The film is presented as an anthology of short horror films, built into a frame narrative which acts as its own short horror film. Each short film is linked together with the concept of found footage (each segment is from the VHS tapes found in the room).Tape 56/frame narrative[edit]Directed by Adam WingardThe frame narrative focuses on a criminal gang who film their exploits, which include smashing the walls and windows of an abandoned house and sexually assaulting a woman in a parking lot. An anonymous source offers them a large sum of money to break into a house and steal a single VHS videotape. The gang is eager to expand their criminal enterprises, and accept the task.Entering the house, the criminals find an old man sitting dead in front of several television sets playing white noise. Feeling free to roam the house, they discover hundreds of unmarked VHS tapes, and set about collecting them all to ensure that they retrieve the right one. One of the criminals stays behind in the TV room with the dead body to watch the "Amateur Night" tape left in the VCR. The contents of this tape and the four subsequent ones comprise the bulk of the film, with the action cutting back to the criminals' efforts between each short. As the frame narrative progresses, the gang encounters a strange figure moving around the basement, which appears to be the old man. Glimpses of the TV room demonstrate that, unknown to the criminals, the man's body disappears at one point only to reappear in the exact position. Similarly, the criminals return to the TV room to find that the first viewer has disappeared, prompting another of the criminals to continue watching the tapes himself. After the "The Sick Thing that happened to Emily when she was Younger" segment ends, the gang's leader returns to the TV room to discover that he is the only person left, and that the old man's body is gone.Searching the rooms upstairs, he finds the decapitated remains of one of the criminals, and is subsequently attacked by the old man, who is now a zombie. The leader flees downstairs, where he falls and is killed by the other figure seen walking around the basement, which seems to be a monster. The frame narrative ends with the camera left in the TV room picking up the sound of the VCR starting the "10/31/98" tape by itself.Amateur Night[edit]Directed by David BrucknerShane, Patrick, and Clint are three friends who have rented a motel room to fulfill Shane's intent of bringing women back for sex; Clint's glasses have been outfitted with a hidden camera that will allow them to turn their planned encounter into an amateur porn video. While the three men are bar-hopping, Clint encounters a mysterious young woman, Lily, who acts aloof and says little other than "I like you."In addition to picking up Lily, the men also succeed in convincing another young woman, Lisa, to return to their motel with them. Lisa passes out as Shane attempts to initiate sex and Patrick, laughing, discourages him from continuing. Lily continues awkwardly coming on to Clint, but a dejected Shane comes on to Lily instead, oblivious to the scales visible on her feet as he undresses her. Lily appears responsive, pushing Shane onto his back and then beginning to undress Clint, seemingly beginning a threesome. Overwhelmed, Clint goes to the bathroom; Patrick disrobes and attempts to take Clint's place, but Lily has made it clear that she dislikes Patrick.Moments later, Patrick bursts into the bathroom claiming Lily bit him. When they approach Shane, Lily sprouts fangs, attacks and kills him. Clint and Patrick hide in the bathroom until Patrick, still nude, arms himself with a shower curtain rod and returns to the room. Clint tries to wake Lisa and Patrick attempts to fight Lily but she subdues him, drinks his blood and rips off his genitals. Clint escapes, but ends up falling down a stairwell and breaks his wrist in the process. Lily catches up to Clint, but instead of attacking, she attempts fellatio. Finding Clint unaroused, she crawls over to a corner and cries softly, which gets louder, then turns into a horrific growl. Clint flees, begging bystanders for help, but he is suddenly lifted into the sky by Lily, who has transformed into a winged creature. The glasses fall off Clint's face and hit the ground before the video cuts out.Second Honeymoon[edit]Directed by Ti WestA married couple, Sam and Stephanie, travel to Arizona for their second honeymoon. They visit a Wild West-themed attraction where Stephanie receives a prediction from a mechanical fortune teller, which claims that she will soon be reunited with a loved one. That evening (off camera), a woman comes to Sam and Stephanie's motel room and awkwardly tries to convince Sam to give her a ride the next day. In the middle of the night, while the couple are asleep, someone breaks into the room, turns on the camcorder and films touching Stephanie's buttocks with a switchblade. The intruder then steals $100 from Sam's wallet and dips his toothbrush in the toilet. The next day, on their way to visit the Grand Canyon, Sam notices the missing money and accuses Stephanie of taking it, but she assumes he is joking. That night, someone enters the room again and stabs Sam in the neck with their switchblade, filming him as he chokes on his own blood before decapitating him. The