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V/H/S/Beyond (Blu-ray)
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: (17th February 2025). |
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The Film
 A dire 2024 comes to a close with yet another entry in the V/H/S franchise of diminishing returns that, for the most part, gave up the "found footage" and underground circulation of taboo content on VHS tapes a long time ago. V/H/S/Beyond takes on a sci-fi twist (again) via the framing faux-documentary story "Abduction/Adduction" from Jay Cheel (Cursed Films) in which the last surviving member of an immigrant family sets up video to prove the existence of the paranormal in his family mansion. Strung out of the length of the film intercut with the other stories and padded with licensed clips from fifties studio sci-fi movies with too little actual "found footage" this piece lacks suspense, focus, and feels more like free Shudder cross promotion for Mitch Horowitz (Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction) and the Corridor Digital crew as, respectively, believers and non-believers viewing an underwhelming piece of video proof of aliens that looks like a Roblox horror game and culminates in a gross out image that pretty much sums up the series by this point. In "Stork" from Jordan Downey (ThanksKilling), rookie Segura (Phillip Andre Botello) is outfitted with a bodycam on his first night out with secret police group W.A.R.D.E.N. who are on a private mission to find and take out the perpetrator of a series of infant abductions that includes the son of one of their own (Vas Provatakis). Trailing the latest abduction to a derelict house, they discover that the perpetrator is one of many lullaby-singing, chainsaw-wielding zombified servants of the titular "hatched" menace. Essentially, it's the sort of first-person horror game type of filmmaking reminiscent of [REC]2 with unlikable cardboard characters whose tough guy dialogue consists of saying fuck every few words in what one can only hope is a longer project refashioned for a short rather than a teaser for an expanded universe. You might have seen something like it before in the franchise with the GoPro skateboarders. V/H/S goes Bollywood with "Dream Girl" by Virat Pal (Recapture) in which struggling actor/full-time paparazzi Arnab ('s ) and his lackey Sonu ('s ) sneak onto a film set and into the dressing room of superstar Tara ('s ) to get some exclusive photos only to discover just how Bollywood keeps turning out overnight sensations out of nowhere in what is pretty much a flashier variation on the gorgon short from one of the earlier segments. In "Live and Let Dive" from Justin Martinez (Southbound), a sextet of douchey adrenaline junkies are in the air preparing for a skydive when they wind up in the path of army jets in pursuit of a flying saucer and then end up in an orange grove being taken out one-by-one by an alien that seems to be based on the model of a backwards-walking monster suit-wearing contortionist. Seemingly the work of people with more resources than ideas, the first half is well-realized including the fall to Earth but the orange grove sequence is nothing new or even particularly novel suggesting that video games have spoiled the way most digitally-based filmmakers structure horror.  The nadir of the what is already the franchise nadir (so far) is "Fur Babies" from brothers Christian Long and Justin Long in which a group of deliberately annoying hipster animal activists who do a sting on perky doggy daycare operator Becky (Libby Letlow) discover that her facility does an entirely more sinister type of grooming. Horror fans who did not like Tusk in which Justin Long was on the other end of the camera and the torment, will gain little pleasure from this derivative work. Actress Kate Siegel (Hush) helms "Stowaway" penned by her husband Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) in which single mother and college dropout Hailey (Alanah Pearce) sets out to show everyone whoever doubted her by proving the existence of aliens by camping out in farm country with a camcorder. When she actually happens upon a spaceship, she becomes the titular stowaway and her camcorder documents her discoveries including her increasingly monstrous transformation as alien nanotechnology repeatedly attempts to reassemble her body as it undergoes the ravages of space travel outside of stasis. If you do not like the reductive way Flanagan writes "real people" then the protagonist will just irritate as she narrates the entire experience on Earth and beyond but there is some interesting imagery with the digital effects seeming less overlaid due to the simulated limitations of analog video capture and general loss in what is the only short that actually attempts to be "found footage." As a franchise V/H/S just keeps getting worse, but its maintains continued viewership not so much through the courting of up-and-coming and slumming established filmmakers as much as the possibility of at least one or two shorts per entry of interest. 
Video
Shot in a variety of mostly high definition video formats and different cameras – as well as possibly some standard definition digital and analog video – and digitally-manipulated before being finished in 4K, V/H/S/Beyond looks very much the patchwork experience it is supposed to be as some segments dispense with the "found footage" aesthetic almost entirely while others digitally degrade the imagery so it would be foolish to expect any consistence across shorts in terms of detail and clarity. 
Audio
The sole audio track is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in which the surrounds are used to different degrees from short to short with music sometimes the sole element spread to the rears and other times the usual surround jump scares. "Dream Girl" is mostly in Hindi with burnt-in English subtitles while the overall optional English SDH track covers the English dialogue in the segment and the sound and music notations (as well as translating and transcribing the musical number). "Stowaway' is perhaps the more impressive in terms of sound for being mostly front-oriented lo-fi up to a point and then using the rest of the field for ambiance rather than jolts. 
Extras
While some of the earlier franchise entries included either separately-recorded or hosted commentaries with the filmmakers over Zoom, V/H/S/Beyond's extras are more minimal (and perhaps more tolerable than watching the feature again) starting with pre-visuals on "Live and Let Dive" (1:08) and Libby Letlow "Fur Babies" Audition Tape (4:47) before the more substantial "Do You Want a Selfie?: The Making of Dream Girl" (16:55) and the behind the scenes of "Stork" with IGN (8:07). The "Stowaway" timelapse (5:01) has less in common with the behind the scenes pieces than with the four behind the scenes galleries with nothing devoted to the framing piece (which is perhaps just as well). 
Overall
As a franchise V/H/S just keeps getting worse, but its maintains continued viewership not so much through the courting of up-and-coming and slumming established filmmakers as much as the possibility of at least one or two shorts per entry of interest.
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