There's something unsettling about VHS tapes, especially those uncovered under mysterious circumstances. It's something that the horror genre has been obsessed with for a long time, and Posthumous, which just premiered at Fantastic Fest 2026, knows it very well.
Sophie Lowe plays Zoe in Posthumous, a young woman returning to her childhood home and estranged father, on her 30th birthday. After discovering a mysterious VHS tape, she slowly uncovers previously unknown secrets about her mother that lead to disturbing, terrifying supernatural occurrences.
At Fantastic Fest, The Direct spoke with Posthumous VFX director Josh Tanner, who talked about the horrors VHS tapes bring to the table and how they pulled off the many unsettling VFX effects throughout the movie.
Posthumous premiered at Fantastic Fest 2026, but the movie does not have a wider release date yet. Fans of horror movies should also check out The Direct's coverage of the campy horror-comedy Flapjax and Maika Monroe's insane performance in Victorian Psycho.
Posthumous & the Horror VHS Tapes Bring to the Genre
"It Sort of Reminds Us a Little Bit That We're Dying and of Our Own Mortality..."
- The Direct: "What is it about VHS [tapes] that brings horror and creep factor into any story?"
Josh Tanner: Look, I have a theory that as technologies sort of get further away from us in time, it sort of reminds us a little bit that we're dying and of our own mortality, and that sort of like the creeping factor of it. It's like when you look at sort of old 1920s photos or things, you know, like old media. It's like the further you go back, the creepier it looks... Certainly remember back as a kid, I wasn't playing VHS tapes and thinking that was creepy, or like when the tracking would go off and start warping. I didn't think that was creepy.
- The Direct: "Obviously, there are supernatural things occurring in this film, many of which start to arrive from the VHS tape itself. How did you work to make those effects a reality? And at the end of the day, what did you really want them to make the audiences feel?"
Tanner: The VHS elements themselves, we just wanted to be incredibly authentic, so we really did do a lot of, you know, there's the live on set stuff, but also we did a lot of refilming CRT screens and sort of running things through multiple passes, damaging the tape, and so we did a lot of that stuff, and we had an amazing visual effects team as well to sort of support the film.
The director praised the amazing artists who helped make Posthumous possible with their VFX work.
Tanner: A really amazing company named Goodman Brothers, based out of Sydney, that did the entity in the third act. Spoiler, there's an entity, and Justin Ledgerett, who is another great VFX artist who really came and did some wild VFX stuff towards the end of the film for us
- The Direct: "At the end of the day, aside from having just provided an entertaining movie-going experience, what did you want the story to impart on those that watch?"
Tanner: A huge theme of the movie is about the past and how it sort of controls us and haunts us, and I think the fact that it is so easy to look back... I'm a very nostalgic person, and I think about the past a lot, but sometimes you do need a bit of a nudge to go, hey, no, look forward... You've got some good times ahead of you, and I think the heart of that and of the father-daughter relationship... I hope it's just a really cathartic movie for people because we tried to make something that was really emotional as much as it was hopefully really scary.
Josh Tanner's full discussion with The Direct can be seen below:
