V H S 85 2023 -

Where previous entries leaned into camp or nostalgia, 85 weaponizes the very limitations of its format. The year is, of course, 1985—the peak of the home camcorder boom, when families recorded birthdays and serial killers recorded basements. Director David Bruckner (returning to the franchise he helped launch with 2012’s Amateur Night ) and his cohort of filmmakers—Scott Derrickson, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Natasha Kermani, and Mike P. Nelson—treat the VHS artifact not as a gimmick but as a ghost. The tracking errors, the blown-out highlights, the haunting moment when the tape runs out and snow fills the screen: all of it becomes a language of dread.

But the crown jewel is Guerrero’s “They’re in the Walls” —a relentless, Spanish-language slasher set during a live televised lucha libre match. When a news crew follows a luchador home to document his “simple life,” they discover that the real monster isn’t in the ring but in the family shrine. The finale, shot entirely through a shoulder-mounted Betacam’s night-vision mode, is a strobe-lit ballet of blood and azulejo tiles. It’s the most beautiful massacre you’ll ever hate to witness. V H S 85 2023

The final wraparound reveal—that every tape we’ve watched was a snuff collection belonging to the documentary’s “scientist,” who has been broadcasting his “research” into empty airwaves—lands with a quiet, sickening thud. There is no final girl. No police raid. Just the hum of a VCR in an empty room, waiting for the next viewer. Where previous entries leaned into camp or nostalgia,

★★★★½ (4.5/5) Best watched with the lights off and your hand hovering over the eject button. Nelson—treat the VHS artifact not as a gimmick

Unlike the uneven pacing of some franchise entries, 85 builds like a concept album. The wraparound segment, “Total Copy,” presents itself as an earnest PBS-style documentary about a “new form of life” discovered in a Nicaraguan lake. But as the “expert” grows increasingly unhinged, the documentary’s slick veneer cracks to reveal a Cronenbergian body-horror nightmare—one that subtly connects every other tape in the collection.