Honestly, I think blaming “heavy files” and “old versions” is a little too easy (no offense to @mikeappsreviewer). I’ve seen VLC freeze on a pristine install just playing a 480p MP4—nothing “spicy” about that. For me, the real culprit was hardware acceleration. VLC’s default settings try to offload decoding to your Mac’s GPU, but if there’s any driver wonkiness or your hardware doesn’t quite jive, it’s freeze city. Disabling hardware-accelerated decoding in VLC’s preferences actually stopped the constant lock-ups for me—try: Preferences > Input/Codecs > “Hardware-accelerated decoding” set to “Disable.” It’s not as smooth on 4K, but at least it runs.
Also, check your codec packs—not that Mac users go wild installing them, but sometimes a weird old Perian or Flip4Mac remnant (if you’re running old OS X versions) can cause havoc.
Not sure chasing VLC replacements is always worth it though. Yeah, I’ve thrown in IINA and MPV for fun, but they’ve got their own quirks. If VLC is crashing so hard it takes down the whole program every time, it might be something lower-level too—maybe try creating a new user account and running VLC there to see if it’s system-wide or your user profile is haunted.
tl;dr: Disable hardware decoding, check for codec conflicts, maybe try a clean user account. Abandoning VLC is one answer, but I’d poke a bit deeper before hitting the eject button. Anyone else had VLC freeze just on totally basic files? Makes me feel like my Mac’s cursed sometimes.