Film / V/H/S/99

V/H/S/99 is a 2022 Found Footage anthology film featuring segments directed by new franchise directors Johannes Roberts, Flying Lotus, Tyler MacIntyre, Maggie Levin and Vanessa & Joseph Winter. The plot is set during the year 1999, where a thirsty teenager's home video leads to a series of horrifying revelations, taking one giant leap forward into the hellish new millennium.

This is the fifth entry in the franchise following 2012's V/H/S, 2013's V/H/S/2, 2014's V/H/S: Viral and the 2021 reboot, V/H/S/94. A sixth film, V/H/S/ 85, was released in 2023.

Producers include previous franchise directors David Bruckner and filmmaking collective Radio Silence.

• Shredding: R.A.C.K, consisting of Rachel, Ankur, Chris, and Kaleb, are a punk rock garage band who host a web show where they pull off various pranks. For their latest video, the band decides to venture into "The Colony Underground", an abandoned music venue that was shut down after an electrical fire broke out. The venue is rumored to be haunted by the restless spirits of Bitch Cat, an all-girl punk group on the rise, who were trampled to death by their fans when the fire broke out. While it would seem that supernatural happenings plague the group as they attempt to film themselves playing on Bitch Cat's old stage, they turn out to be pranks that Rachel, Chris, and Kaleb pull on Ankur, who they treat as their go-to punching bag. That quickly changes when the actual, angry spirits of the deceased band emerge and go after the punks.
• Suicide Bid: Lily, an innocent college freshman, decides to perform a "suicide bid" by applying for recruitment to only one sorority on campus. The sisters of the sorority Lily wants to join, the prestigious Beta Sigma Eta, invite Lily to travel with them to a nearby graveyard. There, they share the urban legend of Giltine, a freshman who was dared to spend a night buried in a coffin as a hazing ritual, but was ultimately left in said coffin for a week and had disappeared when the coffin was unearthed. If Lily is to join them, the sisters say that she must endure the same ordeal, giving her a camera to film herself with as proof. Inside the coffin, Lily grows terrified by the presence of spiders, a downpour, and ominous knocking sounds from around the coffin, the latter of which happen to be the work of the now-demonic Giltine.
• Ozzy's Dungeon: Ozzy's Dungeon was a popular children's game show where contestants competed in a series of physical challenges. The grand prize was a chance to descend into the titular dungeon to meet Ozzy, who would grant the winning contestant a wish; any wish they desire. One contestant, young Donna, gruesomely and permanently injured herself during one of the challenges, which cost her the game. Years after Ozzy's Dungeon went off the air in response to the incident, the obnoxious former host of the show, who didn't stop the challenge so Donna could get help, is kidnapped by Donna's enraged mother Debra, blaming him for ruining the family's chance to have Donna's wish help them leave Detroit. As Donna's older brother Brandon films him, the host is forced by Debra to endure painful, dangerous, and nauseating homemade versions of the challenges on Ozzy's Dungeon as retribution for his actions, and is forced to complete them all within a time limit under the threat of being splashed with acid. When he fails to complete their challenges on time, the host tries to talk Debra out of killing him by offering to take them to the studio where Ozzy's Dungeon was filmed so they can have Donna's wish granted by Ozzy, who turns out to not only be a real creature, but who grants a different wish than what Debra and the rest of the family were expecting.
• The Gawkers: Teenager Dylan and his friends Kurt, Mark, and Boner film themselves fooling around and pulling pranks throughout the neighborhood. They also use their camera to secretly spy on girls to satisfy their never-ending lust. The teens grow particularly enamored with Sandra, an attractive blonde who has moved into the neighborhood, just across the street from Dylan's house. They quickly begin stalking Sandra, ogling her figure whenever they have the opportunity. Meanwhile, Dylan's dorky younger brother Brady, an expert with technology (whose stop-motion animations of toy soldiers comprise the framing material of the film), meets with Sandra by chance and is invited into her house. Witnessing this, Dylan and his friends recruit Brady into helping Sandra set up a new webcam she got in the mail, and in the process, install spyware on her computer so the teens can witness her nude through the webcam. When Sandra reveals a horrific secret through her webcam and finds out what's been happening, the teens soon find themselves getting hard... in the literal sense.
• To Hell and Back: On New Year's Eve 1999, a cult of witches and warlocks are attempting to summon a demon known as Ukabon. The witches have planned for their summoning to be held specifically on Y2K because the night of the new millennium is mentioned to be one of the few times where the barriers between Hell and the Earth are at their thinnest. They have also hired Nate and Troy, a pair of friends and videographers, to tape their ritual as a demonstration of what awaits the world. Despite their skepticism, the duo agree to film the summoning, possibly thinking it to be a gag. During the ritual, an uninvited demon known as Ferkus emerges from beneath the witches' altar and drags Nate and Troy underneath it. When they awaken, Nate and Troy find themselves to be stuck in Hell, surrounded by bloody remains, dangerously-placed traps, and hungry demons. While Nate arms himself with a discarded pitchfork, he and Troy ultimately come across Mabel the Skullbiter, a damned soul who has become slightly deranged thanks to her time in Hell. Despite this, she advises that the pair stay close to her and go where she goes, since they are mortals and thus have fresh souls, making them irresistible to the hungry minions of Satan. The pair also learn through Mabel that the veil between Earth and Hell will fully close upon midnight, which will occur in mere minutes. Now knowing what's at stake, Nate, Troy, and Mabel make their way across Hell in the hopes of finding Ukabon, so the former two can return to Earth before they're trapped in Hell forever.

