHS, so you can’t see shit. So I think that really letting go — the actors may look kind of crazy. You’re gonna have moments where some part of the screen just drops off into black, there’s no detail there. It was fun to embrace the ugly, grit and nastiness. Because normally we’re doing the opposite. How can this star be made beautiful? So that’s liberating.

Guerrero: It’s just [about] not being perfect. The framing of the shot and its polished look are very important. The actors must feel natural when using found footage. That’s why we do block, rehearse, shoot. The films themselves aren’t the main thing. See what happens when you fucking mess it up. It feels very natural. Definitely, all of my cinematographers suffered a great deal of trauma following this. It’s hard on them to not be perfect with how they film anything.

Derrickson: Brett [Jutkiewicz]Who shot Black Phone for me, one of the reasons he said yes to this was because I said I thought we should just use ’80s cameras, and shoot everything analog. He was very enthusiastic about it. Super 8 was the footage I used to mess around with the V/H/S format.

So when you talk about “ugly,” it’s a beautiful ugliness. It’s everything people are trying not to have in their visual images now. Higher resolution, more clarity, perfect brightness — we all grew up watching things in low-res, and there’s absolutely a beauty to that. I was fascinated by the actual capture of how cameras worked at that time, and not just as nostalgia.

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Nelson: It was a challenge to recreate the old-style home movies, because they were so different than the ones we have today. People will still use cool camera angles with their phones and mount them to little gyros. But I was so inspired by my dad’s old stuff. His old Magnavox camera was mounted on his shoulder and connected to an older VCR that he carried around. He had to charge the batteries, which lasted only an hour.

It was fascinating to see how he shot the things because this was a new format for consumers. Before this there were home movies shot in Super 8 or 16mm, but now this is a new medium. These cameras were enormous. One of the shots that always kills me — it’s like literally in every home movie of the time, whether it was Christmas or Easter, out at the lake at a picnic, there was a long take just watching people doing things. When you’re revisiting that memory, when you put it in the VCR, you’re just like I get it, Dad. They are all there.

You also have the drunkard who wants to display his muscles in front the camera. The people in the old home movies who want to display their muscles are always a draw for me. It was the norm. I’m just like, how many times are people going to come up and flex at the camera? It’s so cool. Exploring how to do that, or how to take a shot in a way which is not so good, but still makes it fun, was really a fun challenge and exploration.

Guerrero: We shot on a VHS camera as well, and it’s so light that it feels like you’re playing with a toy camera. And we didn’t have the luxury of doing playback, because that damages the tape. This was our first video! Then we’d shoot it as if it were a VHS tape, which is probably what you would do. [Nelson’s] Pops. He never went back and looked at what he’d shot on the player, he’d wait and watch it with everybody else. The same was true for us. It was kind of a misunderstanding. All right, let’s just do three takes for everything.

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Did everyone use retro-technology, or did they shoot it using modern cameras?

Kermani: Our piece is full of visual effects, so we had to blend. This was an interesting piece, because it was so retro in so many ways, but then we were constructing an entire world digitally, so it’s a strange match in your brain. It was important to us that the world felt like a real place. TronWe wanted to make the Monster timeless. In fact, the technology and look of this monster are far ahead of what was available in 1985. Those visuals didn’t exist — they couldn’t actually animate like that.

We layered her a bunch of times, so there’s the Tron Then, in another layer, I ran my monster through the VHS tape process. We ran it through the machine a lot of times. Finally, I composited back into our original. Tron backdrop. Like, we were playing around with it. OK, now we’ve gone too far, now you actually can’t see her at all. It was lots of experimentation, and a lot running of tape decks. Our first version was probably taped on top of a copy. The Phantom Menace. It was analog and digital.

Nelson: It’s going to sound silly, but ours was shot on a Red [digital camera]I told Nick Junkersfeld, our DP: “I know we’re shooting on this crazy high-def camera but just make sure you have the resolution where you can go nuts with it.” I told Nick Junkersfeld, our DP, “I know we’re shooting on this crazy high-def camera, but just make sure we have the resolution where you can just go nuts with it.”

Omnimovie was a movie we did see [VHS camcorder] with us at all times — we took an Omnimovie and a Red, and tried to find a lens that matched the Omnimovie in terms of zooms and optically. In Minneapolis, we went and tested lenses till they were the right ones. OK, yep, that’s it. Then I was like, “Nick, here’s some old VHS clips from my dad. Here’s some stuff I found on YouTube, because people also post their old VHS family videos on YouTube. Here’s what I need. We’re going to make this feel like a VHS home movie.”

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David, you talked at the Q&A about shooting your short on a 40-year-old Magnavox camera that was literally disintegrating during production. What was the impact of that on your shoot?

Bruckner: We had a few backups, but it was just a totally different way of thinking when the camera — the tubes were dying in the camera. It looked good when we first tested it. But as soon us running through the halls began, tiny cracks appeared. We’d go to the monitor and look at footage, and these bizarre scan lines would start to appear. We could see the image breaking apart right before our eyes.

To take it back to the fuck-you of it all, it’s liberating, going, Let’s just keep shooting. Let’s get as much out of it as we possibly can, until the camera completely craps out. It’s a totally different way of thinking, because we couldn’t control what was happening in the frame as much as we’re used to. The experience was great.

V/H/S/85Shudder now streams the movie.