Looks like the fascination with found footage horror movies isn’t waning anytime soon. It was announced today that North American distribution rights for the anthology picture V/H/S are being acquired by Magnolia Pictures for $1 million, making it the first horror title bought at the festival. [THR]

The movie, which premiered last Sunday, was brought to gruesome life by six of today’s most promising horror directors: Adam Wingard, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, David Bruckner, Joe Swanberg and Ti West. Essentially a found footage horror flick within a found footage horror flick, V/H/S follows a team of petty criminals hired by a mysterious party to steal a video tape from a rundown house in the middle of nowhere. They break in, only to find themselves faced with a dead body and a living room containing stacks upon stacks of tapes. In the process of searching for the right one, they suffer through an array of horrific footage that escalates with each new viewing.

Magnolia beat out three other perspective buyers, all of whom probably clamored for the film after Park City news outlets reported that two people became ill and were forced to leave the theater during a screening last Tuesday. While it was later confirmed by V/H/S producer Roxanne Benjamin (via Twitter) that they were actually suffering from altitude sickness, exhaustion and dehydration, that’s the kind of bad/good publicity that just about every horror filmmaker craves.

 Do you think a movie like V/H/S is worth all the hype?