The new film This Is How the World Ends is a remarkable piece of cinema, telling the story of two siblings who find each other at a party held at the end of humanity. It is essentially On the Beach set at Burning Man. However, what truly sets it apart is its release method: it is the first straight-to-VHS film in 20 years.
A Deliberate Challenge for Viewers
In the early 2000s, an estimated 90% of British households owned a VCR, marking the last golden days of the format before DVDs, Blu-rays, and streaming took over. In 2016, Funai Electric, the world's last VCR manufacturer, ceased production. Releasing a film straight to video today makes watching it as difficult as possible. That, according to director Robert dos Santos, is precisely the point.
“I love the idea that you need to be part of the club to watch this,” he says via video call from Cannes. “It’s for people who have a specific taste. There is a band of human beings who really understand what we’re doing.”
Originally a lawyer, dos Santos moved into filmmaking after being held up at gunpoint multiple times within a few months. “I realised that I’m going to die one day and, if I’m going to die, I might as well do something that I’ll truly, really, passionately enjoy.”
More Than a Gimmick
My initial assumption was that This Is How the World Ends would be a deliberately trashy genre piece that played with the limits of VHS. Instead, it is a beautifully shot modern indie film grappling with big themes. It’s easy to draw a line from dos Santos’s real-life experiences to the movie’s end-of-world hedonism. Notably, the thing that ends the world in the film is artificial intelligence.
The looming threat of automated creativity pushed dos Santos toward this unconventional release. “It’s a film made by humans for humans,” he says. “I want people to feel something that’s imperfect, because VHS is not a perfect medium, but there’s also a physical process to it. You have to order a tape and, for some people, actually go out and buy a VCR.”
“I’m asking people to do a lot, but that’s what it means to be a human. That’s what it means to exist in this lifetime, to actually participate in the act of life, and not to just allow things to happen. It’s to go out there and feel the bumps and the grooves of life.”
Against AI
Dos Santos is not a fan of AI. “Someone once said that if your mum can do it, it doesn’t have value,” he says. “If everybody can do something, then nobody can do it. You wouldn’t watch a FIFA World Cup that was AI-generated. If there was a reality TV show and they said, ‘Oh, we just generated this,’ you wouldn’t watch it. Because what we’re drawn to is the idea that there are human beings interacting, engaging with one another, being part of the process.”
Although dos Santos has made things more difficult for himself by sourcing physical VHS tapes and learning to transfer the film onto them, there is a market for this. The subreddit r/VHS has 73,000 users, and companies like Witter Entertainment release specialised VHS editions of movies like Terrifier and Mandy. In 2024, Alien: Romulus released a limited edition VHS copy, reformatted into 4:3.
Nostalgia and Ownership
The love for VHS is twofold. First, there is nostalgia for the format. Our conversation soon turned to memories of visiting video stores, discovering unexpected films, and rewatching rentals repeatedly to get value for money. Second, when cinematic archives are controlled by a few billion-dollar streamers who can bury titles forever, owning a tangible hard copy becomes special.
“Hey, maybe we shouldn’t digitise everything,” dos Santos says. “I’m a massive fan of vinyl. I love that if I put Led Zeppelin IV on, I have to listen to the whole thing. I’ve got to commit to listening to Stairway to Heaven without skipping it. You’ve got the intentionality of musicians. I know that VHS has a niche audience, but if we can bring people back to the hands-on effort of engaging with art, that’s something that I would love.”
Watching the Film
I admit I did not watch This Is How the World Ends on VHS. Due to my deadline and the assumption that my television wouldn’t know what to do with a VCR, I requested an online screener. The screener came with the password “stuartpleasebuyavcr,” which I appreciated. The film itself is gorgeous, with desert scenes full of beautiful HD details like pinks in the clouds and the texture of sand.
However, anyone who watches the film in its intended form—on wobbly old standard definition video in a boxy television format—would miss many of these details. Was that galling? “There will be image loss and a cropped image, and obviously I’m in love with the images we shot, so it’s a compromise,” he says. “But I think that falls back on what I was talking about. Compromise is a part of experiencing life. Some film-makers would stick their noses up at VHS. But that’s the price you pay for being a human and for bumping up against the four corners of the world, and in this case, the four corners of the screen.”
Future Plans
Eventually, This Is How the World Ends will step outside its narrow confines. “We’re doing the opposite of what used to happen,” dos Santos grins. “First you’d take a film to cinema, and then eventually at the very end you get VHS. And we’re like: no. If you want to watch this, get a VCR and let’s go. Then after that, we’re going to go to Blu-ray and DVD, and then after that, we’re going to go to cinema and streaming. But the first priority is VHS.”
The strategy appears to be paying off. Before the film is even released, dos Santos and his team had to order more VHS tapes to meet demand. “Already I’ve had people literally send me a video, just like they just reach out on Instagram and say, ‘Hey, I bought my VCR so I can watch it,’ and I’m like, ‘You’re crazy.’ It’s madness. This will never be full-on mainstream, but I’m very happy about that. It’s nice to have a niche, and for those who are crazy and passionate enough, it’s saying: ‘Hey, there are others like us. We’re crazy and passionate, just like you are.’” This Is How the World Ends is released on 7 June, which is also World VCR Day.
