V/H/S/Mixtape review – murderous puppets pull the strings in mixed bag of gory music-themed mini-movies

Metal band Gwar host this instalment of the horror series, which serves up darkly humorous movie morsels that would struggle to frighten a toddler The latest in the long-running horror-feature series is, as per usual, a decidedly diverse ragbag of shorts, strung together with the thinnest of connective tissue.

The theme this go-round seems to be music and sound, so it sort of makes sense that hosting duties for the interstitial bits fall to the goofy metal band Gwar , its assorted members met here cracking Halloween dad jokes in their trademark extravagant outfits. The five mini movies vary significantly in length as well as quality. Flying Lotus’s stop-motion exercise Another Cabin posits a young boy in a rural cabin living with a mean old grannie who tries to push him forward when a tentacled demon tears the roof of the house in search of a snack. The characters’ resemblance to the cast of early 2000s series The PJs is slightly jarring, given this is such a different register, but the brevity works…