It’s not a Fantastic Fest without a “V/H/S” film. For the past four years, an installment of the Shudder Original series has premiered in Austin, which brings us to the sixth installment of the series premiering this weekend on “V/H/S/Beyond,” before premiering on Shudder on October 4.He. By now, the strengths and weaknesses of this series are pretty well established: clever concepts, inconsistent execution. The synopses for the “Beyond” segments are some of the best in the series, finding new ways to wedge in horror stories, this time intentionally or coincidentally built around warping. The execution often falters, though, as if the entire film needed a little more fine-tuning at some stage of production. While this is one of the better “V/H/S” anthologies in recent memory, I can’t help but wonder if they shouldn’t take two years to make the next one.
In the segment that wraps around the film, documentarian Jay Cheel has fun riffing on his own skills in projects like the excellent “Cursed Films,” making a sort of fake streaming original docuseries about a pair of tapes purporting to show an alien encounter. The segments that wrap around the film often tie literally into the anthology segments in that franchise, but this one is more thematic, raising the recurring theme of the allure of seeing the seemingly impossible through grainy home footage.
“Beyond” kicks into high gear with “Stork,” a Jordan Stewart-esque action-shooter that at times plays out like a first-person zombie shooter. A group of officers are searching for some missing babies — including one of the cops themselves — and end up at an old house that’s been overrun by monstrous creations, one of which even wields a chainsaw. Until its WTF ending, it’s the most straightforward segment and is enjoyable on its own crazy-action terms. Get in, blow up some bad guys, slap on some wicked makeup effects, get out.
A more ambitious segment unfolds in Virat Pal’s “Dream Girl,” which actually allows for the first Bollywood dance number in a “V/H/S” film. The first half of this is stellar, proving that Pal has a filmmaker’s eye, even through the shaky cameras of a pair of paparazzi chasing an Indian star. When one sneaks into the icon’s trailer, one discovers something unimaginable and, well, chaos ensues. And by chaos I mean shaking, screaming, flashing lights and loud noises. The truth is that using a shaky camera to disorient the audience requires more skill than it seems, and it becomes far too confusing and nauseating.
I felt something similar about the shakiness of Justin Martinez’s “Live and Let Dive,” but it has SUCH a cool idea that it’s more forgivable. Not since the “GoPro meets zombies” brilliance of “V/H/S/2” has this show found such an elegant way to tell a horror story. In this one, a group of people go skydiving for 30 minutes.He Birthday when, basically thousands of miles in the air, they stumble upon an alien invasion. When their plane explodes and half of them crash to the ground, the survivors are forced to run through an orange grove to avoid the massive alien creatures now chasing them. It’s like “District 9” with skydiving. Fun.
Less amusing is Justin Long’s “Fur Babies,” which proves that “Tusk” really screwed Mr. Long. A variation on that film’s deformation fetish, “Fur Babies” features some gnarly makeup effects, but, like many of these segments, it goes on too long. There’s no reason for “V/H/S/Beyond” to be nearly two hours long. I think the best future installments could do would be to shorten the segments by 15-20%. Nearly every chapter in all six films could use trimming.
That’s true even of my favorite segment of this film, “Stowaway,” the directorial debut of the great Kate Siegel, from a script by her husband Mike Flanagan. The reason I responded so strongly to this segment is that it’s unlike other “V/H/S” segments. First, it’s truer to the title — it actually feels like something found on tape that’s been recorded more than a dozen times. Second, it doesn’t rely on disorientation, even if what Siegel chooses to hide gives it strength. It’s the story of a woman investigating stories of lights in the sky and what she discovers — closer to “Annihilation” than anything else. It’s strange, but not just in gross or disorienting terms. It’s proof that the best “V/H/S” segments don’t just think outside the box — they prove there shouldn’t be a box for this kind of filmmaking in the first place.
This review was submitted from the Fantastic Fest premiere. “V/H/S/Beyond” premieres on Shudder on October 4He.