"Tape 56"/frame narrative

"Tape 56" is the frame narrative for all the other shorts featured in the 2012 anthology horror movie "V/H/S". Directed by notable horror director Adam Wingard, who has directed movies like "You're Next" (2011) and "Death Note" (2017), and written by Wingard and his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett.

The short follows a street gang who film their actions, destroying property and attacking people. They are hired to break into a house, and inside they find a collection of strange tapes, each of which has a strange effect on the gang members and the house around them.

This is the first short in V/H/S and the first in the series, and is followed by "Amateur Night".

Plot
The 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 they accept the task.

Entering the house, the criminals find an old man sitting dead in front of several televisions 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 Zak to continue watching the tapes himself. After the ending of "The Sick Thing that happened to Emily when she was Younger" segment, Gary returns to the TV room to discover that Zak has disappeared as well, 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 Zak and is subsequently attacked by the old man, who is now a zombie. The terrified leader flees downstairs, where he falls and is killed by the zombie. 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.

Cast

 * Calvin Reeder as Gary
 * Lane Hughes as Zak
 * Kentucker Audley as Rox
 * Adam Wingard as Brad
 * Frank Stack as Old Man
 * Sarah Byrne as Abbey
 * Melissa Boatright as Tabitha
 * Simon Barrett as Steve
 * Andrew Droz Palermo as Fifth Thug

Trivia

 * the brick house that the main character break into, where they find all the VHS tapes, is the same house feature in Marble Hornets, the popular found-footage YouTube series that popularised the Slender Man.