This review was made possible by an advance screener of V/H/S Beyond. V/H/S Beyond premieres on Shudder on Friday, October 4th.

V/H/S/BEYOND, the seventh installment of the V/H/S franchise will feature six new bloodcurdling tapes, directed by Jordan Downey, Christian Long & Justin Long, Justin Martinez, Virat Pal, Kate Siegel and a special presentation by Jay Cheel, respectively.

I’ve talked before about the love/hate relationship I have with both Shudder and anthology series flicks. Both of them have the ability to turn in really great work, but also a fair chunk of stinkers. Anthologies can be so hit or miss in particular because you can pair really enthralling stories right up against some that are massive let-downs. And more often than not, the lesser story ends up dragging down the better one in your mind. 

Then you get into the V/H/S series as a whole, and I’ll be honest: I haven’t been a very big fan. For all the reasons I just laid out: they are imbalanced and heavily flawed; the bad stories tend to be more bad than the good ones are good. There are some gem segments, to be sure, but it feels like three out of five of the tales are on the negative end of things. 

This all leads us to the newest Shudder anthology movie offering: V/H/S Beyond. Where as the previous entries in the franchise have been loosely grouped horror tales or organized by an era (like V/H/S 85 or V/H/S 99), Beyond apparently set out to be themed around alien invasion story arcs. For the most part. But we’ll get to that. Alien horror has a pretty rich history that can be hard to live up to, but can this series pull it off? Let’s see…

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ For whatever reason, V/H/S movies have a tendency to lead-off the anthology segments with their best tale, and Beyond keeps that tradition alive with Stork, a story of a secret police force called W.A.R.D.E.N. going after what they suspect is a child kidnapper. 

Of course, as with most V/H/S stories, there is far more than meets the eye initially to the story of the WARDENS. They quickly find themselves swarmed by brainless (literally!) zombies, protecting something at the top of a building. The police force fight, shoot, stab, and chainsaw their way through the opposition before finally encountering the alien beast responsible for the abductions. 

Stork is a brutal fun time, with some legitimately great action set pieces and brilliant gore. The camera POV might change a bit too often and haphazardly for me, but everything here is a pretty fantastic thrill ride to kick V/H/S Beyond off. It fits the tradition of opening arcs for this series.

+ Live And Let Dive is the third anthology story of the bunch, and as if the title wasn’t clue enough, it kicks off with a group of friends preparing to go skydiving. While reveling in the excitement and anticipation, they see an alien spacecraft outside their dive plane. And things go down from there. Literally!

Unlike with Stork, there is only one camera in play here, and Live And Let Dive is pretty much an extended one-cut story, though you can see several times where the cuts are. But hey, that’s fine. I get it. It’s REALLY HARD to do single takes, so sneak in your cuts where you can. It’s still mighty impressive looking. 

This is also the arc that gives us the most clear view of its aliens, and they are imaginative! So that’s definitely a plus. 

– In an anthology full of science fiction and alien related tales, Christian and Justin Long’s Fur Babies segment sticks out like a sore thumb because it features neither of those things. It’s like the V/H/S creators were so excited to get Justin Long’s involvement in their project, that they let him go completely off-assignment. 

Also, the correlation to Tusk is obvious enough, but when you find out that Justin Long was involved, it’s even more obvious. The story itself is fine, I suppose, and it’s really uncomfortable to watch at points, which is exactly what the Longs were going for. It just feels so out in left field; it’s distractingly different from the rest of the movie. They couldn’t have saved this segment for the next edition?

– The ultimate through-line story to V/H/S Beyond is titled Abduction/Adduction. And aside from having a boss looking alien design when you finally get to see it, it’s ultimately a let-down. The interspersed talking heads bits are worthwhile enough, and each time they pop up between tales, they lead us in to the new story we are about to see while also carrying on with the overarching angle. But when you get to the end, it feels very much like a disappointment when we just see something happen, and that’s the end of it.

I wish this part of the movie had gotten a bit better of an ending to work with, because again… the final creature we see has a gnarly design. But aside from that, it’s just nothing. 

OVERALL

Being a touch uneven is the name of the game not just for anthology pieces, but the V/H/S franchise in general. I will admit, though: this is probably the best V/H/S movie I have ever seen. It’s not quite as memorably humorous as some of the others, but the quality drop-off from story to story wasn’t as bad as it has often been. Even Long’s Fur Babies story is good enough for what it is, even if it’s so out of place. Finally, a V/H/S I can wholeheartedly recommend!

★★★ Out Of 5!