V/H/S/Beyond

The 'V/H/S' movies are always a funny one. They're very inconsistent and there's rarely more than one great segment per film. But you keep watching each one in the hope that a magical segment will come along that will blow everything to pieces and make it all worth it.

My ratings of the 5 segments (skipping the wrap-around one):

Stork: 4/10 Dream Girl: 3/10 Live and Let Dive: 6/10 Fur Babies: 8/10 Stowaway: 4/10

Fur Babies was the pick of the bunch for me, but mostly because it appealed to my tastes more than the others. It had a real 'Tusk' vibe to it.

Stowaway was disappointing considering Mike Flanagan wrote it. I was hoping he would have done something special and they were saving the best for last.

Overall the alien theme didn't really do it for me and I preferred the variety the other films had. A generous 5/10.

Once again the V/H/S franchise proves its consistency is in its inconsistency of quality. From the framing tape you would expect that every one of these shorts would be about aliens, but even that isn't consistent as 2 out of the 6 tapes don't follow that theme. I personally don't like whenever the V/H/S franchise focuses on aliens, because due to the microbudget nature of these films, they almost always have to use CGI in order to create aliens/UFOs, which end up looking like trash. Not surprisingly, most of the aliens in this film have that exact same problem where the practical gore effects end up being pretty gnarly and nice, but nearly every time they use CGI it instantly takes me out of the film.

That being said the short "Stowaway", written by Mike Flanagan, actually makes great use out of the alien gimmick, as it is actually shot with a VHS camcorder (something that the V/H/S films are ironically using less and less of), which hides a lot of how amateurish the CGI effects usually can be. It also uses really clever cinematography to never fully reveal what the aliens in the short look like, making great use out of the fear of the unknown.

"Dream Girl" also showcases another major theme of the V/H/S films that foreign filmmakers always outclass their American counterparts. This one isn't about aliens at all, rather a couple of Mumbai native paparazzi who are assigned to get candids of a Bollywood sensation named Tara, who holds a dark secret. It's one of the shorter segments, but it goes pretty hard with some of the best gore in this film.

"Fur Babies" is the other segment that doesn't have any aliens at all, and while it starts off pretty weak, it ends up being pretty middle of the road due to how hilariously they push the concept. "Stork" is also fine, as while the creature design for the alien is pretty gnarly, being based off of the art of Oleg Vdovenko by the same name, it feels more like a video game than an actual horror movie. The gore and action just feel way too floaty and doesn't have the impact that it should.

"Live and Let Dive" is the worst one of the bunch, as it relies too much on the alien gimmick and I quite frankly could not take any of the CGI creatures seriously whenever they come on screen.

The framing tape is ultimately the most frustrating out of the bunch, as throughout we get spoonfed info about how 2 recently discovered video tapes about a missing man might finally prove the existence of aliens. We never really get enough context to actually be excited about what's on the tapes, and when it finally gets revealed at the very end of the movie, it ends up being extremely underwhelming. Yeah, the gore's cool and all, but I've been strung along for nearly 2 hours and this reveal was not worth the wait at all.

If you're already a fan of the V/H/S franchise you'll probably get a kick out of this, and it might provide some amusement if this is your first V/H/S film and you're bored looking for something to watch.

This is I believe the seventh of the V/H/S franchise to come out and this one has a theme focus on sci-fi horror and creatures from other planets. As with the other films, it is made up of several shorter segments telling various stories through the use of "found footage". The found footage horror genre is one that gets a pretty bad name from what I've seen, but I've personally found the V/H/S films to be some that do this better than most, however I felt this one fell a bit flat. I am actually quite surprised at the high rotten tomatoes rating on this. This is probably the least entertaining of the V/H/S franchise so far and the tie-in's with alien abduction tales was weak at best for most of the segments. The resorting to gore for most of the horror elements was a cheap replacement for telling a good story through the use of the found footage medium and style. Part of what made Blair Witch so terrifying was that you never saw the witch. You were terrified because the characters were terrified. I wasn't terribly engaged by these, nor was I disturbed as I have been from others. In other films I've found myself impacted and unable to stop thinking about at least one of the stories but for this one they each devolved into shock and gore and just left me bored.

As a documentary detailing a popular alien abduction site in Toronto plays, the footage is interrupted by various vignettes showing supernatural (though mainly extraterrestrial) encounters.

V/H/S/Beyond is the seventh entry in the V/H/S franchise that starting with soft reboot V/H/S/94 has become a regular staple of horror streaming service Shudder. The producers opted to have this installment being sci-fi based (as a sort of in-joke on horror franchises such as Hellraiser and Friday the 13th going into space in certain entries) and what results is something that's not without charm, but is in my opinion one of the lesser entries in the series.

The main narrative thread, Jay Cheel's Abduction/Adduction, following a documentary involving investigating a popular alien abduction spot in Toronto and anonymous alien proof tapes from a Redditor is nicely produced I guess and feels like something you'd see on one of those "Aliens: Fact or Fiction?" type shows, but while it's well produced with some humorous moments it doesn't really have a big payoff nor is it all that scary even with its ending stinger that was kind of disappointing.

