V/H/S/85 (2023)

V/H/S/85 feels like stumbling onto a forbidden late-night broadcast from the Reagan era—grainy, grimy, and charged with the kind of inventive dread that anthologies rarely sustain for this long. What makes it special is its consistency: five filmmakers bring wildly different nightmares, yet the whole thing hums with a unified, made-for-TV-documentary vibe that keeps the tension tight and the imagery memorably wrong. It’s gleefully ambitious in its ideas, mixing urban-legend unease with body-horror punchlines and bursts of gore that land because the setups are so efficiently creepy. If you’re not into found-footage chaos or you prefer your horror restrained, it may feel abrasive—but if you want a franchise entry that actually delivers the goods, this one is a nasty little time capsule worth cracking open.

V/H/S/85 is clearly trying to revive the franchise’s scrappy, late-night-TV vibe with a faux-documentary frame and a handful of nasty little found-footage shocks, and when it clicks, it delivers some inventive gore and a couple of genuinely creepy images. The problem is the “’80s” hook often feels like window dressing, and the anthology format means you’re stuck riding out segments that feel familiar, undercooked, or like variations on better V/H/S entries. If you’re hoping for tight storytelling, fresh mythology, or consistent quality across all five tales, this one will probably test your patience. But if you mainly want a grab bag of grimy set pieces, practical-effects carnage, and the occasional standout segment, it’s a serviceable late-night horror snack.