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This movie provides examples of the following:

In General

• Asshole Victim: Like the previous films, most of the victims have it coming.
• Call-Back: The Veggie Masher infomercial from the previous film can be seen in the beginning of the film.
• Lighter and Softer: In comparison to previous entries (and particularly 94, which was easily the darkest and most consistently gruesome and violent entry in the series), this is much heavier on the Black Comedy and period kitsch and schlock, with a deliberate Camp feel throughout.
• Meta Twist: Unlike the previous films, there is no frame story. Instead, short stop-motion animations of toy soldiers — made by Brady from "The Gawkers" — serve as interludes.
• The Stinger: After the credits, another one of Brady's animations briefly plays.
• Turn of the Millennium: This entry takes place at the tail-end of 1999, described as "the final punk rock analog days of VHS."

Shredding

• All Drummers Are Animals: Inverted with R.A.C.K.’s drummer, Ankur, who serves as the group’s Only Sane Man.
• Butt-Monkey: Ankur, who is subject to the jabs of his friends for everything, from being hesitant with their plans to just being Hindu.
• Celebrity Resemblance: As part of the segment's punk rock motif, Rachel resembles Deborah Harry, lead singer of Blondie. Similarly, Chris has a faint resemblance to Marilyn Manson.
• Droste Image: Rachel creates one on her TV when she shoots it with her camera.
• Due to the Dead: At first, R.A.C.K. treats the legend of Bitch Cat with a sense of respect. When they enter the Colony Underground however, the trope is sharply averted, with the band making tasteless comments about the site of Bitch Cat's deaths, disturbing their shrine, and crushing blow-up dolls filled with Jell-O to mimic how the band were trampled. It's this final act that ultimately sets the spirits of the dead band after them.
• Everyone Has Standards: Ankur uneasily goes along with the rest of R.A.C.K. at first, but he is clearly not okay with their flippant and disrespectful attitudes towards the dead, and when they fake being possessed to prank him, he is openly disgusted and abandons them in a rage.
• Foreshadowing: Ankur tells the group about bhuts, restless spirits in Hindu mythology that possess any person who disturbs their resting place. By the end of the segment, R.A.C.K.'s corpses have been hastily stitched together and possessed by Bitch Cat, performing in the same place they died.
  • It's also foreshadowed with an open Bible at Bitch Cat's shrine that has a specific portion highlighted in marker. The portion highlighted? "Passed from death to life."
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The rest of R.A.C.K. treats Ankur like absolute shit, constantly mocking and insulting him, and even making racist jabs at him for being Hindu.
• Genre Savvy: Ankur expresses serious misgivings about going into the Colony Underground, and mentions that he's heard Hindu tales of bhuts, restless and angry spirits with unfinished business, even bringing herbs and spices as a protective measure. He was absolutely right about his suspicions of hauntings, but it doesn't stop him from following his friends inside, nor was it enough to save him.
• Insistent Terminology: R.A.C.K. makes it clear that "The Colony Underground" is an "arts collective", not a place to throw mosh pits.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After mocking Bitch Cat and the tale of their deaths by trampling, R.A.C.K is killed by the angered spirits of the band, who then possess their corpses so they can jam on their old stage.
• Only Sane Man: Ankur is the only member of R.A.C.K. who thinks that venturing into the Colony Underground is a bad idea, and he is clearly disturbed by the blatant disrespect for the dead that his so-called "friends" show. When they fake being possessed for shits and giggles, he blows up at the others, tells them that he hopes the bhuts kill them, and storms off in disgust.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: The spirit of Bitch Cat's vocalist RC tells Rachel, Kaleb, and Chris to "Get off my fucking stage!", right before she kills Kaleb.
• Rotten Rock & Roll: Bitch Cat, who were trampled to death by their fans, resurrect as demonic ghouls who kill anybody breaking into the music venue they now haunt.
• Shrine to the Fallen: An altar dedicated to Bitch Cat sits in the abandoned "Colony Underground".
• Shout-Out: R.A.C.K. is clearly modeled after Camp Kill Yourself.
• Tragic Monster: In life, the members of Bitch Cat were four young women who became lifelong friends through their love of music and partying, and their skills as musicians were good enough to bring them on the cusp of rock stardom. On the night of their last performance however, an electrical fire broke out at the Colony Underground, and Bitch Cat were trampled to death by their fleeing fans, leaving their corpses to burn in the blaze. Ever since, their restless spirits haunt the abandoned venue, and they proceed to kill and possess R.A.C.K. as an act of vengeance for defiling their resting place.
• Unfinished Business: Bitch Cat's spirits are hinted to haunt the Colony Underground because they died just before they could make it as rock stars.

