Beyond' Takes Found Footage to Space and Back

By Lindsay Traves | Film | October 7, 2024 |

The V/H/S franchise is as much an incubator as it is a showcase. The shorts anthology films collect up-and-coming talent along with industry darlings and veterans to cram together thematic horror shorts into an easy-to-consume movie. There’s only one rule: they must be found footage. Held together with themes, eras, and crafty wraparounds, the anthology series is made up of stories that feel both unique and familiar to the brand. For its seventh outing, comes V/H/S/Beyond which trades in its recent successors’ focus on years for stories about alien invasions. It’s no longer limited to handheld camcorders and grainy tapes, this time benefitting from would-be go-pros, cell phone cameras, and other modern tech.

Jay Cheel opens this installment with a faux documentary about alien abductions. Serving as the framing piece or “wraparound,” this segment will come and go in between the remaining shorts. The talking heads are consumed with tapes labeled “Proof 1” and “Proof 2” of alien encounters that promise to change our perception of everything. For a found footage anthology, a faux documentary is a natural evolution and a fun spin on the genre. It’s also very grounding in an anthology made up of a lot of shaking cameras and staticky handheld shots which makes it an even more effective denotation of when each film begins and ends. Jay Cheel is also known for making Shudder’s Cursed Films documentary which makes this section a bit of a meta in-joke for those familiar.

The first segment comes from Jordan Downey and Kevin Stewart in the form of Stork, their zombie-ish alien tale about cops hunting for missing infants in a dilapidated home filled with brainless killers. If any segments will feel familiar, it’s this one, as these anthologies often have what I like to call “yelly cop shoot ‘em ups.” It’s more of the same and opens the alien themed story with what functions as more of a zombie installment loosely grabbing onto the theme via some quick exposition. That said, the segment has fun with the first-person shooter angles, especially by using different POV shots to toggle between that and third person. There’s also an always welcome chainsaw wielding monster.

Next, there’s Dream Girl from Virat Pal and Evan Dickson, a tale of desperate paparazzi chasing images of a larger-than-life popstar. Feeling like a grim tale out of the mind of Britney Spears, this story has the camera men capture the weeping popstar struggling to keep up with the demands of her. It’s somewhere between The Idol and the Black Mirror episode, Mazey Day but with its own unique aesthetic. This segment stands out as a cool showcase of filmmaking by saving the handheld shaky terror for after it highlights the magic of music video filmmaking, pulling their camera back to show choreography, lighting, music, and the camera setups of another form of the medium.

Smack in the middle was my favorite, and the most effective short in the cluster, Live and Let Dive from Justin Martinez and Ben Turner. This segment finds a group of friends nervously preparing to leap from an airplane. As they prepare to skydive, someone spots something sinister outside the window which knocks their plane out of the regular course of the thrill. Not only did this segment make me audibly shriek more than once, it is also such a creative use of the theme, that left me both stunned and laughing. While others stretched the theme into their zombie or robot stories, Live and Let Dive creatively took the characters off the ground to experience an invasion from a new angle. In some short minutes, this segment made something so hilariously magical, while using its time limitations as an effective medium instead of a constraint.

If you liked Tusk, then you might also like Fur Babies which comes from Christian and Justin Long. This segment attempts to take the piss out of animal activists by having them go after a dog sitter who keeps taxidermy pets which they find cruel. On their crusade, they’re discovered and tortured by the business owner who uses her collection of parts to make something gruesome. It’s got a few good gags and some fun gross-out humor, but this segment moves away from the theme for something we’ve seen Justin Long endure before.

Taking us to the end is Stowaway, a Gravity like take on some parts of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This segment is directed by Kate Seigel (her directorial debut and prelude to her upcoming project) and written by Mike Flanagan, a filmmaker whose name brings a lot of gravitas to the endeavor. This quieter and moodier segment follows a woman recording herself chasing alien encounters in the Mojave desert. On one such excursion, she encounters a spaceship. She chooses to board it and records herself discovering its mysteries. It’s interesting and spooky, especially by being a firsthand account of the terrors of such an alien experience that leans close to body horror. On its own, it’s a compelling horror tale you might find within the pages of a Robert Heinlein anthology, but it sometimes feels like a sauntering pace compared to the frantic style of the V/H/S/ films that doesn’t entirely work. By the end of the anthology, you’re often beginning to mentally log off, having counted the segments, and while this one is spooky and pretty, it doesn’t have what it takes to grasp attention.

As a whole, V/H/S/ Beyond is another worthy installment in a fun horror franchise. They’ve become a beacon for so many creators, and a fun medium to showcase new takes on the craft. This collection of alien stories is as imperfect as one can expect from an assortment of varying tones and creators, but it’s a wicked use of found footage subgenres to experience science fiction terrors. It takes the anthology out of hell and, instead, to space and back.

V/H/S/Beyond begins streaming on Shudder on October 4, 2024