There was once a time when “straight-to-VHS” was a slur, code for largely terrible bargain bucket movies made for next to nothing yet sporting wildly-overpromising covers. Today, it’s not even a thing. VHS tapes were replaced by DVDs and eventually streaming. The last VCR player was made in 2016. Most machines lie broken, covered in dust or already long-since sent to scrap heaps.
But one filmmaker is bringing “straight-to-VHS” back and hoping to give it a makeover for the digital era.
“This is How the World Ends” — a low-budget sci-fi adventure about a brother who sets out to find his sister at a hedonistic party deep in the desert dubbed the “last party on earth” — is, according to South African director Robert dos Santos, the first straight-to-VHS release in 20 years.
“The concept for us was: what does VHS in 2026 look like and how can this be a new reimagining of what ‘straight-to-VHS’ means,” dos Santos tells Variety. “It used to be proper slander, if someone said ‘straight-to-VHS,’ it meant terrible. But the whole point of this is to reclaim that and say, look, straight-to-VHS is actually saying that this is a well-made film, made with intention for an audience.”
That VCR-owning audience is, of course, limited. But not quite as limited as first thought by dos Santos, a former lawyer who switched to film after being held at gunpoint multiple times in South Africa and realizing “I’m going to die, so I can die chained to a desk, unhappy, or just accept who I am and seize the moment.”