Suicide Bid

• Alpha Bitch: Every member of Beta Sigma Eta.
• Break the Cutie: Lily is a nice but lonely young lady who desperately wants to join the sorority that she feels is where she is meant to be. The sisters of said sorority proceed to haze her by burying her alive in a coffin, fill said coffin with spiders, and ultimately bail on her when campus police officers investigate the graveyard. If that isn't enough, the coffin is exposed to pouring rain, filling it with water and mud and nearly making Lily drown. As the final cherry on top, Giltine herself, now a demon, takes Lily to the underworld with her. Thankfully, Lily gets the last laugh by making a deal with Giltine, offering the sorority sisters to her as replacement victims if she spares her soul.
• Chromosome Casting: Much like how the previous film contained a segment that only featured men, this segment's cast consists primarily of women. The only male characters in the story are an offscreen pair of campus police officers who inspects the graveyard, but leave when they don't hear Lily's screams for help.
• Dirty Coward: The sisters don't lift a finger to help Lily out of the coffin once a rainstorm occurs, nor do they say a word about their crime to anyone out of fear of being expelled and subsequently convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Their cowardice is more upfront at the end, as they are terrorized by Giltine and Lily.
• The Dog Bites Back: The now-demonic Lily works with Giltine to punish the sisters of Beta Sigma Eta by forcing them all to suffer the same fate she had: trapped in a coffin to slowly await death, if not being killed by the demonic duo outright.
• Drowning Pit: Lily's coffin is slowly filled with water when it's exposed to the pouring rain, putting her at the risk of drowning.
• Genre Savvy: Lily's roommate Helen can sense just what kind of girls the sisters of Beta Sigma Eta are, just by observing the way she and Lily were looked at, and questions Lily if she really wants to take the risk of joining their ranks and only their ranks. When Lily is left terrified through the ordeal, she tearfully apologizes to Helen for not listening to her.
• History Repeats: Just as Giltine did 20 years ago, Lily is drug into the underworld and turned into a demon.
• Jerkass: The Beta Sigma Eta sorority enjoy giving their inductees terrifying hazes, and they even leave Lily in a watery grave to avoid expulsion.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Lily and Giltine work together to get bloody revenge on the sorority responsible for turning them into demons.
• Meaningful Name: Giltine, the girl who fell through her coffin into the underworld and is now a reanimated demon, shares the same name as the Lithuanian goddess of death.
• Police Are Useless: The campus officers who check out the cemetery where Lily is buried don't seem to notice the blatantly open grave nearby. They promptly leave to get out of the rain and avoid catching pneumonia, leaving poor Lily to her fate.
• Sinister Sorority Sisters: Lily is a sweet young woman who only wants to have friends. She joins a sorority to try and make friends, with the warning that she's going to be a complete pariah if she doesn't make it in. They pull a cruel Initiation Ceremony for the sorority, burying her alive in a graveyard. When the coffin floods due to heavy rain, the other sisters abandon her to a slow and protracted death and don't alert the campus police, who mount a brief (and incompetent) search effort. As if that wasn't bad enough, they also encourage her to open a box when she gets most terrified, telling her that it will comfort her. It turns out to be full of spiders, for no other reason than because Evil Is Petty. Lily then gets visited by a demon and, as part of the pact, she kills the sorority sisters.
• Urban Legend: The legend of Giltine, which is revealed to have been true.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Lily's roommate Helen, who warns her that if Beta Sigma Eta rejects her application, she'll have to spend the rest of her freshman year as an outcast. She only appears in the opening scene, but Helen pleads that she forgive her and calls her her only friend.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The sorority sisters give Lily a box to take with her into the coffin, telling her to open it only when she's at her most terrified. Rather than the box containing something to help her, it's full of spiders, frightening the poor freshman even more.

