The first V/H/S film was released in 2012 as a found footage horror anthology by Bloody Disgusting. Since then, the franchise has spawned three sequels, the second of which received critical praise.
While the VHS franchise isn’t innovative in and of itself, there are a number of shorts that have become well-known among horror enthusiasts solely because of the creatures they depict. Any good narrative is only as good as its villain, and V/H/S has a slew of them in its sleeve.
The anthologies provide something for everyone, from alluring succubus from mythology to murderous cyborgs from science fiction. The most important aspect of the franchise, however, is that the numerous shorts were directed by a diverse group of well-known and famous directors that specialize in action, horror, and science fiction. So, without further ado, here are the nine most terrifying monsters from the V/H/S movies.
Succubus – “Amateur Night” – V/H/S (2012)
The film Amateur Night is the first film of the anthology and revolves around three friends who rent a motel and then visit a bar in the hopes of picking up a girl and bringing her back to the motel room so that she could be filmed using glasses that have a spy-cam embedded in them. They go out to one of the local bars and pick up a girl named Lisa. However, they also manage to get another mysterious girl named Lily.
On the way back to the motel, it becomes clear that Lily is not the regular girl one may encounter at a bar and that something is strange about her. After coming to the motel, Lisa passes out as one of the guys tries to make out with her.
He then turns to Lily, who takes charge, albeit a bit too much. It soon becomes clear that she’s not a girl at all, but an extremely violent and deadly succubus who was only hunting for mates at the bar. What follows a post that is beyond anyone’s guess.
So, anyone who takes an interest in demons and creatures from folklore and mythology would have at least a passing knowledge of a succubus. These nasty demonic entities appear in female form to seduce men and, well, do sinister shit with them.
As few of you may know, the first-ever succubus is believed to be Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who later mated with archangel Samael and then refused to enter the Garden of Eden. But apart from Jewish and Christian mythologies, the succubus finds mention in ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamian and Egyptian.
Now, such an entity is bound to find a place in cinema from around the globe. Now, most of the succubi that have been featured in films have been romanticized and modernized as extremely attractive women who can speak perfectly, carry themselves like classy ladies, etc. However, it is important to note that a succubus is essentially a demon, and it doesn’t care much about conversational or soft skills, right?
That’s what David Bruckner’s short film does best. It portrays its succubus named Lily, possibly referencing the name Lilith, in the crudest and most honest form. Not only does she have fanged teeth and clawed feet, but it also seems she has a fractured skull. Furthermore, she can hardly speak anything apart from the words “I like you!” That’s just creepy. Bruckner’s demon has no qualms for violence.
She is every bit violent as she is hedonistic. She initially bites one guy’s palm, but that was absolutely nothing when compared to what she does to him later, tearing his genitals and all. However, before that, she mutilates and probably devours another guy she was making love to. In the end, Lily takes the last survivor of her carnage and flies away into the darkness of the night.
The Glitch – “Tuesday the 17th” – V/H/S (2012)
Three friends named Joey, Samantha, and Spider accompany their new friend Wendy to a deserted and secluded lake in one of her annual visits to the place. They leave their car after arriving at a dead end and then walk deep into the forest to reach the said lake. Throughout their walk, they witness strange things like eviscerated animals, etc.
Moreover, Wendy keeps telling them strange things like how her friends once died in that same place or how Joey, Samantha, and Spider were going to die that day. Upon reaching the lake, Joey goes for a swim in the lake while Samantha and Spider take a walk. Suddenly, a figure with a red, featureless face puts a knife through Samantha’s skull. A traumatized Spider meets a similar fate.
Meanwhile, when Joey asks Wendy about his friends, she tells him that they took off, but late reveals that she had brought the three friends to the lake as bait to catch the killer who had once killed her friends. The killer then appears again and slashes Joey’s throat. Wendy runs away, and the killer follows her.
