V/H/S/99 marks another addition to the V/H/S franchise, giving viewers five segments of found footage terror following the 2012 release of V/H/S, V/H/S/2 in 2013, V/H/S: Viral in 2014, and V/H/S/94 in 2021. “I think we’re all pretty excited to be part of the great legacy V/H/S has. I was just coming out of film school when that firm movie hit Sundance, and all those directors have gone on to do so many great things. Everyone brings their own energy to it. So it was cool to be a part of one and see things come together,” said Tyler MacIntyre who directed the segment The Gawkers.
As V/H/S/99 will premiere on Shudder on October 20, MacIntyre joined us to talk about the film, alongside segment directors Joseph and Vanessa Winter and producer Josh Goldbloom.
Building on the V/H/S Franchise
“I love the storytelling process and the V/H/S/ movies… I think there’s a pretty in-depth creative process. It goes into any movie, but V/H/S as well with the constraints that are provided. The most important thing for me always, as a producer being able to support the talent, is to see audiences engaged and enjoying and discovering… I also can’t wait for them to see the Glenn Danzig song that we put in at the end,” said Goldbloom.
As for which of the segments audiences will engage with most, Vanessa commented that she isn’t sure, with Joseph adding that he’s excited about a character introduction.
“We were walking around New York this morning, and Joseph was like, ‘Now that you’ve seen the movie a few times, which segment is your favorite?’ And I literally didn’t answer. We walked for another five minutes and I had no answer. So, I think the thing that I’m most excited about is to be part of something that I’m also a fan of, and I’m excited to see what the other fans react to and if they’re the same things that I love,” said Vanessa.
“Those are really great supportive-of-each-other answers. I’m going to say something that’s more self-centered,” joked Joseph. “I’m really excited for audiences to meet a character that we introduced in our film and to hear how they react to it,” referring to his character Troy in the segment To Hell And Back.
Process and Layers in V/H/S/99
Some segments in V/H/S/99 involve characters in environments that play into some of the most common greatest fears, like being buried alive in a grave, for example, as seen in Suicide Bid.
“The graves are built on a stage, we build tanks, and we put the coffins in those tanks. However, there are sequences that we absolutely shot in a cemetery, in a grave hole. It’s frightening for us as it is for the actress. Ally [Ioannides] was just absolutely lovely and super engaged. It’s tough when you send a breakdown out like, ‘You’ve got to be buried alive for a week covered in real spiders.’ You don’t get many people that are like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to do that.’ But she was very up for the challenge every step of the way,” explained Goldbloom. He continued, noting that there were precautions taken to ensure everyone was safe. “There was a moment where the girls jump into the water [filling a grave hole] at the cemetery, and I was very concerned about that because that’s how horror movies start. You jump in, and you become a zombie, right? So onset, we had safety people and medics, and we tested the water… we spent a whole night purifying the water and making sure it was okay for them to jump in.”
“We’re still refining our process,” commented Joseph on his and Vanessa’s work together, also referring to their previous film Deadstream. “Every time we write a script, we develop a different way of going about it. Like on Deadstream, we would write an entire scene and then send them to each other and rewrite the scene. But on To Hell And Back, it happened so fast on an aggressive timeline that we didn’t get through the scenes. We were writing a couple of paragraphs and then picking it up.”
“It’s just exciting that we’re now making movies that people are watching,” added Vanessa.
MacIntyre’s segment The Gawkers employs comedic elements throughout, which he credits to providing balance to the more tense parts of the film.
“Pretty much everything I’ve ever gotten made has been a horror comedy in some regard… I do think V/H/S/99 kind of has a little bit more of a comedic element to it. I wouldn’t say jokes for the sake of jokes, but kind of character-based comedic moments that happen throughout the movie. I think that’s great because horror and comedy definitely are like two sides of the same coin. They’re both grounded in misdirection… and you use it to control the dynamics of the movie. We knew that each segment was going to be pretty intense, so this idea came out of being like a palate cleanser,” explained MacIntyre.
He continued, discussing the found footage technique used throughout the film. “There’s a sense of realism to some of what you’re doing when playing with that form… the audience really goes along with it, and I think the V/H/S series has been really responsible for renewing it.”
V/H/S/99 is a Cook Filmworks and Winterspectre Entertainment production.
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