Ozzy's Dungeon

• Abusive Parents: Debra is shown to be a domineering woman who only sees her daughter as a means to leave Detroit through the titular game show, and easily browbeats her husband and son into going along with her plans to torture and/or kill the former host.
• Aside Glance: The final shot of the segment is the camera frozen on a menacingly smug Donna looking straight at it, right after using her wish to have Ozzy kill her family and the host of the show.
• Bait-and-Switch: The segment starts off as a recording of the Ozzy's Dungeon game show. Halfway through, it turns out to be a recording of the episode where Donna was injured being shown to the kidnapped ex-host, several years after the incident.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Debra, despite claiming to be meaner then anything, is upstaged and killed by her own daughter and her wish.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Donna and her family, especially after she was brutally injured.
• Black Boss Lady: Debra obviously calls all the shots among her family.
• Body Horror: Donna's injured leg has been succumbing to decay ever since it was injured, apparently since her family was too poor to have it properly treated.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The host claims that he pissed himself during the makeshift obstacle course, if the yellow stain on his briefs is any indication.
• Bystander Syndrome: Despite calling the first aid personnel when a contestant is injured in an earlier challenge, when Donna's leg is hideously injured, the host does absolutely nothing but crack one-liners and pressure both her and Timmy into completing the obstacle course, even when the stage crew and the audience are blowing chunks, Debra is being physically held back from reaching her daughter, and Donna herself is tearfully pleading to stop the show.
• Cancellation: In-Universe. Ozzy's Dungeon was cancelled almost immediately after Donna was injured.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Debra and her family (indirectly) subject this to the former host of Ozzy's Dungeon, punishing him with painful homemade versions of the show's challenges.
• Covered in Gunge: Ozzy's Dungeon heavily features this, being a send-up of 90s kids' game shows, with contestants having to dig for a flag in a pool of gelatin. Debra builds a version of the show's final obstacle course in her basement that she subjects the host to, where the gunge is much more... fragrant and natural.
• Depraved Kids' Show Host: The unnamed host of Ozzy's Dungeon plays with this. While he's no doubt a jerk who doesn't treat his kid contestants well, and barely conceals his classism and racism, he never intended to cause Donna's injury.
• Dodgy Toupee: The host of Ozzy's Dungeon while he's on set. He's shown bald when kidnapped in Debra's basement.
• The Dog Bites Back: Donna, who was seen by her mom solely as her ticket to leaving Detroit by winning Ozzy's Dungeon, uses her wish to Ozzy to kill her and everyone else who wronged her.
• Eldritch Abomination: What the actual Ozzy is revealed to be, housed in a heavily pregnant woman and being worshipped by a cult in the studio's basement.
• Facial Horror: Donna's (new) wish results in Ozzy melting the faces off of the host and her family.
• Fan Disservice: Not only is the game show host is stripped down to his briefs, but Fat Bitch Debra goes topless and blows her nose without a tissue, snot being clearly seen shooting out of her nostril.
• Fat Bitch: Debra, a Scary Black Woman and Stage Mom. It's subverted with Ozzy itself, who inhabits the body of a heavily pregnant woman.
• Foreshadowing: Before the final challenge begins, the host tells Donna that no one has completed it before. The trend continues when Donna gruesomely injures her leg trying to complete it.
• Gilligan Cut: One of the contestants on Ozzy's Dungeon is seen being rammed into by her rival pretty roughly. After a brief transition, we cut back to her clutching an injured shoulder as the medics take her off the set, dropping her off the gurney in the process, showing us that the show doesn't really care about the kids' safety and the medics on hand are not properly trained for their line of work.
• Henpecked Husband: Debra's husband Marcus makes feeble objections to her revenge plot, but he is easily cowed into going along.
• Hollywood Acid: Debra repeatedly threatens to splash and/or inject the host of Ozzy's Dungeon with a bottle full of the stuff, and she holds onto the bottle as her preferred weapon throughout the entire segment from that point on.
• It's All About Me: While gravely concerned with her daughter's permanent injury, Debra proves herself to be domineering and self-centered, and is heavily implied to have groomed Donna to use her winning wish to get her out of Detroit, only seeing Donna as a means of doing so if she wins the show.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Despite his inaction towards Donna's injury, the host of Ozzy's Dungeon raises a valid point in saying that not every child who competed on the show could win and have their wish granted, since the show had a budget that would easily be depleted if every contestant won. He also points out that he's not the person who actually caused Donna's leg injury, and states that the show wasn't rigged in a way that the contestants couldn't win.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: At first, Debra's vengeance against the slimy game show host appears be out being a Mama Bear wanting to avenge her daughter's crippling out of a degree of affection for her, but as the segment goes along, it's revealed that she's looking out for herself and her own greed, aiming to seek revenge on the host for ruining her plans to have Donna win the show so she can leave her low-rent neighborhood.
• Karma Houdini: Timmy, Donna's rival contestant and the person who actually injured her leg, doesn't suffer any consequence for doing it.
  • However, given the nature of Donna's wish at the end, it's possible he was killed, too.

