The new film This Is How the World Ends is a fine piece of work; the story of two siblings finding each other at a party held at humanity’s end, it is basically On the Beach set at Burning Man. However, what is really remarkable about it is its method of release, as the first straight to VHS film in 20 years.

In the early 2000s it was estimated 90% of British households owned a VCR – the last halcyon days of the format, before it was replaced by DVDs, and then Blu-ray, then streaming. In 2016, the world’s last VCR manufacturer Funai Electric ceased production. To release a film straight to video, in other words, is to make watching your film as difficult as possible.

That, explains the film’s director Robert dos Santos, is kind of the point. “I love the idea that you need to be part of the club to watch this,” he says over video call from Cannes. “It’s for people that have a specific taste. There is a band of human beings who really understand what we’re doing.”

Originally a lawyer, the South African moved into film-making after he found himself held up at gunpoint multiple times over the space of a couple of 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 really, truly, passionately enjoy.”

There are elements of this in the film itself. My assumption upon hearing about the VHS release strategy was that This Is How the World Ends would be a deliberately trashy genre piece that had fun with the limits of the format’s ability. Instead, it is a beautifully shot modern indie film that grapples with a lot of big themes. You don’t need to be a therapist to draw a straight line from dos Santos’s real-life experiences to the movie’s end of the world hedonism. But it’s also worth noting that the thing that ends the world here is AI.

And the looming threat of automated creativity is what pushed dos Santos towards the 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.”

If you haven’t guessed already, 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 very clearly made things more difficult for himself by going down this route – he’s had to source the physical VHS tapes himself, and learn how to physically get his film on to them – there is a market for this. The subreddit r/VHS has 73,000 users, full of people bragging about their huge thrift-shop hauls. A company called Witter Entertainment releases specialised VHS editions of movies like Terrifier and Mandy. In 2024 Alien: Romulus released a limited edition VHS copy, lovingly reformatted into 4:3.

The love for this clunky and imperfect format is twofold. First there’s an evident nostalgia for VHS. Before long my chat with dos Santos collapsed into reminiscences about what an event it was to visit a video store, and how sometimes you’d end up loving a film you hadn’t expected to rent, and how you’d watch your rentals over and over again to get your money’s worth.

But also, when the world’s cinematic archives are now essentially in the hands of a few billion-dollar streamers, who can bury titles forever on a whim by dropping them from their submenus, then owning a tangible hard copy of something you love becomes very special indeed.

“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.”

I have to admit that I did not watch This Is How the World ends on VHS. Between my deadline and the assumption that my television wouldn’t know what to do with a VCR if I held a gun to its head, I had to bite the bullet and ask for an online screener. Two things about this; first, the screener came with the password “stuartpleasebuyavcr,” which I appreciated enormously. But second, the film itself is gorgeous to look at. The desert-set scenes are full of beautiful HD details, like the pinks in the clouds and the texture of the sand itself.

However, presumably anyone who chooses to watch the film in its intended form – on wobbly old standard definition video presented in boxy television format – would miss a lot of these details. Was that slightly 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.”

Eventually, This Is How the World Ends will step outside the narrow confines it has set for itself. “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. And this, he hopes, is just the beginning.

“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 End is released on 7 June, which is also World VCR Day.