| This page is similar in name or subject to other pages.
See also V/H/S film series for a complete list of references to clarify differences between these closely named or closely related articles. |
| V/H/S/99 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Credits | |
| Title: | V/H/S/99 |
| Directed by: | Maggie Levin; Johannes Roberts; Flying Lotus; Tyler MacIntyre; Joseph Winter; Vanessa Winter |
| Written by: | Maggie Levin; Johannes Roberts; Flying Lotus; Zoe Cooper; Tyler MacIntyre; Chris Lee Hill; Joseph Winter; Vanessa Winter |
| Produced by: | Samuel Zimmerman; Emily Gotto; Nicholas Lazo; Andrew Williams; Matt Bettinelli-Olpin; Tyler Gillett; David Bruckner; Josh Goldbloom; Chad Villella; Joseph Winter; Brad Miska; Vanessa Winter; Jared Cook; John Negropontes; Paige Dowling |
| Music by: | Keeley Bumford Dresage; Joseph Winter |
| Cinematography: | Alexander Chinnici; Alex Choonoo; Benjamin Kitchens; Nicholas Piatnik |
| Edited by: | Andy Holton; Thom Newell; Joseph Winter; Vanessa Winter |
| Production | |
| Production: | Bloody Disgusting Cinepocalypse Productions |
| Distributors: | RLJ Entertainment Shudder |
| Released: | September 14th, 2022 |
| Rating: | Unrated |
| Running time: | 109 min. |
| Country: | USA |
| Language: | English |
| Navigation | |
| Previous: | V/H/S/94 |
| Next: | V/H/S/85 |
V/H/S/99 is an American independent feature film of the anthology and found footage subgenres of horror. It is the fourth installment in the V/H/S film series. It was produced by Bloody Disgusting and Cinepocalypse Productions. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada on September 14th, 2022. It was first screened in the United States at Fantastic Fest on September 25th, 2022, then at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in October of that same year. Witness a hellish vision of 1999, as social isolation, analog technology and disturbing home videos fuse into a nightmare of found footage savagery.
"Shredding"[]
Four young members of an amateur heavy metal band known as R.A.C.K., enjoy the day playing music, riding skateboards and pranking one another; especially drummer Ankur, who does not have a sense of humor, and is often the target of their jokes. The other members of the group, Rachel, Chris, and Kaleb each make fun of Ankur and call him a "pussy".
The group talks about a local tragedy that occurred three years ago to the day on March 5th, 1996. At a local music club called the Colony Underground, an all-female punk band named Bitch Cat were performing when a freak electrical fire broke out, causing all of the attending guests to panic. All four members of Bitch Cat were trampled to death in a stampeded of panicking guests.
The R.A.C.K. members want to break into the closed down Colony Underground to play their own set as some sort of macabre tribute to Bitch Cat. Ankur is very superstitious and does not think that it is a good idea. He is fearful of "Bhuts", a type of ghost in Hindu culture that rise from the dead to attack the living. Rachel, Kaleb, and Chris continue to mock Ankur.
They go to the club and skulk about, finding various oddities that had never been removed. Ankur freaks out when he sees his drum set on the stage. This was yet another prank perpetuated by the other R.A.C.K. members and Ankur is furious. The other three then pretend that they are being possessed just to continue tormenting their bandmate. They find some blow-up sex dolls and pretend that they are the Bitch Cat members, trampling them in a mock re-enactment of the stampede that claimed their lives. As he predicted, the ghosts of the Bitch Cat members materialize as rotting ghouls and attack the other band members. Kaleb is pulled into the air and a fountain of blood rain downs in his place. Ankur uses some spices he nabbed from home as a means of protection and manages to disintegrate one of the attacking bhuts. Rachel and Chris are torn to pieces. The Bitch Cat monsters then reassemble them. Using the dead R.A.C.K. members as human puppets, Bitch Cat goes onstage and has them perform one of their old songs.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Jesse LaTourette | Rachel |
| Keanush Tafreshi | Ankur |
| Dashiell Derrickson | Chris Carbona |
| Jackson Kelly | Kaleb |
| Tybee Diskin | RC |
| Verona Blue | Deirdre |
| Aminah Nieves | Charissa |
| Kelley Missal | Jessie |
| Melissa Macedo | Jessie Deux |
| Rae Olivier | Rachel's mom |
"Suicide Bid"[]
August 30th, 1999: A college freshman named Lily files an online application to a sorority. In what is known as a "suicide bid", she only applies to a single sorority. If she is rejected, she will ejected from the application process and forced to be an "outcast" as her best friend and roommate Helen puts it.