• Knight Templar Parent: Debra, as she appears to be motivated by avenging her daughter's crippling against the game show host.
• Large Ham: Debra. The host is also one, when he's on set of course.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Debra, who blatantly saw her daughter as her ticket to leave Detroit behind her, gets her face melted off when Donna finally gets her wish granted. Her father Marcus, older brother Brandon, and the host of the show share the same fate, the former two for blindly following Debra, and the latter for not stopping the show after the injury.
• Lovely Assistant: The Amazonian Beauty assistant to the host. She may not be human, as she's still in the empty studio years after Ozzy's Dungeon was cancelled.
• Lower-Class Lout: Debra can be considered to be one, for her unkempt Fat Bitch appearance and manners, and the fact that she and her family live in a low rent part of Detroit, if their Creepy Basement is any indication. As a kid, Donna even told the host that she and her family drove from Detroit to Florida because they couldn't afford to fly.
• Mama Bear: Debra, being a vengeful Stage Mom, avenges her daughter's crippling against the game show host. Even when the injury first happened, Debra had to be physically restrained by her husband and her older son from coming to her aid. For all her domineering tendencies, this incident shows that Donna's mother does have some degree of affection for her daughter.
• No Name Given: The host of Ozzy's Dungeon.
• No OSHA Compliance: A fair share of contestants on Ozzy's Dungeon were shown to suffer injuries while competing on the show, the injuries themselves ranging from mild enough to be tended to by on-site first aid, to levels of permanent damage and disability, such as Donna's leg. The medics on standby also seem to be bungling and overall not good at their jobs, either.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Debra's Cold-Blooded Torture of the Slimeball game show host.
• Revenge Before Reason: Debra and Donna, the latter especially, who used her wish to kill everyone who wronged her rather than fixing her ruined leg, which would be more practically desirable.
• Sadistic Game Show: Ozzy's Dungeon has the bearings of one of these, since the physical challenges aren't necessarily safe, the on-standby medics aren't good at their jobs, and the host is a sleazy asshole who doesn't really give two shits about his contestants.
• Sassy Black Woman: Debra, to a point of being an Evil Is Hammy Large Ham Chewing the Scenery style villain about it.
• Scary Black Woman: The vengeful Mama Bear Debra and Donna herself, as she not only became a Goth who wears a constant Death Glare since her crippling, but used her wish to avenge herself, with the last shot of her being a spine-chilling combination of a Slasher Smile, Psychotic Smirk and Kubrick Stare that she gives to the camera.
• Self-Made Orphan: Donna uses her wish to have everyone that wronged her die, including her parents.
• Shout-Out: Ozzy's Dungeon itself is a pitch perfect love letter to 90s Nickelodeon game shows, specifically borrowing elements of GUTS, Double Dare, and Legends of the Hidden Temple.
  • And just in case you feel like Ozzy's Dungeon doesn't look and sound exactly like something straight out of the early 90s, just before the second challenge begins, the Host exclaims "AALLLLLLL-righty, then!"
  Host: Who hasn't seen that movie?
• Slimeball: In-Universe, Debra believes the host is one. Her belief has merit due to his sleazy demeanor on set.
• Stage Mom: Debra's shown to be one of these, mainly valuing her daughter Donna as means to win Ozzy's Dungeon and using her wish to leave Detroit. The way she treats the rest of her family isn't any better, often berating them whenever they speak up.
• Stock Sound Effects: These are played all over Ozzy's Dungeon.
• Took a Level in Cynic: While on the show, Donna was an energetic and excitable girl eager to win the show and have her wish to leave Detroit granted. As a teenager, years after she injured her leg and the host didn't stop the show, she's a morose and angry goth confined to a wheelchair, and her injured leg has been succumbing to rot.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Donna, prior to her accident and becoming a seething, vengeful goth.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Donna, especially after her wish gets granted.