The next segment, the Jordan Downey directed Stork written by Downey with Kevin Stewart, follows a group of cops who are part of a unit called W. A. R. D. E. N. investigating a rash of kidnapped infants (one of whom is a team member's child) and the raid reveals the abductors are not of this Earth. Essentially a police ride-along where the perps are monsters, it's an idea that's certainly been done before such as the short lived series Death Valley or the standalone X-Files episode X-Cops, but for what it is it delivers even if the monsters sometimes veer into silliness.

The second segment, the Virat Pal directed Dream Girl which Pal writes with Evan Dickson, follows two Paparazzi in Mumbai seeking to get footage of Bollywood star Tara only to discover beneath Tara's delicate beauty lurks something colder and deadly. The short covers very familiar territory satirizing the cult of celebrity and impossible beauty standards albeit transplanting it outside the usual Hollywood setting and into the Indian entertainment industry through a western lens. It goes through the motions well enough, though the reveal as to what Tara is goes into territory so ridiculous and prompting further questions that its brutal finale is more funny than scary.

The third segment, The Justin Martinez directed Live and Let Dive which Martinez writes with Ben Turner, follows a group of characters celebrating the birthday of one of their own by taking him skydiving only for the celebration to be cut short with the arrival of a UFO, some military fighter jets, and a mid air collision that sends the survivors hurtling downward. The segment has some good buildup and an excellent middle portion where we follow the POV through a go-pro struggling to open his chute in mid-air, but once on the ground it goes into very standard territory with characters rushing around an orange grove with an alien monster that's not all that unique or special. In short: excellent setup, standard payoff.

The penultimate short, Fur Babies written and directed by brothers Christian and Justin Long, follows a group of animal rights activists investigating a dog daycare run by Becky (Libby Letlow) by going undercover as dog boarders only to discover Becky's professed love of dogs manifests as a violent hatred of humans. Largely throwing away "sci-fi" theme of this short, Fur Babies instead goes into more bodily mutilation territory similar to Human Centipede or Tusk (rather funny because Justin Long was in Tusk). The biggest asset to the short is definitely Libby Letlow as Becky who's just fantastic in the role playing someone cloyingly sweet who can turn on a dime and reveal an ugly darkness within. I'd honestly compare it to something like Kathy Bates' performance as Annie Wilkes from Misery she's that good. Even as someone who didn't like Human Centipede or Tusk, I actually did kind of like this one for how insane it got with the directions it takes.

The final short, Stowaway directed by Kate Siegel and written by her husband Mike Flanagan, follows a woman named Halley (Alanah Pearce) who having left her family behind travels to the Mojave Desert to investigate alien sightings and finds and boards an alien ship where she uses technology that's not "user friendly" when it comes to humans. This is probably the best realized take on the whole sci-fi concept as Siegel and Flanagan create something truly memorable and alien without even having a traditional antagonist as the aliens seem largely unaware or indifferent to Halley's presence on board. The ship features some excellent creepy production design and a healing technology leads to some solid body horror that's reminiscent of something like Croneberg's The Fly.

As with many anthologies V/H/S/Beyond is a mixture of peaks and valleys, but ultimately I felt the peaks were outnumbered by the valleys. While I liked Stowaway, the frame story and other sci-fi based shorts were very underwhelming in my opinion. And while I respected the insane turns taken by Justin and Christian Long's Fur Babies as a spiritual sequel to Tusk of all things with a great performance by Libby Letlow, I do have to question its placement here when it strays so far from what's supposed to be the core theme of this installment. Some good things to appreciate, but definitely the lesser of the Shudder era franchise entries while being better than V/H/S and Viral.

I love the V/H/S franchise with all my heart. Each year I am very excited to see what new AND interesting spooky stories we will get to experience.

Beyond focus on aliens which is new to the serie! The narrative story felt alright to me, i wasn't very much intrigued like the previous entries, but it did manage to laydown properly the fondation of what we were going to see.

Now into the fun spooky stories! Without going into spoilers, for me V/H/S Beyond started with what I can only consider one of the best story of the whole franchise. I can safely say it will remain with me for a while. After this one I was afraid that because it was so good, the remaining ones might be a let down, but I was wrong. The second and third story were also very new and fun! Didn't expect it at all to dive (pun intended) into this direction. I was hooked and couldn't look away!

Sadly, the 4th story is where things fell of for me. It just felt boring and not very spooky. It felt very off beat compare to the other stories. Nothing that will remain in memory for me. The 5th story althought it did feel more inline with the main narrative, felt also a bit boring. Its extremly slow and predictable. It's intended too, but the way this is shot is so dark i kept trying to see what was going on. Sadly, these two last film take about 50minutes and killed any momentum the movie had for me.

You are left with the final snippet of the story narrative and it was weird and a bit dull. Overall, VHS Beyond lacks a bit of charmed but had some memorable stories that still makes the movie worth the time. I would have reorder stories to leave the first one as the last. The last two VHS movies were better, but Beyond is far better than Viral, definitely the worst. Don't expect too much and you should like it!