November 6th, 1999: Lily meets with the sorority sisters Annie, Imogene, Lucy, and Hannah. They take her to an abandoned building and tell her the tale of Guiltine, a sorority pledge who died twenty years ago during a hazing incident. As part of the pledge, Guiltine was forced to spend the night in a coffin in a cemetery, but she did not survive. The girls tell Lily that she must undergo the same treatment in order to join the sorority. They give her a box to carry with her, and tell her that when she is at her most frightened moment, she should open the box. There will also be a bell that she can ring if she gets too scared and they will let her out, but doing so forfeits her chance to join the sorority.
Lily is sealed in a coffin in an open grave and given the bell, the box, and a camera with a light. Within the hour, she already grows exceedingly frightened as the girls attempt to scare her by banging on the coffin lid with a shovel. She opens up the box, but it is filled with spiders, which exacerbate her growing fear.
It suddenly starts to rain, and muddy water begins leaking into a the coffin. The girls spot the headlights of a police car driving by and flee, for they know that hazing pranks will lead to being expelled. The water continues to pour into the coffin and Lily freaks out. She bangs on the lid of the coffin until it starts to splinter. The ghost of Guiltine smashes through the top of the coffin lid, and more rain pours in. Lily ends up dying.
September 13th, 1999: At 6:00 am, the girls return to the cemetery. The open grave is filled with water, but there is no sign of Lily. The grave is empty. The four girls suddenly lose consciousness. When they awaken, they are each trapped inside of their own personal coffin. This time however, it is not the ghost of Guiltine who appears before them, but the ghost of Lily, who has made a deal with Guiltine, and now claims the souls of the four girls so that Guiltine can have her own sorority.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Ally Ioannides | Lily |
| Isabelle Hahn | Annie |
| Breana Raquel | Helen |
| Caitlin Serros | Imogene |
| Brittany Gandy | Lucy |
| Logan Riley | Hannah |
| Maurice Webster | Security guard |
| Christopher Lee Page | Guiltine |
"Ozzy's Dungeon"[]
A children's game show called "Ozzy's Dungeon" pits young contestants against each other in a variety of physical challenges in the hopes of making their wildest dreams come true. One challenge involves wearing inflated balloons upon their chests and bumping each other to see whose balloon pops first. Another challenge involves throwing pieces of meat into the air to see who can catch the most pieces in their mouth. A third challenge, called "Ozzy's Orifices", is an obstacle course that pits two contestants against one another to capture as many red flags as they can as they navigate through a faux biological system, including a throat, stomach, and colon. The two contestants are Timmy from L.A., and Donna from Detroit. As they make their way through the final part of the challenge, Timmy climbs over Donna, which presses her leg against the rim of the exit ring with such pressure that she suffers a massive compound fracture. The host does not stop the contest, and Donna does not get the medical assistance that she requires. In fact, he puts the scene of her injury on instant replay three times.
A year or so later, the host of Ozzy's Dungeon, awakens inside of a small filthy cage, wearing nothing but his tighty whities. The family of Donna are the ones responsible for his current predicament. They have fabricated their own version of Ozzy's Dungeon with all of the obstacle course settings. Donna is present, and is now confined to a wheelchair due to her broken leg becoming gangrenous.
Donna's mother, Debra, as well as her husband Vinn and her sons Fred and Marcus, hold the host responsible for Donna's impairment. Debra forces the host to undergo her own version of the Ozzy's Dungeon contests. If he fails to participate or complete a challenge, she has a bottle of acid that she is ready to pour all over him. Debra has Fred wear a spiked helmet and rams into the host's side, opening him up. She then plays her version of "Meat Catch" by lobbing handfuls of rotting meat at the host. Debra then forces the host to go through a facsimile of the Ozzy's Dungeon obstacle course while a man named Brandon films the spectacle. Although the host successfully completes the challenge, Debra says that he was few seconds too late and prepares to douse him with acid. The host begs for his life and bargains with the family, offering to bring them to the old game show set to meet Ozzy, whereupon their wishes will be granted. Their wish is to receive a large sum of money.
