V/H/S/Beyond
by Hope Madden
It’s that time again. Time to blow into the cassette basket, ignore the blinking 12:00 and press play on another found footage anthology, V/H/S/Beyond.
The seventh installment in the series focuses (mainly) on left-behind evidence of alien encounters, plus one really weird but entirely unconnected doggy daycare nightmare.
This installment’s wraparound story comes not from a horror filmmaker but from award-winning documentarian Jay Cheel. He invites viewers to investigate the “evidence”—videotapes that may or may not tell of visitors—by way of the documentary “Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction.” The primary story under the experts’ eye is of an Ontario home and a missing man.
In between talking head evaluations of that footage, we’re treated to a smattering of other “evidence.” The most fun is Jordan Downey’s Stork. Downey enlists a first person shooter style to follow a police standoff at a home where missing babies may be stashed. Funhouse gimmicks keep it lively, but the short’s main success is its particular spin on the alien itself.
Virat Pal’s Dream Girl, an interstellar twist on Bollywood stardom, is inventive fun, although the concept of found footage (unretouched or edited footage) is most betrayed in this short.
This brings us to the three most common problems in found footage. 1) How did the found footage get edited together from multiple cameras and angles? 2) Why didn’t the camera operator put the camera down to save themselves and others? 3) How and where was the footage left to be found? To a certain degree, you need to let go of at least one of these details or you can’t enjoy the film. But it gets tough.
Life and Let Dive from Justin Martinez (longtime friend of the franchise) takes us on a 30th birthday skydiving party gone wrong. Shot GoPro style, the short is consistently entertaining, delivers carnage aplenty and one really solid jump scare, plus good-looking aliens. Also, no egregious rule breaking.
The weirdest and possibly most disturbing belongs to directors Christian and Justin Long (the actor, who does not appear). Their short, Fur Babies, has absolutely nothing to do with aliens. Instead, it tails a delightfully unhinged doggy daycare professional (Libby Letlow). There’s also zero integrity in the footage—where it came from and how it was assembled—but there is some wonderfully unseemly stuff happening in the basement.
Kate Siegel’s Stow Away delivers a one-person documentary on recent desert sightings. The segment is strangely fascinating, and Alanah Pearce offers a compelling central performance. Solid creature effects and a logical arc of horror also elevate this one, but you can’t finish it without wondering: how did the world discover this tape?
Found footage horror still manages to strike a chord for a lot of people, and the V/H/S franchise routinely collects an intriguing assortment of films and filmmakers celebrating the form. Beyond is neither the best nor the worst in the series. It does hold some impressive scares and imaginative takes on the old encounter notion.
