V/H/S/Beyond

I am a simple man, if I see found footage horror, I watch... Even though is hard to maintain good quality after so many movies the V/H/S cinematic universe keep driving me there, getting me back and excited to watch them, to see what they are coming up with this time. Maybe its the nostalgia as a 90s kid speaking or how amazed l got the first time l watched The Blair Witch Project (which definetly started my love for the found footage genre) I dont know.

I have to say though, not as good as the last one in the VFX department, and the first "tape" especially the creature looks like an inflatable costume more than a monster and the babies there is no way you can take your mind off of how doll-like they look, but l liked the "Resident Evil-esque" approach. The camera shots were great, I loved them.

The cameo from "VFX artist react" was a quite a surprise really been following their channel for years.

The acting was good enough in general, maybe some over acting sometimes but nothing too "cringe" imo.

The ending was weird and anti-climatic but whatever, you are not watching a Martin Scorsese film anyways.

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!

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.

I was a big fan of the VHS series of movies, but I've been very disappointed in the last two movies. HOWEVER, this one is pretty good! The first two movies in the VHS series were very well done, with some unique stories and good scares. I rated them an 8 out of 10.

But the next two were near absolute garbage to me. Not sure what went wrong but something went very wrong with them.

But, with this new movie they get back to what made the VHS series so great. This movie had very unique stories and a couple of decent scares. The main focus was aliens this time.

So if you didn't like the last two movies, give this one a chance, I think it is very well done. 👍

7/10.

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.