They get into a vehicle and the host directs them to the old abandoned studio. For some reason, there are guards armed with rifles outside the main entrance, so they are forced to find an alternate entrance into the building. Traversing the set, the group soon stand before the large wooden door which supposedly leads to the titular dungeon. The door is opened by the host's former assistant, and is revealed to lead to a cave. Inside, the family discover Ozzy upon an altar, being worshipped by the assistant and people dressed in the attire of the show's contestants. Donna is brought before Ozzy to tell her her wish, after which Ozzy convulses and births a monstrous creature. Granting Donna's wish, the creature proceeds to fire a beam out of its eye at the host and Donna's family, causing their faces to melt.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Steven Ogg | Host |
| Jerry Boyd | Marcus |
| Sonya Eddy | Debra |
| Amelia Ann | Donna |
| Charles Lott, Jr. | Brandon |
| Stephanie Ray | Ozzy |
| Lauren Powers | Bodybuilder |
| Lukas Gilbert | Timmy |
| Shae Rodriguez | Stretcher kid |
| Jeff Barnett | Stage hand 1 |
| Khalid Ghajji | Stage hand 2 |
| Zinnett Hendrix | Contestant 1 |
| Raquel Cain | Contestant 2 |
| Naomi Phan | Contestant 3 |
| Kyle Bales | Stage hand |
"The Gawkers"[]
Brady is a young teenager who films stop motion videos of toy soldiers with his older brother Dylan's camera. While Brady records his latest video, Dylan bursts into his room and takes the camera, which he uses to film himself practicing pick-up lines. He and his friends Kurt, Mark and Boner exclude Brady from their activities, thinking him to be a hopeless loser. The friends then go out to pull pranks on the neighborhood residents and each other, then perform tricks at the local skate park.
After concealing the camera and using it in an attempt to get secret up-skirt photos of two girls, the teens become fixated on Sandra, an attractive blonde-haired neighbor who has moved into the house across the street from Brady and Dylan's house. They note that her yard is decorated with several stone busts.
As the boys film Sandra washing her car from Brady's window, they are interrupted by a deliveryman who hands Sandra a Macintosh computer. Brady later meets and befriends Sandra, who invites him into her house while he attempts to roller-skate, much to Dylan's shock and jealousy. Upon Brady's return, Kurt, Mark, and Boner compliment him for his newfound relationship with Sandra. When they beg him for information, Brady tells them that Sandra invited him back to help set up a new webcam. Dylan and his friends enlist Brady to follow through on this promise, pressuring him into installing spyware on her computer, intending to hack into her webcam in the hopes of seeing her nude.
Brady reluctantly agrees and returns to Sandra's house that night. Although he is nearly caught, he manages to install the spyware, despite being wracked with guilt for spying on Sandra and betraying her trust. Unbothered, Dylan and his friends watch Sandra as she undresses as Brady leaves the room. The boys are horrified to witness Sandra rip off her scalp, uncovering hair made of snakes and revealing that she is actually a gorgon.
Sandra appears to notice what the boys are doing through the webcam and leaps from her window to their house. She breaks into Dylan's room and attacks them, killing Kurt, Mark, and Boner. As Dylan flees, Brady arrives and attempts to reason with Sandra, apologizing for violating her privacy. Not accepting his apology, Sandra turns Brady to stone, then proceeds to petrify Dylan as well. Now fully transformed, she slowly approaches the camera stuck in Dylan's stony hand, as the tape comes to an end.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Emily Sweet | Sandra |
| Luke Mullen | Dylan |
| Ethan Pogue | Brady |
| Cree Kawa | Mark |
| Tyler Lofton | Kurt |
| Duncan Anderson | Boner |
| Denise Dorado | Emma |
| Janna Bossier | Mom |
| Hannah Kat Jones | Cassidy |
| Danny Jolles | Delivery driver |
"To Hell and Back"[]
On New Year's Eve 1999, best friends and videographers Nate and Troy have been hired by what is revealed to be a coven of witches. Their task is to film the witches performing a ritual where a woman named Kirsten volunteers to be offered as a vessel to a powerful demon known as Ukabon. Despite agreeing to film the ritual, Nate is notably skeptical of his clients and thinks that the ritual may be a prank. The witches performing the ritual tell the duo that while they call to Ukabon, they will not actually summon it until the stroke of midnight on the new millennium, when the veil between Earth and Hell is at its thinnest. As the ritual begins, Furcas, an uninvited demon who has disrupted the coven's rituals before, makes its presence known. As the witches attempt to cast it out, Furcas grabs Nate and Troy and drags them underneath the witches' altar.
As his camera glimpses Furcas retreating, Troy slowly discovers that he and Nate have been sent to Hell. The duo encounter bloodthirsty demons, hazardous traps, and mutilated bodies spread throughout the cavernous landscape, prompting Nate to arm himself with a discarded pitchfork as a means of protection. As they make their way across Hell, Nate and Troy cross paths with Mabel, a damned soul who speaks in archaic terms and can tell that they are mortal, thus making them irresistible to hungry demons. She decides to help them escape by leading them to Ukabon, whom she hates, in exchange for the two of them writing her name in the witches' spell book. Nate and Troy also remember how the witches told them that the veil between Earth and Hell is weakest at midnight, and since Ukabon is the only conduit through which the duo can return to Earth, they have only minutes to find them before they are stuck in Hell for eternity.