camera then shows the killer, the woman from earlier, cleaning the blade while she and Stephanie kiss passionately. The recording cuts to Stephanie asking her lover if she has erased the footage.Tuesday the 17th[edit]Directed by Glenn McQuaidThree friendsâJoey, Spider, and Samanthaâaccompany their new friend, Wendy, on a camping trip. Joey films the group as Wendy leads them through the woods, occasionally mentioning 'accidents' that took the lives of her friends. When scanning certain areas, images of mutilated bodies appear in the film. Wendy then tells them that a murderer killed her friends during a camping trip here the previous year, but the group laughs it off as a joke. Spider and Samantha leave the group and are killed by a human-like figure with a red head obscured in tracking errors (identified in the credits as "The Glitch").At the lake, Wendy tells Joey she lured all three of them to the grounds to use as bait so she can find and kill the mysterious force. Wendy reveals that she had been to this lake before where a killer had slaughtered all her friends and she was the only survivor. She notes that the police did not believe her when she said the killer could be in two places at once. The entity walks up behind Joey and slits his throat.Wendy runs away, luring the figure into two easily escaped booby traps and is cut by it in the second one. She films the entity close up, but it continues to be obscured by the tracking error. Wendy continues to run through the woods, she finds Joey in his death throes. After he dies, the figure approaches Wendy and a final trap impales it. Wendy gloats at it and walks away but when she turns around, it is gone; it reappears in a tree and jumps down, beats her with the camera, then kills her, subsequently eviscerating her, then inhabiting her body.The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger[edit]Directed by Joe SwanbergThis segment is shown through computer video chats. Emily talks to her boyfriend James, a trainee doctor, about a strange bump on her arm and how it reminds her of an accident she had when she was younger. After witnessing a small, childlike entity rush into her room and slam the door shut, Emily believes her apartment is haunted. Her landlord claims that no children have ever lived in the apartment, but Emily is unconvinced. During her next video chat with James, an increasingly frantic Emily digs into her arm with a scalpel to find out what the bump is, but James urges her to stop before the wound becomes infected.Emily attempts to contact the being, but it knocks her out. James quickly appears in her apartment and surgically removes an alien fetus from Emily's torso. Aliens are using Emily as an incubator for alien/human hybrids, and James has been working for them and removing the fetuses for some time. The aliens erase Emily's memory, and James mentions that the arm bump is a tracking device. In their next chat, a badly injured Emily believes she sustained her injuries after wandering into traffic in a fugue state. She reveals that the doctor James recommended has diagnosed her as schizoaffective, and tearfully says that James deserves a better, more normal girlfriend. He assures Emily that she is the only person he wants to be with, but once their chat ends he begins a new chat with a different woman who has the same bump on her arm and also believes James is her boyfriend, showing that the aliens are using more than one person as an incubator.10/31/98[edit]Written and directed by Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez &amp; Chad Villella)It's Halloween 1998. Chad, Matt, Tyler, and Paul (dressed in Halloween costumes as the Unabomber, a pirate, a teddy bear implanted with a nanny cam, and a Marine, respectively) head out to a Halloween party at a friend's house, only to end up at the wrong place. Sneaking inside, they begin to experience paranormal phenomena and decide they are at a haunted house and have fun with it. In the attic they find several men gathered around a young woman whom they've suspended from the rafters, apparently performing an exorcism. The men are chanting "cast you down", and the boys exuberantly join in, "cast him down". One of the men reacts angrily to their presence and physically assaults the young woman. More violent, overtly threatening paranormal phenomena then begin to occur and the boys initially flee before realizing they should try to rescue the girl. Returning to the attic, the boys work to untie her and get her to safety, as the house itself comes to life with poltergeist phenomena and ghostly hands coming out of the walls and floors to claim the lives of the woman's captors.Exiting through the basement, the boys pile into their car with the girl and drive away. The car abruptly stops and the girl disappears, reappearing in the street before them and walking away amid a flock of birds before they realize that they've stopped on train tracks. The boys attempt to get out of the car as a train approaches, but the doors are locked. The screen starts to flicker with static and the train smashes into the car off-camera, presumably killing all inside.During the end credits, clips from Tape 56 are shown.
Output: Question: Why are the masked criminals sent to the seemingly empty house?, Answer: Steal a single VHS videotape