The Gawkers

• All Men Are Perverts: Dylan and his friends enjoy spying on women and getting as many upskirt/nude shots as they can. Hell, their main motivation throughout the segment is to find a way to spy on their next-door neighbor Sandra as she strips naked.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Dylan thinks that his younger brother Brady, who uses his camera to make movies of toy soldiers, is an annoying geek.
• Decoy Protagonist: Brady's shorts throughout the movie imply that he'll be the lead character, only to find out that the camera he was using belongs to his older brother Dylan.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The deliveryman who delivers Sandra's Macintosh appears earlier in the segment, as the teens remove his parking brake and make his van roll away.
• Face Doodling: Boner, true to his name, gets a dick drawn on his forehead when he's asleep.
• Fan Disservice: Dylan and his friends think they can still enjoy Sandra getting nude after she takes off her hair. They take it back when the snakes are revealed.
• Fanservice Car Wash: Sandra washes her car in her driveway (in the requisite tank top and cut off shorts) as Dylan and his friends spy on her from his room, before their view is blocked by a mailman who delivers her computer. The guys even say that she's washed her car in the exact same fashion every day since she moved in.
• Foreshadowing: Sandra's stony lawn decorations.
  • There's also the huge piece of snakeskin the guys find lying around, way too big to have been left behind by a normal snake.
  • Boner also plans to be hiding out in a "bomb shelter/crib" when Y2K rolls around, telling his friends that they're gonna be sorry they didn't join him. This mention of Y2K ties into the final segment.
• Framing Device: Brady's stop motion movies of toy army men make up the film's wraparound.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Sandra is presented as drop-dead hot for most of the segment, even after she reveals her snake hair. The final seconds of the segment avert the trope by having her growing fangs, scales, and yellow eyes.
• I Know You're Watching Me: When she transforms into her true form, Sandra can apparently sense or outright see Dylan and his crew through the webcam, where she kills/petrifies the lot of them.
• In a Single Bound: Once she turns into a gorgon, Sandra apparently reaches Dylan's room by leaping from her second story window to his roof.
• The Internet Is for Porn: Brady manages to install spyware into Sandra's computer so his brother and his friends can spy on her through her webcam.
• Laser-Guided Karma: As punishment for their obsessive stalking of Sandra, Kurt, Mark, and Boner are gruesomely killed, and Brady and Dylan are turned to stone.
• Medusa: Sandra is revealed to be a gorgon. It's not revealed if she's the actual Medusa, though.
• Mythology Gag: Pun aside, just like Lily in VHS and Siren, Sandra is revealed to be a creature from mythology, particularly a gorgon.
• Nice Guy: Brady is a genuinely good kid who Sandra takes a liking to, and he feels pretty badly about betraying her trust by installing spyware on her computer for his brother.
• No-Sell: Sandra manages to shrug off a hammer to the back during her killing spree.
• Pet the Dog: After he installs the spyware, Dylan compliments Brady for fulfilling his duty. Beforehand, his friends call him a man for his blossoming relationship with Sandra
• Properly Paranoid: Boner is planning to hide in a bunker for Y2K. The next segment features Y2K as a central plot device, and proves that Boner was somewhat right about the day bringing bad omens... just not in a way that involves technology.
• The Quiet One: Sandra never utters an audible word throughout the segment. The closest we get from her are growls and hisses when her true self is revealed.
• Shower Scene: Dylan and his friends' ultimate goal is to catch Sandra in the middle of one.
• Sickening "Crunch!": When Boner breaks his arm while skateboarding.
• Sinister Surveillance: It isn't so much "sinister" as it is "obnoxious and perverted", but Dylan and his friends rope Brady into installing spyware on Sandra's computer so they can spy her nude on her webcam.
• Stalking is Love: Dylan and his friends' motivations for the segment are to spy on Sandra and watch her get nude without her knowledge or consent.
• Taken for Granite: The ultimate fate of Brady and Dylan.
• Techno Wizard: Brady is able, under his brother's orders, to install spyware on Sandra's computer so Dylan and his friends can watch her through her webcam.
• Villain Protagonist: Dylan and his friends, a bunch of perverted assholes looking to spy on their beautiful neighbor, are our "lovely" protagonists.

