V/H/S Beyond (2024)
Directed by Jay Cheel, Jordan Downey, Christian Long, Justin Long, Justin Martinez, Virat Pal, Kate Siegel
I can’t believe there has been 7 VHS movies lol. The only one I haven’t seen is VHS Viral, so I probably should get to that one right? These are a yearly occurrence at this point, and they always make it to my blog. Like the other installments, this one is an anthology with 5 shorts and a wrap around. So I’ll just break down each segment and give my thoughts on acting, cinematography, fx, etc you know the whole deal.
Stork
Stork is the first segment directed by Jordan Downey. It is about a string of baby disappearances and a police swat team outside of a crappy house, where they have been told the babies are. They come across numerous zombie like people wielding weapons. They make it to the top room and a bunch of creatures called Brooders attack them. The brooders all have bandages on their heads, covering holes and empty skulls. The brooders are being controlled by a large Stork like creature, whom is feeding the babies the brains of people. They rain gunfire on the stork and drop it. It is a solid creature feature and has good tension for being a short. I enjoyed this one, the acting is decent and the stork looks great.
Dream Girl
Dream Girl is next, directed by Virat Pal and I hate to say that I was bored with this one, the second I saw it was Indian. I know that is probably bad to say but it is the truth. Two paparazzi guys are walking around trying to get footage of Tara, a Bollywood actress. They hide in her trailer and she comes in, gets berated by the director and starts crying. Arnab sees a face floating in a bowl, and freaks out. She is alerted by this and Arnab apologizes, then tells her that she is a goddess and shouldn’t be pushed around by the director. She stands up and agrees, then shows that she is some kind of robot, and rips her own face off and says she is going to take his. Then shit hits the fan while the robo bitch kills everyone. It was ok, I liked the crazy swerve but the subtitles and awful bollywood dancing made me groan. Not sure about the acting, because it was in a different language but it seemed decent?
Live and Let Dive
Live and Let Dive, directed by Justin Martinez follows a group of friends going skydiving. Suddenly they see a UFO in the sky and it takes the plane down. We get to see a cool shot of a gun skydiving in POV so that was fun. Now they run around an orange grove being chased by a large alien creature that is hell bent on killing them. Zach, the main character tries helping numerous people but the alien kills them. He waves down a dude in a truck, the guy gets killed and Zach tries to take off but he’s abducted and the tape cuts out. The effects were ok, the alien was bad cgi, but it was still a decent entry with some good gore. I really like the skydiving shot.
Fur Babies
Fur Babies, oh man. Directed by Chrisian Long and Justin Long. This one is pretty unhinged haha. A commercial for a doggy day care is shown and you can see taxidermied dogs behind the lady which leads some activist group to check her out. The two people that go, get captured by the woman, whom is insane and hell bent on turning people into dogs. Yes, dog like people, it is pretty hilarious and gross. The rest of the group shows up to find them, and they get attacked by the human dog like creatures and mutilated. Then later an idiot tries to steal a package off the lady’s step and a dog like creature kills him. Wow this one was nuts, and pretty fun. It is probably my favorite of the bunch.
Stowaway
Last is Stowaway, directed by Kate Siegel. This one was basically black and white for the most part and rather boring. This woman jumps on a ufo and faces the consequences. She gets injured and nanties come out and heal her, then she learns that she is being mutated by the ship and other creatures on board. Now it is an endless cycle of her getting hurt, and healed and mutated. I was bored with this one, not a fan. Crazy that Mike Flanagan wrote this installment because it is the worst by far.
The wrap around is boring as well, basically just a documentary about a guy finding vhs tapes and what is on them. At this point, do we even need the wrap around story? No one cares, just show us the fun segments.
It was a decent installment to the VHS series and had some fun entries such as Fur Babies but a lousy one like Stowaway. I enjoyed the previous one much more. If you have Shudder, check it out. I give this a C+.