It turns out that Wendy had set traps like pit traps, bear traps, and bed of spikes. Despite falling for each trap, the killer manages to escape and ultimately gets Wendy. He hits her repeatedly with her camera and eviscerates her guts out. In the end, Wendy’s mutilated body twitches, signaling that she was becoming the killer, who was described as The Glitch in the credits.
Written and directed by Glenn McQuaid, the film features an entity that’s seemingly invisible to the naked eye, but can be vaguely captured by a camera. Due to the distorted image, it was called The Glitch. Wendy claimed things like the Glitch could be present in two places at once and had killed all her friends once upon a time, and it turned out that she was indeed correct.
The Glitch not only proved to be a skilled slasher killer, but also a sadist supernatural entity. If we think about it, the Glitch bears an uncanny resemblance with the cloaking device of a Predator from the Predator franchise but has all the undertones of a slasher like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.
However, if we are to consider its supernatural origins, the only monster that comes to mind is a poltergeist, which is a type of ghost or spirit that creates physical disturbances. Alleged cases of poltergeists have existed at least since 1654 when the Scottish mathematician and demonologist George Sinclair mentioned the poltergeist called the Glenluce Devil in his book Satan’s Invisible World Discovered. Nevertheless, The Glitch is such a fine amalgamation of several movie monsters that it becomes a unique monster in its own right.
Zombie – A Ride in the Park – V/H/S/2 (2013)
A Ride In The Park begins with a man named Mike preparing to go cycling in the biking trails of a state park. Right before that, he gets a call from his girlfriend Amy, and we learn that the two are in love. Nevertheless, Mike rides through the woods only to bump into an injured and panicked woman who was begging Mike to help her boyfriend. The woman soon starts to throw up blood and collapses.
Meanwhile, Mike notices a bunch of zombies coming his way; as he tries to warn the woman, she reanimates and bites him. He manages to kill her after much struggle and runs further into the woods, only to vomit blood himself and then collapse. Mike’s corpse is then found by a cyclist couple, who dial 911.
However, Mike reanimates as a zombie and bites the guy while the woman runs for safety. Mike begins to devour the guy, and sometime later, the girl returns, now turned into a zombie herself. The zombies then attack the people present at a birthday party; some of them escape in their cars while the others look for means to secure themselves.
Meanwhile, Mike tries to attack three kids and their father, who had locked themselves inside their car. But when Mike sees his reflection in the tinted glass, his rage subdues. A while later, he accidentally speeds dials Amy, who says that she loves him. The phone call brings back a bit of humanity into Mike; he gets hold of a shotgun and shoots himself to save others from the monster that he’s become.
The primary zombie in this film was Mike, a simple young guy who loved his girl but was met with a disastrous end. Co-directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale, the film’s strongest point remains to show the film from a zombie’s perspective. Not only do we know Mike’s background and personality, but we also get a visceral view of the paradigm shift as far as his physical and mental transformations are concerned.
In the end, the zombified Mike resorts to shooting himself after an illuminating ray of humanity breach his dead heart. The film could very well be titled the Rise and Fall of a Zombie. I am just kidding!
Zombies are often portrayed as swarms of pests that destroy the crop of humanity. However, A Ride In The Park changes that and almost gives its zombie a personality of his own. Well, one shouldn’t entirely be surprised because Sanchez also served as the co-director of the thrilling found-footage film The Blair Witch Project.
The Horned Demon (The Baphomet) – Safe Haven – V/H/S/2 (2013)
Malik goes with his fiancé Lena, best friend Adam, and cameraman Joni goto interview a cult leader and film his cultist institution for a documentary. The leader, only known as Father, is initially hesitant but later agrees to allow them into his establishment. However, he sets several rules as to what can be filmed and what can not, so the crew uses both visible and hidden cameras for their project.
They are greeted by one of Father’s wives and a daughter. It soon becomes clear that the women of the cult have to sleep with the Father as a rite of passage. Also, they all see him as the path to heaven and the keeper of keys. Nevertheless, they proceed with the interview and exploration of the mysterious building with strange markings.