To Hell and Back

• Action Girl: Mabel knows her way around a good portion of Hell, and acts as the duo's guide to Ukabon's lair. She even tells the duo that she was given command of 30 legions of demons.
• All for Nothing: After escaping hell by the skin of their teeth, Nate and Troy are immediately killed by the witches, and their souls are presumably sent right back to hell. At least Mabel has a shot at returning to earth, if The Stinger is any indication.
• Affably Evil: The witches treat summoning their demonic lord and ushering an everlasting age of darkness as a celebration to look forward to. They even make sure that their vessels give consent to allow the coven to use them as sacrifices, and do so by producing special release forms designed for potential vessels to sign.
• Bathos: The segment milks quite a bit of humor from its absurd juxtapositions, like the coven insisting on their vessels signing consent forms for their sacrifices, and Nate and Troy's somewhat lame attempts at badassery. Having to fight your way out of hell with the help of an unhinged witch? Terrifying. Doing it while wearing a party hat and bickering over who's more qualified to carry the spear? Hilarious.
• Bittersweet Ending: Nate and Troy are killed by the witches, who thankfully fail to summon Ukabon, but Troy is able to write Mabel's name in their spell book before he dies, giving her a shot at resurrection. The witches are even heard using Mabel's name in their summoning chant at the end of the credits, indicating that she will indeed return to the realm of the living.
• Black Comedy: In spite of the endless gore and mayhem Nate and Troy find themselves getting into, this segment serves as a more comedic outing than the four that preceded it.
• Black Magic: The witches are practitioners of the art.
• Body Horror: Lots of misshapen demons and mutilated human corpses are found in Hell.
• Body Swap: Nate accidentally possesses Kristen, Ukabon's intended vessel, when he and Troy return from Hell.
• Continuity Nod: Kristen, the host body for Ukabon recruited by the witches, allows herself to be Ukabon's vessel because she feels destined to be part of something bigger than her... an exact phrase which was previously quoted in V/H/S: Viral.
• Crazy-Prepared: The witches are shown to have their victims sign release forms to solidify their consent with being their sacrifices.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being a pair of dum-dums, Nate and Troy manage to upgrade into Action Survivors who fight their way through Hell to get back home.
• Demonic Possession: In an interesting case, Kristen willingly volunteers to be Ukabon's vessel in the witches' ritual. She gets mistakenly possessed by Nate when he and Troy come back from Hell.
• Devil's Pitchfork: Both videographers arm themselves with discarded pitchforks for protection. Nate gets a large one, while Troy steals a smaller one from a sleeping(?) imp.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Nate and Troy accidentally get sent to Hell by mistake when the witches attempt to summon Ukabon.
• Escaped from Hell: Nate and Troy manage to get thrown into Hell by an uninvited demon named Ferkus, and fight for their lives to reach Ukabon so they can return to Earth before midnight.
• Eyeless Face: One of the creatures encountered in Hell, which freaks the duo out.
• Fat Bastard: From what we see of him, Ukabon is a flabby demon with tendrils on his midsection and a cavernous mouth on his stomach.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Nate doesn't believe in the concept of Hell after he and Troy are sent there, and he attempts to persuade Troy that they can't actually be in Hell because neither of them go to church.
• Hell: Obviously. This is the first segment in the franchise where it's actually seen. It consists of dry, barren badlands and sharp rocks, a dark sky (save for occasional red flashes of lightning), brutal acts of torture and murder, and a kaiju-sized Satan looming over it all.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Mabel is stabbed by one of Ukabon's followers before she can escape with the duo to Earth. She tells the two of them to hurry back before they get stuck there forever, as well as to write her name in the witches' spell book.
