The latest installment of the found footage horror anthology V/H/S has arrived, this time tapping into the minds of some legendary musicians. V/H/S/Mixtape, released to streaming on October 9, 2026, features a collection of shorts that explore horror through music, rhythm, sound, and other audio elements.
Filmmakers like Ernest Dickerson, Renee Zahn, and David Moreau, along with musician Flying Lotus, Tobias Forge of Ghost, and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, contributed. In an October 2026 interview for Consequence, RZA shared the inspiration that led him to his final idea for V/H/S/Mixtape.
His segment, titled “Death Tone”, follows a sound engineer tasked with finishing her late father’s final project. Neela Jolene portrays the young engineer, who struggles to complete her father’s instructions. She eventually starts killing in order to directly record the sounds of death.
As for what led RZA to this idea, he explained that it had a lot to do with his own career. “For me as a producer,” he said, “I always incorporated police sirens, trains, thunder, lightning. Like the sound of New York is all in my music.”
RZA’s Horror Short Drew Inspiration From His Own Production Style and 90s Horrorcore Group
RZA’s experience with field recordings and ambient sounds directly inspired his idea for “Death Tone”. But it didn’t come to him immediately. First, he went through several other ideas, trying out themes and conflicts that just didn’t seem right. According to RZA, he spent four months brainstorming for the short.
Before landing on field recordings of death, RZA came up with an idea for instruments made of human skin. But that’s a bit overdone in the horror genre in one way or another. For devoted horror fans, it just doesn’t have the shock value. However, a sound engineer committing murder to record the sounds of death has a good blend of slasher thrills and psychological torment. A bit like Blow Out from 1981, but with more purpose.
RZA’s engineer “thought that the best thing to sample is to sample life itself, sample death itself” to get the perfect sound. This blend of his own artistic tricks with gruesome horror themes might remind longtime fans of RZA’s other rap group, Gravediggaz. For a bit in the 90s, they pioneered horrorcore hip-hop, which has since grown as a genre.
Meanwhile, “Death Tone” had some links to the Gravediggaz track “1-800-SUICIDE”. This actually appeared on the soundtrack to Ernest Dickerson’s 1995 film Demon Knight. And of course, Dickerson teamed up with Flying Lotus for his own V/H/S/Mixtape short.
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