During the interview, Lena falls sick, and Malik learns through a hidden microphone that his fiancé was pregnant with his best friend Adam’s child. This is when the film picks up pace, as Adam finds a woman almost mutilated near her crotch because of a cesarean gone wrong. Meanwhile, Father stabs Joni’s through with a knife before slicing it because the moment reckoning has arrived.
The cultists commit mass suicide using poison and guns, while Lena is taken by a few women in surgical gear to a delivery room. Adam witnesses Malik being shot dead and learns that all the dead had reanimated into zombies. He fights his way through them to reach Lena, whose screams he could hear, but instead, Father confronts him, but he explodes into a visceral cloud of blood and internal organs.
Adam manages to defeat the zombies holding Lena, whose womb had become abnormally large for an early stage of pregnancy. Despite trying to save her, she dies when a horn pierces through her belly. A life-size Baphomet erupts out of her womb while Adam runs for his life, fighting the zombies.
He gets into his car and races away, only to be rammed into by the Baphomet, who addresses him as Papa. Upon realizing that the demon was indeed his child, Adam has a burst of hysterical laughter, possibly losing his mind.
The Baphomet or the horned demon depicted in this film originated in the early 14th century as a diety that the Templar Knights worshipped. Since then, it has traveled to various mythologies and folklore, including the oriental world. The Baphomet is essentially an entity with the legs and head of a goat, three horns on its head, and wings of a large bird.
The most descriptive example and depiction of the Baphomet can be found in the book titled Dogma and Rituals of High Magic, which Eliphas Levi wrote in the mid-nineteenth century. Although considered by many as a symbol of equilibrium between good and evil, right and wrong, the Baphomet is yet another monstrous demon fetched out from the depths of mythology.
The film Safe Haven was co-directed by TimoTjahjanto and Gareth Evans, the latter of whom is also famous for delivering Indonesian action hits like The Raid and its sequel. Interestingly, the cult shown in the film bears close resemblances with the real-life Heaven’s Gate cult that was formed by Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite in San Diego. On March 26th, 1997, it was reported that 39 members of the cult had committed mass suicide as a means to transcend and become something more than human.
Grey Alien – Slumber Party Alien Abduction – V/H/S/2 (2013)
The parents of Gary, Randy, and Jen leave the house for an overnight romantic getaway and leave the kids in charge of the house. Gary and Randy invite their friends Shawn and Danny, while Jen calls her boyfriend over so that they could enjoy a raunchy night together. The kids attach a camera to their pet dog and record everything around their lakeside home. The four young kids constantly annoy Jen and her boyfriend Zack, and because of this, they ignore the first glance of one of the grey aliens in the water.
I mean, one can not really blame them because they were attacking the elder couple with squirt guns filled with urine! Nevertheless, by nightfall, things begin to take a turn for the worse when a loud noise is heard just outside the house, due to which the house loses power and connectivity. Meanwhile, they notice silhouettes of people just outside the door.
Witnessing this, Zack grabs a gun and attempts to scare the possible intruders, but to everyone’s surprise, grey aliens abduct him. One by one, each one of them is abducted, packed into sleeping bags, and thrown into the lake. The three siblings manage to escape with their dog, but the grey aliens pursue and find them. And eventually, all of them are abducted.
The monsters from this film, directed by Jason Eisener, are grey aliens, who are also known as Zeta Reticulans or simply Grays. According to one estimate, out of all alleged alien sightings in the United States of America, 73% of them claim the involvement of grey aliens. These creatures are usually described to be grey in color with a humanoid stance and structure.
However, they lack any external body parts such as ears, noses, or even sexual organs. Their elongated bodies are so sleek that their skeletal structure is visible. The first major publicity that the grey aliens received was from the claims of Betty and Barney Hills, a couple from New Hampshire, who claimed to have been abducted by the grey aliens.
While many skeptics thwart these claims as fabrications, there are others who believe that the grey aliens are a part of a larger government conspiracy, and there are yet others who believe that the grey aliens do exist. What do you think?