• Karma Houdini: The witch cult aren't punished for their murder of Nate and Troy or their practicioning of the dark arts, but their plan to summon Ukabon fails, which leaves them immensely frustrated.
  • The uninvited demon, Ferkus, also gets away with dragging Nate and Troy to Hell in the first place, as he is last seen scurrying away through the camera.
• Large Ham: Mabel, an eccentric Cloudcuckoolander who spends her screen time Chewing the Scenery with anarchic terms.
• Nice Girl: In spite of being a damned soul who speaks in anarchic terms and... isn't exactly right in the head, Mabel grows to like Nate and Troy, using her experiences in Hell to safely bring them to Ukabon's lair and protecting them from demons, in exchange for the two of them writing her name in the witches' book to let her have a chance at returning to Earth. Throughout their time in Hell, she tosses a severed arm to distract a demon, removes a beartrap clamped onto Troy's hand, and uses her bandages to attach Troy's camera to his head so he can crawl through a tunnel. It gets to the point where the duo even invite her to return with them to Earth, and when she is stabbed by one of Ukabon's cultist followers, Troy uses his blood to write her name in the witches' spell book, allowing her a shot at returning to Earth even after he and Nate die.
• Nightmare Fetishist: The geeky Kristen, who the witches recruit to be Ukabon's vessel, is actually thrilled to be demonically possessed.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: The witches accidentally summon a different demon known as Ferkus while summoning Ukabon. Their irritated-yet-casual dialogue when they can sense him lets us know that Ferkus has been showing up quite uninvited through their rituals many times before.
• Race Against the Clock: After finding themselves transported to Hell, Nate and Troy remember that the witches said the veil between Hell and Earth is only at its thinnest at the stroke of midnight on the new millennium. Because of this, the duo have only minutes to find Ukabon and use him to return to Earth, or else they'll be stuck in Hell forever.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The sky in Hell is completely shrouded by dark red clouds, the flashes of lightning they produce bringing the only pockets of light to the landscape.
• Satan: He makes a brief appearance as a huge silhouette in the sky.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Nate and Troy manage to fight off insurmountable odds and escape from Hell alive... and are promptly killed by the angered witches for ruining their ritual.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Nate and Troy, which highlights their idiocy. Mabel even mocks them for it.
• Spell Book: The witches have one, and Mabel offers to help the videographers out of Hell in exchange for getting her name written in the tome. Troy manages to do so just before he dies from his injuries.
• Those Two Guys: Nate and Troy, a pair of moronic videographers hired by the cult.
• To Hell and Back: The literal name of the segment.
• Turn of the Millennium: The story is set on New Year's Eve 1999, which is believed to be the point when the veil between the Earth and Hell is at its thinnest, which is why the witches decide to use the night to summon Ukabon, a particularly "big" demon.
• The Unreveal: Troy asks Mabel what she did that got her sent to Hell, but he isn't given an answer.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Ferkus, the uninvited demon who drags Nate and Troy to Hell.
• Voice of the Legion: A booming voice, most likely Ukabon, commands the "Great Order" to retrieve him.
• Winged Humanoid: The first demon the duo encounter has gory ones which seem to be made of bone and muscle tissue.
• With Friends Like These...: Nate and Troy snipe at each other constantly while they're stuck in Hell, reminding one another of their previous transgressions against the other (such as Troy telling Nate's ex-girlfriend that he had a gambling addiction), but they manage to make amends and return to Earth... where the witches kill them.

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