A long-running horror anthology series takes a dip into alien visitation, with mixed yet diverting results. Our V/H/S/Beyond review:
The appearance of the V/H/S franchise every October has become as delightful an annual staple as the Doctor Who Christmas special once was. Perhaps such a comparison is apt given that V/H/S/Beyond, the seventh entry in the Brad Miska-developed horror anthology series, is more expressly sci-fi than any previous film. It also has a specific focus on sinister close encounters with an array of extra-terrestrial beings – some weird, some vicious.
V/H/S has often focused on specific genres or ideas in recent years, with the last three films’ 80s and 90s settings allowing them to lean more heavily on their retro aesthetic. The result is a certain level of restriction, both in their visual presentation and storytelling. Beyond, by contrast, is free to tell stories across multiple decades and with varying styles of camera, technology and narrative structure – the main point of connection being those extra-terrestrials.
It’s an approach that recalls 2013’s V/H/S 2, ‘Slumber Party Alien Abduction’ by Jason Eisner, which from the perspective of a camera on a dog captured a group of teens being attacked and abducted by menacing ‘Grey’ aliens. Though it isn’t the best V/H/S short, that one remains memorable for its chaotic visual style and an attempt to classify alien visitors as vicious – far from the benign or enigmatic figures in mythology or the ones found in Beyond’s framing narrative, ‘Abduction/Addiction’ by Jay Cheel. Each V/H/S movie contains a wraparound story that interweaves between each short film, but it often doesn’t connect to the shorts themselves beyond perhaps a slight level of thematic resonance.
In Beyond’s case, the series adopts a faux documentary approach in telling how two old VHS tapes which contain seeming proof of alien life surfaced through a Redditor. This allows various talking heads – including podcast hosts, YouTubers and such – to discuss the ongoing alien phenomenon in history and culture, while framing the strange tale of an old house, an immigrant family and what could be the weirdest alien visitation ever. As many of these framing tales in the franchise often are, ‘Abduction/Addiction’ is a bit unformed, but it does have an arresting conclusion and sets the tone for the films we’re really here to see.
In advance of Beyond’s release, the big talking point was ultimately the final short, ‘Stowaway’, coming as it does from husband and wife team Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, both of whom arguably stand as modern horror legends thanks to an array of celebrated TV projects and movies. Flanagan writes ‘Stowaway’ while Siegel, in her debut, directs the tale of Halley (Alanna Pierce), a woman obsessed with the UFO phenomenon who, while filming in the Mojave Desert, has her own close encounter.
Siegel has designs on direction as an extension of her career and ‘Stowaway’ suggests real promise. She manages to capture the found footage aesthetic while using varying camera styles, including an arresting use of infra-red, to depict an atmospheric slice of body horror. Given it also has a quietly tragic emotional undertone to Halley’s life, there’s a deeper component that helps ‘Stowaway’ stand out as the best short film Beyond has to offer.
The film starts in bombastic fashion with Jordan Downey’s ‘Stork’, which sees a group of hard-boiled cops investigating the abduction of babies. Their investigation leads them to a vast, abandoned old house where they face down a horde of what appear to be humans transformed into alien-controlled zombies, resulting in a barrage of gunfire as the team work to blast their way to the source and uncover the reason for all those abductions. One of them, the appropriately named E.T. (Vas Provatakis), has particular skin in the game as one of the abducted children’s father.
‘Stork’ never quite reaches the intense highs of shorts from previous films such as ‘Safe Haven’ or ‘The Subject’, but it does wildly entertain at points and introduces a well-worn but enjoyable conspiratorial idea that hopefully future V/H/S films might revisit (or could even have spin-off movie potential).
The other highlight of Beyond, if perhaps a little less enjoyable, was ‘Live And Let Dive’ by Justin Martinez, explores a familiar bit of alien lore before spiralling off into horror territory. A group of friends gather to celebrate the 30th birthday of Zach (Bobby Slaski) with a skydive, but their plane crashes into a UFO. Having landed in an orange grove, the group’s stalked by deadly alien creatures from the aforementioned UFO. It’s a simple but well executed premise, one you might suspect could stay airborne for longer, but once it comes to earth, it provides Beyond’s weirdest and nastiest alien interlopers. There’s something uncanny about these creatures that makes them entirely memorable.
Less effective are the other two shorts, ‘Dream Girl’ from Virat Pal, set in Mumbai and about a popular singer and actress hiding an otherworldly, Body Snatchers-esque secret. Despite some fun Bollywood trappings, it ends up more ridiculous than scary. ‘Fur Babies’ by Christian and Justin Long, ostensibly designed as a dark comedy about a doggy daycare woman called Becky (Libby Letlow) with a weird sideline in transforming people into human/dog hybrids, feels more grating than comedic, and the connection to alien life feels far less clear than in the other shorts. It’s decidedly nasty and twisted at points, and Letlow is great at being a truly awful human being, but it struggles to come together overall.
Such the nature of V/H/S, though: not one of the seven released anthologies to date has delivered six top-tier horror tales. There’s always a balance between the good, average and sometimes just plain bad. Beyond is no exception and, ultimately, it’s no better or worse than the previous two or three films in the series. If their makers are moving into a realm of specific paranormal foci per film, that could continue to keep the franchise feeling fresh, as Beyond often does.
Suggested product
Film Stories issue 48 print edition: 168 pages, the UK's biggest film magazine
£6.99
Even if the quality threshold varies, V/H/S/Beyond proves there’s life in this old dog yet.
V/H/S/Beyond is available on Shudder now.
You can find A J. on social media, including links to his Patreon and books, via Linktr.ee here. You can hear more on the V/H/S franchise here on the Modern Horror Podcast, exclusively on the Film Stories Podcast Network.