While trekking across Hell, the group encounters more demons, and Nate and Troy bicker with one another constantly over their predicament, confusing Mabel with their modern ways of speaking. Eventually, the group enters a cave where they find Ukabon, surrounded by a cult of masked demons, preparing to enter Kirsten’s body. The demon cultists attack the trio, but Nate and Troy manage to kill them. As midnight rapidly approaches, Nate and Troy shout at Mabel to come with them to Earth. She is unfortunately stabbed by one of the cultists, reminding them to write her name in the book. The two friends jump inside Ukabon's cavernous stomach just as the ritual commences. The duo successfully return to Earth, albeit with Nate possessing Kirsten’s body. Furious that their ritual has failed, the witches kill Nate and Troy before arguing with one another about what went wrong. A dying Troy uses his blood to write Mabel's name in the book the witches used to summon Ukabon, then succumbs to his injuries before the tape ends.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Archelaus Crisanto | Nate |
| Joseph Winter | Troy |
| Melanie Stone | Mabel |
| Kim Abunuwara | Jane |
| Ehab Abunuwara | Husband |
| Ryann Abunuwara | Julia |
| Tori Pence | Kirsten |
| James C. Morris | Furcas |
| Alex Lacayo | Witch Alex |
| Vickie Hayden | Witch Vickie |
| Coe-Jane Weight | Grandma Great |
| Ariel Lee | Wormaid |
| Dustin Watts | Ukoban |
| Calen Chan | Winged demon #1 |
| Christian Russell | Winged demon #2 |
| Tyler Evans | Giant devil |
| Miguel Peña | Tortured soul #2 |
| Parker Cluff | Tortured soul #3 |
| Sena Warren | Cave tortured soul |
| Casey Warren | Bloodletter #1 |
| Alex Hasse | Bloodletter #2 |
| Beni Alexander | Bloodletter #3 |
| Halem Medina | Large bloodletter |
| Corbett McAllister | Troy's stunt double |
| Marc Miller | Bloodletter voice |
| Austin Anderson | Bloodletter voice |
| Jared Cook | Bloodletter voice |
| Vanessa Winter | Voice of Wormaid |
| Amanda Cook | Tortured screams |
Notes & Trivia[]
- The tagline for this film is "VHS goes to Hell".
- "VHS99" serves as a shortcut to this page.
- V/H/S/99 was made available for streaming on the Shudder streaming service on October 20th, 2022. It became the platform's most viewed streaming premiere, surpassing the previous title holder, V/H/S/94, released in 1994.
- V/H/S/99 was released on Blu-ray by RLJ Entertainment on May 23rd, 2023.
- On the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, V/H/S/99 holds a certified "fresh" Tomatometer rating of 77% based on fifty-three posted critic reviews. It has forty-one positive reviews and twelve negative reviews, averaging 6.1 out of 10. It has an audience score of 69% based on more than one-hundred user ratings, averaging 4 out of 5.
- The band name R.A.C.K. from "Shredding" is an acronym for the first names of the band members: Rachel, Ankur, Chris, Kaleb.
- The names of the members of Bitch Cat from "Shredding" are RC, Deirdre, Charissa, and Jessie.
- The name of the sorority from "Suicide Bid" that Lily attempts to join is called Beta Sigma Eta.
- "To Hell and Back" creators Joseph and Vanessa Winter are also the filmmakers behind the 2022 found footage movie Deadstream. Actress Melanie Stone appears in that film as well.
- Actress Perla Lacayo from "To Hell and Back" is credited as Alex Lacayo in this vignette.
- Presumably, actors Kim, Ehab, and Ryann Abunuwara are all related.
- Actress Amanda Seria from "To Hell and Back" is credited as Amanda Cook in this vignette.
Related pages[]
See also[]
Recommendations[]
External Links[]
References[]
1990s | 1996 | 1999 | Acid | Bicycle | Bondage | Buried alive | Cemetery | Chains | Coffin | Computer | Cult | Dead animals | Demons | Detroit | Disfigurement | Disintegration | Dismemberment | Drowning | Dungeon | Female topless nudity || Found footage | Ghosts | Gorgons | Guitar | Hell | Incantations | Jeep | Matter transmutation | Michigan | Motorcycle | Mutilation | Mystical texts | New Year's | Obscene finger gestures | Pitchfork | Police car | Possession | Profanity | Rifle | Ritualism | Severed limbs | Shovel | Smoking | Sororities | Spiders | Stabbings | Syringe | Tentacles | Torture | Turtles | Voyeurism | Wheelchair | Witchcraft | Witches