My quick rating – 3.5/10. Conjuring Tapes kicks off with the kind of premise horror fans can sniff out a mile away: two women (Brenda Yanez and Samantha Laurenti) sorting through their late friend’s belongings stumble onto a pile of mysterious VHS tapes. You already know the rules: if you find unmarked horror tapes in a box, you put them back, torch the house, and move. But no, our leads do the polite horror movie thing and press play, thereby punching their ticket for a slow train to doom.
The first tape serves as a nostalgic PSA reminding us that the gateway to the afterlife can, in fact, be purchased at any game store near you courtesy of Hasbro. For the budget, the scares are decently pulled off—cheap, yes, but competent enough. Not a bad start, though the story has all the edge of a butter knife.
Next, we meet a “professional” paranormal investigator. We know he’s professional because he actually says, “You have seen my videos.” (Yes, the ultimate resumé line.) His portion mostly features bad acting, cheap jump scares, and an abandoned office where a possessed woman chases him around like it’s a low-rent Scooby-Doo gag. Still, it’s the segment that introduces the connecting thread: the women watching these tapes keep seeing themselves in the footage, even though they weren’t there. Cue the ominous “dun dun, duuuuun” noise.
The third tape? Therapy session gone wrong. Hypnosis summons an entity named Mr. Magpie (who sounds more like a rejected Saturday morning cartoon villain than pure evil). The concept isn’t terrible, but the acting doesn’t sell it. Think less “psychological terror,” more “community theater warm-up exercise.”
Then things take a left turn into cult territory. We get a PSA for the SRO, followed by a podcast dissecting their nonsense, which makes the film feel less like a horror anthology and more like a Vice documentary on weird groups meeting in barns. And honestly? That part almost works. The sermon, delivered by Lori Richardson, is the one moment that feels grounded and creepy enough to be believable. Unfortunately, the whole cult angle gets shoved aside for—you guessed it—a crappy found footage chase through dark tunnels.
Finally, we arrive at the wraparound story, which ties everything up with a bow so obvious that if they’d chosen any other ending, I would’ve applauded out of pure shock. But no, we get the predictable finale that the script has been telegraphing from minute one.
Conjuring Tapes isn’t the worst anthology I’ve seen; it has a couple of fun ideas and a cult sermon that feels disturbingly real, but between limp acting, predictable structure, and found footage clichés, it’s nothing I’d recommend. If you’re hunting for hidden gems in the bargain bin, you could do worse. But you could also just rewatch V/H/S and save yourself the déjà vu.
You can rent it on Amazon or check it out for free with ads on Tubi.
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