Demonic Entity – Parallel Monsters – V/H/S: Viral (2014)
A Spanish inventor named Alfonso successfully develops a prototype that could facilitate interdimensional travel. Upon activating this interdimensional portal, he sees his own garage and an exact replica of himself on the other side. Both Alfonsos discover that they have opened a doorway to each other’s parallel universes. Excited by their invention, both Alfonsos decide to explore each other’s world for fifteen minutes before returning to their respective worlds.
The story then follows the Earthly Alfonso, who explores his counterpart’s house. It initially seems that the house is an exact replica of his Earthly house, but he begins to notice strange things like a satanic picture hanging on the wall. He then meets his counterpart’s wife, who looks like his own wife.
His wife, Marta, introduces him to two men who are both named Oriole. Upon going inside, he sees a ritualistic setup with a bag of organs just hanging in the center of the room. The parallel Marta then tells the men about a ritual and how her husband likes to go first, but the Orioles suspect that Alfonso is not interested, and they leave. Alfonso then hears demonic chanting coming from a blip and goes out to investigate. He sees an inverted cross and realizes that the two worlds have opposite dominant religions. In the parallel world, Satan has taken the place of God.
The two Orioles then chase and attack Alfonso, and one of them unzips his pants to reveal that he has a huge fanged creature instead of male genitalia. Alfonso stabs them with a screwdriver and escapes to get back to his world but comes across the parallel Marta, who also reveals her demonic genitalia.
Back at the house of the real Alfonso, the parallel Alfonso attacks Earthly Marta with his demonic penis. Meanwhile, the Earthly Alfonso knocks down parallel Marta and crosses the portal to reach his house.
The parallel Marta arrives and devours the parallel Alfonso on account of domestic violence. The real Alfonso shuts the portal down, but he’d been injured and calls for his wife. The Earthly Marta arrives and stabs the real Alfonso multiple times assuming that he was the savage who had previously attacked her.
Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, this film was every bit thrilling as it was scary. The director handled the concept of a parallel universe with great ease and ensured that the film didn’t get uselessly complicated or confusing.
We often use the term parallel universe in our everyday use but never do we stop to think about the horrors that such a world would hide. Vigalondo emphasizes the sexual aspect of the monsters from the parallel universe and gives them a Satanic overtone. In my personal opinion, it’s a brilliant piece of work.
Reanimated skeletons – Bonestorm – V/H/S: Viral (2014)
Skateboarders Jason and Danny hire a cameraman named Taylor to help them record skateboarding videos. However, Taylor seems more interested in getting Danny and Jason into a freak accident so that he could use the footage to earn money by selling it as a snuff film. They pick up a fight at the skatepark where they were filming, and Taylor suggests that they go to an abandoned skatepark in Tijuana, Mexico.
Because they were short on fuel money, Taylor asked his friend Shaun to tag along, but that is only because they wanted to use Shaun’s dad’s credit card. They reach Tijuana but fail to find the said skatepark and settle for recording the video at a deserted flood channel with satanic markings intended to bring a demonic monster to life.
It wasn’t before long that a mysterious woman appeared in the middle of the flood channel and broke off Taylor’s arm. Meanwhile, many cultists appear from nowhere and attack the kids. They fight off and kill the cultists using skateboards and a gun, but the blood spilled on the ground awakened the demon.
Just as that happened, the dead cultists reanimated as skeletal figures and started to attack once again. In the end, Jason and Danny managed to flee towards the border while the demon ate Taylor along with his camera.
Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead are the same guys behind critically acclaimed films like Resolution and The Endless. Known for their creative and novel cinematographic techniques, the duo brought the same magic to Bonestorm. The reanimated skeletons appearing in the film served as the minions of the demon they awakened in their human lives.
