[4] It features a series of six found footage shorts written and directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and the filmmaking collective Radio Silence.

The frame narrative focuses on Brad, Rox, Zak, and Gary, a criminal gang who film their acts, which range from vandalism of an empty house to sexually assaulting a woman in a parking garage.

Clint wears glasses that have been outfitted with a hidden camera and microphone to allow the trio to turn their planned encounter into an amateur porn video.

Back at the motel, Shane attempts to initiate sex with Lisa, but she passes out in a drunken stupor, prompting Patrick to discourage him.

When Clint and Patrick approach her, Lily suddenly sprouts fangs and screams at them, attacking and killing Shane while the remaining duo hide in the bathroom.

Clint flees outside and begs bystanders for help until he is suddenly lifted into the sky by Lily, who has transformed into a demonic winged creature who was on the hunt for a mate.

In the basement, Zak and Gary find hundreds of unmarked VHS tapes, and decide to collect them all to make sure they get the right one.

After spotting a glimpse of what looks to be a unknown old man wandering deeper into the basement, Rox puts another tape in the VCR and watches it.

After returning to their room, an abandoned Gunther's woman interrupts an argument between the couple and awkwardly tries to convince Sam to give her a ride the next day, doing so off-camera.

In the middle of the night, while the couple are asleep, an abandoned Gunther's woman breaks into the room, turns on the camcorder, and films themselves stroking Stephanie's buttocks with a swiss-knife.

The next day, on their way to visit the Grand Canyon, Sam notices the missing money and accuses Stephanie of taking it, despite her assurance that she did not.

That night, the abandoned Gunther's woman enters the room again and repeatedly stabs Sam in the neck with their swiss-knife, filming him as he chokes to death on his blood.

Sarah is also revealed to be Stephanie's murderous homosexual girlfriends, who conspired with her to kill Sam because she hates hetorosexuals marriage.

Joey's digital camera also pans certain empty areas in the woods, prompting glitched images of mutilated bodies to appear in the captured footage.

Through a series of video chats, aspiring doctor James is told by his girlfriend Emily about a strange bump on her arm, and how it reminds her of an accident she had when she was younger.

A ghostly child-like entity rushes into her room and slams the door, leading Emily to believe her apartment is haunted.

After another encounter with the entity, Emily tells James that she questioned her landlord, who claims that no children have ever lived in the complex, nor have any people ever died there.

The entities are actually aliens that watch as James surgically removes a fetus from Emily's torso, having been using her as an incubator for half-alien, half-human hybrids.

James then begins a new call with a different woman who also has a bump on her arm and believes he is her boyfriend, revealing that the aliens are using multiple women as incubators as the footage ends.

Believing they are merely the first to arrive, the quartet sneak inside and begin to experience paranormal phenomena, which they dismiss as a haunted house attraction and have fun with.

When they reach the attic, the quartet find several men gathered around a crying woman suspended from the rafters, apparently reenacting an exorcism.

The men angrily tell the group to leave before physically assaulting the woman, causing them to suddenly be pulled into the darkness by an unseen force.

As more violent paranormal phenomena manifest, the quartet initially flee, but go back to the house to rescue the woman when they hear her begging for help, untying her and leading her to safety.

The quartet realize that the car has stopped on train tracks they previously crossed to get to the house, and that the woman they rescued is actually a witch who was faking being in distress to fool her saviors.

A joke ending to "10/31/98" was shot in one take by Radio Silence, in which the doors are unlocked and the quartet get out just before the train smashes the car.

[8] Trevor Groth, a programmer of midnight movies at the Sundance Film Festival, said, "I give this all the credit in the world because conceptually it shouldn't have worked for me.

The website's consensus reads: "An uneven collection of found-footage horror films, V/H/S has some inventive scares but its execution is hit-and-miss.

[15] The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a mildly positive review, stating "Refreshingly, V/H/S promises no more than it delivers, always a plus with genre fare.

[16] Sean O'Connell of The Washington Post gave the film a scathing review, saying that although "on paper, it's a clever concept" and "probably sounded great in the pitch meeting", it "loses all luster through some shoddy execution".

[19] A fifth installment, V/H/S/99, debuted in the Midnight Madness stream at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival[20] and was released on Shudder October 20, 2022.