Although the demon wasn’t given enough screentime in the film, it’s safe to say that it is among the most formidable monsters that have appeared on this list. By the way, if you liked this film, do check our video on Benson and Moorhead’s film The Endless. It’s titled Time Bending Evil Lovecraftian Entity Of THE ENDLESS (2017) – Explored – An Absolute Underrated Gem.
“Raatma” A Grotesque Half-Human/Half-Rat Creature – Storm Drain – V/H/S/94 (2021)
When the city gets plagued with terrifying rumors about a humanoid monster named Rat Man, Reporter Holly Marciano and her cameraman Jeff visit one of the storms drains to make a report about the said legend. There were several witnesses who claimed to have seen the Rat Man in the sewers and being a good reporter, Holly decided to dig deeper into the story.
Holly and Jeff find several homeless encampments before finding an elderly man covered in some kind of black goo. When Holly tried to interview him, the man started spilling the black goo from his mouth and murmured the word Raatma. Scared, Holly and Jeff tried to flee but were caught by other slave dwellers.
They are then taken deeper inside the sewers, where a minister proclaims that new religious order is about to begin. He summons his god, and a grotesque amalgamation of a human and a rat appears.
The creature vomits some more black goo, which the minister collects and throws on Jeff’s face. Jeff’s face burns and he dies an excruciatingly painful death. Next up is Holly, who is to be tested for being worthy of becoming a part of this new order. The Raatma growled over his face but kept her alive, signaling that she had been accepted.
Sometime later, Holly is rescued from the sewers, and she gets back to work. Holly seems to be normal while presenting the news telecast, but then she spits the black goo on her co-anchor on live television, burning his face to death. In the end, she finishes by saying, ‘Hail Raatma.’
Like most creatures appearing in the VHS anthology, the origins of Raatma are largely unknown, but it is clear that it was created due to some form of genetic mutation of one of the sewer dwellers due to constant exposure to toxic waste.
The film Storm Drain could be considered as a satire on the increasing pollution in the surrounding, but then there are a few aspects about Raatma that go beyond sci-fi and enter the realm of the supernatural.
Mechanical-Human Hybrid – The Subject – V/H/S/94 (2021)
Dr. James Suhendra is an exceptional but mad scientist who specializes in mechanical prosthetics. At some point in time, Suhendra decided that he should be the one to create a biomechanical human or, as he liked to call it—the Neo Human. Given that his experiments are far beyond the boundaries of scientific and social acceptance, he would abduct his own patients and use them as his test subjects.
Right at the beginning of the film, we see a man’s head attached to spidery legs, but the creature catches fire and gets destroyed. In Suhendra’s facility, there were several such abominations, but his most successful experiments were the ones he performed on a young girl and a young man. The girl transformed into a cyborg, while the man transformed into a huge robot with spring-powered blades instead of arms.
Although the giant robot lost all his sense, humanity, and memories from his human life, the girl or the cyborg did retain her memories and could even respond to speech. She started to resist her confinement, and Suhendra was about to kill her, but he was interrupted by the police, who were already on the lookout for him.
The commander of the cops had his men shoot Suhendra down, and he wanted to kill the girl as well, but he was interrupted by the cameraman that the cops brought along with themselves. Furthermore, the huge robot man woke up from his slumber and started slashing the cops one by one.
The robot was then seemingly put down using a grenade, and in the chaos, our cyborg girl escaped from the scene. In the end, the robot killed the cameraman, and in the act of revenge and survival, the cyborg girl pulled the robot’s brain out, killing him for good.
Written and directed by noted Indonesian horror director TimoTjahjanto, the film explores the question of humanity in humans as well as robots. On one hand, the mad scientist, the police commander, and the giant robotic man represent the dark side of humanity, while the cyborg girl and the cameraman seek to define what it truly means to be human.
In one of the scenes, she euthanizes another test subject to put an end to her miseries. When the cameraman asked her what she really wanted, she said that all she wanted was to live. So, amidst all the carnage and visceral gore, the film aspired to be humane and somewhat succeeded in its attempt in doing so quite poignantly.